The Colorado River Fishery Project – Grand Junction (CRFP) was established in 1979 to conduct research and management activities to benefit four endangered fish species in the upper Colorado River Basin. It was expanded in 1992 to include spawning and rearing facilities for the endangered fish. Geographic scope of the Grand Junction station includes the Colorado, Gunnison and San Juan rivers of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. Its sister station, in Vernal, Utah, similarly covers the Green, Yampa and White rivers of Utah and Colorado.
The CRFP mission is to identify and implement methods to recover the endangered Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), humpback chub (Gila cypha), bonytail (Gila elegans), and razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus). Species will be considered recovered when populations are self-sustaining in the wild, threats are reduced, and adult numbers are sufficient to maintain long-term genetic diversity. Ultimately, the goal is for these fish to no longer need the protection of the Endangered Species Act.
CRFP field station activities include basin-wide monitoring of rare fish populations and their habitats, basic life-history and management-oriented research, instream-flow assessments and recommendations, database management and analyses, and fish propagation. Primary conservation projects in recent years include assessing status and trends of Colorado pikeminnow and humpback chub populations, reducing the impacts of introduced fish on native species, restoring fish passage over diversion dams, and rearing and stocking razorback sucker to augment declining populations in the wild.
