Kevin Moloney
“We’re helping to solve a problem instead of standing in the way,” accoding to Ted Kowalski of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Kowalski, photographed in Denver as he crossed the South Platte River, is Colorado’s Platte River Recovery Implementation Program manager.
The river’s riparian zones provide valuable sheltering, nesting and foraging habitat for the program’s target species. But after 150 years of water development, the Platte’s flow regime and structure have been altered dramatically, and the habitat is less of an Eden-like refuge than a liability. For example, terns and plovers historically sought out the river’s high sandbars as prime nesting sites. Snowmelt-driven spring flows of years past built sandbars that were high enough to withstand heavy summer rains. Now the sandbars are often
“It is an ecological phenomenon. Acre by acre, this is probably the most important piece of land for sandhill cranes. If we lost 100 square miles, it would probably decimate the population. If we lost that in the wintering or breeding grounds, it wouldn’t even make a dent.”
—Felipe Chavez-Ramirez
inundated later in the season. Whooping cranes are having trouble finding suitable sites to layover. The cranes look for wide, shallow sections of braided river with little vegetation so they can spot predators. Lower water levels have allowed so much new vegetation to take root that parts of the river look like forests. According to Felipe Chavez-Ramirez, executive director of the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust, “For the last three summers (2004-2006) the riverbed was completely dry. You couldn’t tell where it was, there was so much vegetation.” It’s so bad that the trust, which worked to restore native habitat, plows the river mechanically to clear vegetation so cranes will use it again. Dan Luecke, a hydrologist who represented the National Wildlife Federation during the negotiations, said that the circumstances of the whooping crane are perilous. The H e a d w at e r s | W i n t e r 2 0 0 8
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