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Texas Agriculture Archive

November 4, 2005

River shiner plan is
an ESA success story

By Lana Robinson
Field Editor

Thanks largely to a management plan drafted by the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority (CRMWA), with the help and assistance of other members of the Arkansas River Shiner Coalition, the final designation of critical habitat for the federally threatened Arkansas River shiner excludes all areas of Texas and New Mexico. A final rule issued by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Oct. 13, pertaining to a two-inch minnow which historically inhabited the Canadian River and other tributaries of the Arkansas River basin, accepted the coalition's plan for protecting the tiny fish.

"We were involved from day one," said Don Petty, associate director of Texas Farm Bureau's Commodity and Regulatory Affairs division, who represented the farm organization within the coalition. "We consider this a success story. It shows what landowner cooperation can do in terms of minimizing the impacts of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and yet protect the species."

The Arkansas River Basin population of the Arkansas River shiner was listed as threatened under the ESA in 1998. The shiner once inhabited wide, sandy-bottomed rivers and streams throughout the Arkansas River Basin in Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Today, the fish is found primarily throughout the Canadian/South Canadian River in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

Critical habitat is a term in the Endangered Species Act which identifies geographic areas that contain features essential for the conservation of a threatened or endangered species and may require special management considerations. According to USFWS, the designation of critical habitat does not affect land ownership or establish a refuge, wilderness, reserve, preserve, or other conservation area. It does not allow government or public access to private lands. Still, it imposes regulations of management practices and certain other criteria that restricts how an affected landowner may use his or her property. Petty said the management plan which helped Texas and New Mexico landowners avoid critical habitat designation was crafted with three objectives in mind.

"The first goal is to maintain and improve the habitat in the Canadian River. The second goal is to provide a mechanism for monitoring the status of the river shiner, so we know how they're doing," he explained. "And the third is to encourage landowners and other involved parties to use good management practices on the land adjacent to the river to protect the ecology."

Specifically, the CRMWA Management Plan applies to the Canadian River from Lake Meredith in Texas to Ute Lake in New Mexico, and provides for control of salt cedar, maintenance of current levels of base flows, management of activities of off-road vehicle enthusiasts, and other voluntary activities which will maintain and enhance the existing habitat of the shiner.

The ARS Coalition is a partnership of 17 private and local government agencies—including Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, National Resource Conservation Service offices in Texas and New Mexico, the National Park Service, Texas Off Roaders Association and others—which first banded together in 2001 to challenge the original designation of critical habitat for the shiner. The group has actively cooperated to encourage the USFWS to accept cooperative management efforts in lieu of imposing stringent regulations through the designation of critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act.

In 30 years of implementing the Endangered Species Act, the USFWS said it has found that the designation of critical habitat provides little additional protection to most listed species, while preventing the Service from using scarce conservation resources for activities with greater conservation benefits. In almost all cases, recovery of listed species will come through voluntary cooperative partnerships, not regulatory measures such as critical habitat.

Renne Loehoefener, head of the USFWS Endangered Species Branch, said, "We really aren't that interested in regulating people. We'd much rather be out there working with people, collaborating with them, finding cooperative ways so that what we do for the environment benefits everybody, not only the species we have trust resources for, trust responsibilities for, but for the people and all the other wildlife that lives out there. That's a huge benefit."

Loehoefener said he was impressed with the persistence and professionalism of the ARS Coalition.

"The thing that really impressed me with what those folks did up there, by their hard work and getting together and getting a multitude of interests, is they've really put together a comprehensive plan that looks at that whole river ecosystem out there in that area of Texas, especially the salt cedar problems which if we can get under control will benefit everybody—species and people."

Considerable efforts toward salt cedar control have already been carried out. Therefore, the USFWS found it advantageous to eliminate the area covered by the Plan from the proposed critical habitat area. Additionally, an area in Hemphill County on the east side of the Texas Panhandle was also eliminated from the designation.

Acceptance of the Plan was no small feat, according to John C. Williams of Sanford, special advisor to the Canadian River MWA. In fact, the proposal of a Management Plan for areas in Oklahoma and Kansas was not approved, because that Plan was not submitted in final form. However, it can be reconsidered later, he said.

TFB's Petty is confident that landowners and others involved are committed to the Plan and will follow through.

"Hopefully, this example of cooperative conservation efforts in the Panhandle will add momentum to some of the efforts to reduce the negative impacts of the ESA on private landowners," said Petty.