Project Will Give Rare Fish a Habitat ; Part of Rio Grande To Be Reshaped

By CAROLYN CARLSON Journal Staff Writer

If you can’t get the water to the fish, then move the fish to the water.

That is the reasoning behind the Middle Rio Grande Riverine Habitat Restoration Project, which officially kicked off Friday morning.

“Bring the fish to the water,” Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Friday during a news conference on the banks of the Rio Grande at the Alameda Open Space Wetlands.

Domenici said that, several years ago, he was sitting at his desk in Washington when the thought occurred about moving the endangered silvery minnow upstream from the Socorro area, where the river tends to dry up during the summer, to the Albuquerque area where it tends to flow year-round.

“For years, I have urged the agencies involved in the middle Rio Grande to bring the minnow to the water, rather than trying to keep the entire Rio Grande flowing in the hottest parts of the summer,” Domenici said Friday.

“And, today, we see we are making headway,” Domenici said.

The Interstate Stream Commission began dirt work this week on phase one of the project, which will reshape 24 acres of the Rio Grande.

The project will remove sand and silt and reshape several islands and sandbars in the river to provide habitat for the silvery minnow.

The three river locations for the project are: from the North Diversion Channel to the Alameda bridge; from Interstate 40 to the Central bridge and from the Rio Bravo bridge to the South Diversion Channel.

Page Pegram, Interstate Stream Commission project manager, said removing silt and reshaping the river’s islands and banks will improve the ecosystem and provide for greater habitat diversity.

Pegram said several of the river’s islands and sandbars will be re-shaped to provide slopes and varying levels of steps that will allow the river to have areas where the flow slows down during the peak run-off season, which also happens to be when the silvery minnow spawn.

“During the spring flows, the eggs need vegetation to get caught up in while they mature,” Pegram said.

Pegram said the fast-moving current during spring carries the minnow eggs downstream and away from suitable habitat for them to mature into larvae, then into juvenile fish.

“Then, when they become larvae downstream, they are not strong enough to swim upstream to better habitat,” Pegram said.

The sloping or stepping of the islands, sandbars and banks will give the eggs and developing fish more areas in the river where they can grow.

Wilco Marsh Buggies and Draglines Inc., from Louisiana, is the contractor doing the amphibious dirt work.

The company brought an amphibious backhoe, along with two air boats, to do the work.

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, RN.M., New Mexico State Attorney General Patricia Madrid and State Engineer John D’Antonio put on life jackets and hopped on one of the air boats for a tour of the work in progress.

“What a great idea bringing the fish to the water,” Wilson said after her tour. “It is really interesting how they are doing it.”

Madrid praised the work of the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative Program.

Madrid serves as co-chair of the collaborative.

The collaborative is a partnership of about 20 state, federal, municipal and tribal agencies working to protect and improve the status of the endangered species, such as the silvery minnow and the southwestern willow flycatcher while simultaneously protecting regional water uses.

“It is a common effort to benefit the Rio Grande ecosystem and the humans that share it,” Madrid said.

Madrid joked that she and the silvery minnow have some things in common.

“And I don’t mean short jokes or being a small fish in a big pond,” Madrid said.

“I am a daughter of this river, having been raised on a farm in Las Cruces that depended on the beautiful Rio Grande.”

Funding sources for the first phase of the restoration project include $728,000 from the New Mexico Water Trust Board, $336,000 from the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and $272,000 from the Middle Rio Grande Endangered Species Act Collaborative Program.