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Granite Cutthroats
The granite sculpture of 27 Rio Grande cutthroat trout is being installed between the new convention center and city hall. This is a nice tribute to our state fish, but as I wrote a year ago, it is unfortunate that we don’t have any real cutts swimming in the Santa Fe River, a mere couple blocks away.
For a city that considers itself “enlightened,” it is an enormous embarrassment that the city’s river runs dry for a good portion of the year.
The city committed something like 700 acre feet to the river this year after a good snow pack last winter, but the politicians fall short of understanding that the river needs to flow all year round to be a living river that holds living fish. Instead of a sustainable flow, we get a cosmetic flow put on during the summer to impress the tourists.
The mere fact that a city was able to totally shut off a river when they built the dam is unbelievable. They’d never be able to get away with that today. And the city likes to impose conservation measures to make us think we are all saving a valuable resource, but when we peons save water, it just goes into more development.
It’s time.
It’s time the city deal with this problem and commit the water savings from the citizens, not to new development, but to a sustainable year-round flow in our river.
Lots of information is flying around about the San Juan below Navajo Dam these days. Unfortunately, almost none of it is grounded in hard scientific data.
Before anyone takes action on the San Juan, a science-based study needs to take place to determine what is changing about the river and what steps might be prudent to correct those problems.
I think pretty much everyone who has watched the San Juan over the last decade would agree that the river is changing. Is that change the result of oil and gas development and is it likely to degrade the fishery? Maybe, maybe not.
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Come get your hands dirty and help clean up the Pecos River.
Meet at the offices of the Upper Pecos Watershed Association, 78 Main St., Pecos, NM
Coffee and pastries from 8:30 to 9:00.
Barbeque to follow from 12:00 to 2:00 at the Jamie Koch Recreation Area. Bring the kids for fishing demonstrations. Raffle prizes for participants.
Sponsored by the Upper Pecos Watershed Association, the Truchas Chapter of Trout Unlimited, U.S. Forest Service, Tas no Mas and the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish
McCrystal Creek
The Coalition for the Valle Vidal has given NMTU $9,100 to do stream restoration work in the Valle Vidal, primarily of Middle Ponil, North Ponil and McCrystal Creeks.
In order to accomplish this work, a coalition of groups, similar to what has been done on Comanche Creek, will be formed to do on the ground projects that will improve the riparian habitat for Rio Grande cutthroats.
It will take several years to accomplish this work. The work plan for 2009, is to determine just what needs to be done, and what can be done similar to Comanche. From there we will add more grant money to the pool so that something significant can be accomplished to improve fish habitat.
William Schudlich
gregmcreynolds
kevinvreilly
