Draft Recovery Plan for the Peppered Chub

The peppered chub (Macrhybopsis tetranema) is a cyprinid minnow once widespread and common in the western portion of the Arkansas River basin in Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. This document is a draft recovery plan for the peppered chub, dated August 2025. Recovery plans describe the envisioned recovered state for a listed species (when it should no longer meet the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) definitions of a threatened or endangered species) and include a recovery strategy, recovery criteria, recovery actions, and the estimates of time and cost needed to achieve it. Recovery plans are guiding and planning documents only; they are intended to establish goals for long-term conservation of listed species and define criteria that are designed to indicate when the threats facing a species have been removed or reduced to such an extent that the species may no longer need the protections of the ESA.