Endangered fish program working to right wrongs of the past

GRAND JUNCTION,  Colo. — There's a trio of men working out of this city who can talk nonstop about their unified efforts to save four endangered species.

They can describe millions of dollars of elaborate equipment used, hours spent trapping, catching, releasing and tagging. They point to studies, reservoir expansion projects, timed releases of flows into rivers, and on, and on.

Over the years, however, they have found they don't have to do the talking or demonstrations to win people to their cause — they let these four examples of fish do that — simply by the animals' tenacious existence.

"The greatest tool for changing people's minds is the fish itself," said Dale Ryden, project leader over the Western Colorado/Utah Fisheries Complex operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"When people handle them and see them, they go from thinking they're nothing, to thinking they're worth saving."

A little kiss by elementary school students along the way doesn't hurt — as children who often do to a 10-year-old razorback sucker that is the unit's "education fish" for tours of the Grand Valley fish hatchery.

The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program is working to save the razorback sucker, the bonytail, the humpback chub and Colorado pikeminnow — fish that exist in only one river system in the world and have endured for millions of years.

Largely considered trash fish by old-timers and anglers, they are alternately treasured by conservationists and others as an aquatic testament to surviving against the odds.

Michael Gross, one of those trio of men who spend their days surrounded by thousands of razorback suckers, recalls a relative's disgusted reaction when the man learned Gross had taken a job as a fish culturist at the Grand Valley hatchery.

"He gave me the third degree," Gross said. "He said they use to just toss them on the bank if they caught them. I brought him in here and now he's a fan."

Little education efforts like that are paying off — such as Grand Junction's annual water festival (where fish kissing is again an activity of the day) or the adopt-a-fish program in which participatory schools agree to take care of some of the endangered fish for a time until they are "adult" enough to fend on their own.