Tuesday August 27, 2024
AZ Central —
A shot of cold water from Glen Canyon Dam appears to have stalled a smallmouth bass invasion of the Grand Canyon and protected rare Colorado River fish there, federal officials say.
In early July, two years after first finding the predatory bass spawning below the dam and in threatened humpback chub territory, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began releasing cold water from deep in Lake Powell in an effort to chill the river past the temperature at which bass are known to reproduce.
So far this summer, numerous netting, snorkeling and electrofishing trips on the river have turned up no newly hatched bass, biologists reported to an advisory committee meeting on Grand Canyon’s South Rim on Thursday.
“That’s huge,” said Kelly Burke, executive director at Wild Arizona and its Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, which had pushed for flow alterations from the dam to disrupt the bass invasion.