Sunday, May 11, 2008

Grand Canyon flood good for fish?

Open the taps and flood the Grand Canyon with a great torrent of water. What a great deal for fish, if only it happened more often.

It's like brushing the Grand Canyon's teeth, it's a good idea, and it's necessary for river health. If it happened more often, and was combined with the other flow patterns the river needs, then we'd be doing ecosystem-based management.

But as a one-off, this flood is more like a photo opportunity...er make that a video opportunity (who is that guy turning on the flood), and the Department of the Interior gets to claim credit for managing the river like a river. That's making some environmentalists hopping mad.

But hey, one flood is a good start, assuming it doesn't do more harm than good as some critics predict. It is nice to see the feds realizing that they have to at least pretend to do a good job running the faucets at the big dams.

So far, we know the fake flood created some new sandbars, which is good news.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe they had a big press conference to look like heroes. The linked article says that since the dam was built (and the long no flood period after) four species went extinct. H