ABC-7 SPECIAL REPORT: Environmental group pushes to restore native fish species to the Rio Grande

The Rio Grande has been a lifeline for humans and wildlife in the Borderland, but a recent report by the Southwest Environmental Center says that roughly two thirds of the species of fish native to the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and Far West Texas have become extinct from those areas.

Those species may still exist in other parts of the Rio Grande, but not near El Paso or Las Cruces. As most residents of the area know, the Rio Grande’s flow is halted at Elephant Butte Dam each winter, leaving very little water downstream. But species started declining even before the Dam was built when farming increased in the mid 1800s.

“There was less water in the river because of the diversions upstream and the watershed as a whole was losing its ability to store water,” says Kevin Bixby, director of the Southwest Environment Center.

Surprisingly though, there are still a few areas with water year round, but that water flows through the main channel and quickly dries up downstream. But there could be a solution.

“The concept is, you create these nodes of perennial water features like a pond or wetland that are out of the main channel, but at times connected to the channel,” says Bixby.

This would create little ponds along the Rio Grande each winter, and since the water would be disconnected from the channel at that time, it would not flow downstream and dry up.

Bixby also proposes another idea: “We have so little water, the Dam is sort of not as useful as it once was maybe, we should look at possibly storing water underground.”

It may sound radical at first, but Elephant Butte Lake’s levels have been well below capacity in recent years and much of that water is being lost to evaporation since it’s constantly exposed to the relentless New Mexico sun.

In September 2018, Elephant Butte’s levels fell to 3 percent of Capacity. As of early March 2019, the lake’s capacity rose to a measly 9 percent. Even if all of Bixby’s proposal were to come to fruition, there may not even be enough water to make it work, plus some other functions of the dam and channel system could get compromised in the process according to Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) consultant and civil engineer Dr. Phil King.

“One big problem is that this is designed for flood control and it is already inadequate, okay. These levees that you just came over are not certified by FEMA,” saids Dr. King after our ABC-7 crews met with him at the Mesilla Dam to discuss conservation proposals.

He says that reconfiguring the channels to sustain fish life year round would be bad for flood control and that Las Cruces has been able to grow as a city because of the engineering that has been done to the river.

But that doesn’t mean the EBID is not willing to work with environmentalists.

“Basically they want nice natural habitat, it’s kind of ironic, but what you need to do is engineer that habitat into the system. And we’ve done that.”

The irrigation district has worked with groups like the New Mexico Audubon Society to restore bird habitats in the past and that has been successful. So when it comes to restoring fish populations, environmentalists and the EBID will have to work together on a solution that will keep residents safe from flooding and save enough water to sustain farming.