2025 Western Division and Colorado/Wyoming AFS Annual Meeting
Dates: May 11-15, 2025
Location: Westin Westminster in Westminster, Colorado
2025 Western Division and Colorado-Wyoming AFS Annual Meeting Plenary Session
Theme: Building Resilience: Investments in Fish Passage, Habitat Restoration, and Hatchery Modernization
Substantial resources are being allocated in the US and Canada to enhance fish passage and habitat restoration projects in an effort to increase resilience in fish populations and their ecosystems. Concurrently, both public agencies and private aquaculture are focusing on modernizing existing hatcheries and designing new facilities to withstand future climate challenges.
We have an amazing group of plenary speakers who will give presentations related to our meeting theme.
Structuring Habitat – The Key Underpinnings of and Perspectives from the National Fish Habitat Partnership
—Gary Whelan, MI DNR Fisheries Division (retired) and AFS President-Elect
The National Fish Habitat Partnership (NFHP) was established in 2006 after a recognition by the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies that many key fish populations were in decline by the early 2000s even after spending billions of U.S. dollars to stem the decline. While NFHP has been around for nearly 20 years, some of its supporting tenets are periodically overlooked or forgotten. The effort has remained true to its original mission which is “To conserve (protect, rehabilitate and enhance) the nation’s fish and aquatic communities through partnerships that foster fish habitat conservation and improve the quality of life for the American people.” The efforts have attempted to remain true to work on key system level functions and processes (i.e. hydrology, connectivity, material transport, channel and bottom form, water quality, and living habitat) and not just fix more symptoms of issues. As you may think, there have been many forces tugging away from those tenets and this presentation will highlight some of these which affect many habitat projects. For example, NFHP has struggled with protecting intact habitats as attention has always been focused on conducting projects on impaired systems that engage many people, a NFHP strong point, such as placing oyster reefs in coastal marine habitats, removing fish barriers, or adding woody debris to streams. Protecting intact systems are well known to be orders of magnitude less expensive than “fixing” damaged systems but are less attractive to the public and can be trigger terms in some political settings. While protecting intact systems are undersubscribed to by NFHP, there is also a tendency to push to spend excessive funds on badly degraded often urban or intense agricultural systems which have many function and process issues with very high and unsustainable price tags but high public profiles with less than measurable results. Even these difficult to rehabilitate systems with high profiles have struggled to mobilize all partners, particularly all federal, state and tribal entities, to fully back NFHP efforts as part of their respective programs. To really show positive change and prevent further habitat loss, NFHP and habitat programs in general really need to fully mobilize all potential public and tribal resources on protecting intact systems and rehabilitating systems with only a few impaired functions or processes to both show the benefits of aquatic habitat work along a high return on investment.
Gary has a B.S. from the University of Wyoming and a M.S. in fisheries management from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He worked for the Michigan DNR for 35.5+ years and prior to that for Michigan State University for 4.7 years. Recently, Gary retired from being the Research Program Manager for the Michigan DNR that also included fish health program oversight and involvement with the Great Lakes Fish Health Committee, habitat management consultation, and emergency response duties. He has been involved with the National Fish Habitat Partnership since 2004 as Board staff and as Co-Chair of the Board’s Science and Data Committee. He is President-Elect, a life member and Fellow of the American Fisheries Society (AFS). He has involved in multiple Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) committees on national fisheries issues and was the second President of the Instream Flow Council. While his educational training is as a stream ecologist, he has been blessed with a wonderfully diverse career that has ranged from studying fish pathogens to analyzing hydropower impacts statewide to examining fish habitat nationally to managing complex fisheries systems in Michigan.
Reconnecting and restoring habitat for Cutthroat Trout in the Bear River Basin
—Jim DeRito, Mike Fiorelli, and Tyler Coleman with Trout Unlimited
The Bear River flows through Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho and is the epitome of a “working river” in the West, supplying water for agriculture, hydropower, and municipal/industrial uses. These uses and related infrastructure have fragmented and degraded fish habitat for Cutthroat Trout throughout the basin. To address these conditions, Trout Unlimited and partners have used the Protect, Reconnect, Restore, and Sustain conservation model for about 20 years. We present three examples within the basin of how this model has been applied, results achieved, and future steps to conserve Cutthroat Trout in the basin.
Jim DeRito has done fisheries conservation work in the Intermountain West for a variety of federal, state, and non-profit organizations for about 32 years. For the past 12 years, he’s worked for Trout Unlimited and has focused on Cutthroat Trout conservation in the Bear River Basin. He has a master’s in Fish & Wildlife Management from Montana State University and a bachelor’s in Environmental Studies from Hobart College.
Increasing Resilience in Arizona’s White Mountains
—Zachary Jackson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—Arizona Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Arizona Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in Whiteriver, Arizona, located on the homelands of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, has worked with a resilient partnership of tribal, state, federal, and NGO partners for decades to support the conservation and recovery of Apache Trout and other native fishes. Substantial funding increases for these efforts over the last 5 years were instrumental for both delisting Apache Trout due to recovery and building resiliency across the range of Apache Trout that is expected to be needed for these fish to continue to thrive in the decades to come. In addition to prior and continued support from various National Fish and Wildlife Foundation initiatives and USFWS programs, recent funding from Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act is providing the necessary resources for our office and partners to employ local tribal members to complete eradication and monitoring projects, replace or remove conservation barriers with more durable structures, restore sensitive meadow habitats, decommission roads and culverts, and replace culverts to restore fish passage and habitats and secure recovery habitats for many decades to come. These efforts, and many others, are part of a coordinated effort to build resiliency in fish populations, including several expanded metapopulations, and their ecosystems in the White Mountains of Arizona as we transition from focusing on attaining recovery to maintaining it in an increasingly dynamic future. Recovery of the Apache Trout clearly demonstrates the transformation power that collaborative conservation efforts can have. Recovery partners have all committed to continue efforts to enhance existing population and habitat resiliency through implementation of the Apache Trout Cooperative Management Plan to ensure that Apache Trout enhance not only our lives, but the lives of generations yet to be born.
Zac Jackson has been working for the Arizona Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office (AZFWCO) in Whiteriver, Arizona since 2017. Prior to his time with AZFWCO, he spent 9 years as a Habitat Restoration Coordinator with the Lodi Fish and Wildlife Office in California working on Chinook Salmon habitat restoration and reintroduction projects and White Sturgeon research, monitoring, and management. He received his B.S. degrees from North Dakota State University in Zoology—Fish and Wildlife Management and Natural Resources Management and M.S. in Fisheries Biology from Iowa State University.
Columbia Basin Anadromous Hatchery Infrastructure: Repair and Renovate for Resilience
—Becky Johnson, Nez Perce Tribe Department of Fisheries Resource Management
Nchʼi-Wàna, the Columbia River, is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest and the fourth-largest in the United States. It serves as critical habitat for 13 ESA-listed species of salmon and steelhead and holds immense cultural and subsistence significance for the Tribes who have lived in the region since time immemorial. The development of the River for hydropower, irrigation, and transportation began in the early 1900s. Today, fourteen federal and ten public utility dams on the Columbia River mainstem provide over 44% of the nation’s hydropower and a navigational route from the Pacific Ocean to Lewiston, Idaho, 500 miles inland. However, these dams have also eliminated 55% of the area and 31% of the stream miles that historically produced salmon and steelhead. To mitigate this loss of habitat and the impacts to fish survival, over 50 fish hatcheries, along with their satellite facilities, have been established since the 1930s, from the lower River to its upper tributaries. These hatcheries now produce and release approximately 150 million juvenile salmon and steelhead annually, which are the source of the only meaningful adult returns to support tribal and non-tribal fisheries along the River. Yet, many of these hatcheries are well over 50 years old. Aging technology, deferred maintenance, and insufficient funding have resulted in a backlog of more than $1 billion in repairs to failing and crumbling infrastructure. With the recent support from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, there is new momentum to address these issues. Efforts to repair and renovate hatcheries in the Columbia Basin with a focus on resilience are now underway. Infrastructure projects will range from small to large but for example include adaptations to deal with climate change (i.e., solar panels over rearing ponds for shade), improvements to hatchery intakes (i.e., compliance with fish passage criteria), repairs to rearing ponds for water efficiency and rearing environment (i.e., reuse systems and circular tanks).
Becky Johnson is Production Division Director for the Nez Perce Tribe Department of Fisheries Resource Management. The Tribe operates several salmon and steelhead hatcheries in the Snake River Basin producing approximately 13 million juvenile fish annually. Fish produced at these facilities support reintroduction and supplementation to restore natural spawning runs as well as providing harvest opportunities. Becky also serves on the U.S. vs. Oregon Production Advisory Committee where she has been involved in Columbia Basin hatchery co-management for over 30 years.
Connectivity, Ethics, and a Reverence for Rivers
—Kurt Fausch, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University
Habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity have profound negative effects on fish populations. Recent and proposed fish passage projects and dam removals have restored connectivity for thousands of rivers and streams across the U.S. These projects provide fish populations access to critical habitats dispersed throughout riverscapes that fishes require to complete their life cycles. However, the potential for such projects to also allow invasive species access poses ethical dilemmas that challenge those who manage rivers and fish. Such ethical quandaries are common for many different threats to rivers, ranging from increasing demands for water, overfishing, and the overarching threat of climate change. Addressing these dilemmas will require that we use not only what western science can offer, but also to imagine an ethic for running waters that melds this rich body of scientific knowledge with the wisdom of our progenitors and the worldviews of indigenous cultures to arrive at a greater reverence for rivers.
Kurt Fausch is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University, where he taught for 35 years. His research collaborations in stream fish ecology and conservation have taken him throughout Colorado and the West, and worldwide, including Hokkaido in northern Japan. His experiences were chronicled in the PBS documentary RiverWebs, and the 2015 book For the Love of Rivers: A Scientist’s Journey which won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. He received lifetime achievement awards from the American Fisheries Society and World Council of Fisheries Societies, and the Leopold Conservation Award from Fly Fishers International.