About Me

The goal of the Native Fish working group is to restore sustainable native fish populations in the Virgin River from the Utah-Arizona line to the Bunkerville Irrigation Diversion in Mesquite, Nevada to conditions where non-native red shiner have completely eradicated and other non-native fish have been eradicated or reduced to a level where native species numerically dominate the assemblage of fish in all fish samples with evidence of multiple age-classes of native fish species. The strategies are consistent with and complimentary to ongoing native fish restoration efforts by state and federal wildlife agencies and conservation plans, and include implementing annual fish monitoring to assess status of native fish and effectiveness of barriers, developing a temporal and spatial understanding of the relationship between low flows and high water temperatures that are damaging to native fish species, and developing and initiating implementation of a comprehensive plan for establishing fish barriers and removing non-native fish.