Appendices to Pacific Water Plan Review Draft

Document: Appendices to Pacific Southwest Water Plan Review Draft "Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife", August 1963, page 13Chapter III. Future Water Needs To supply as completely as possible the fishing and hunting demands of the future, water must be made available for fish and wildlife purposes both in the case of the large multiple-purpose projects and the small sincle-purpose fish and wildlife installations. With regard to the multiple-purpose projects, some of the measures that should be taken include the establishment of basic conservation (minimum) pools of adequate size; reservoirs closed to fishing must be opened; and reservoirs yet to be built should be planned to meet the demands for fishing and hunting in every way possible. Natural streams too must be restored or improved and all waters should be made accessible. The maintenance of fish conservation pools in the numerous reservoirs primarily used for other purposes could largely be accomplished by coordinated operation during most years. Storage and withdrawals could be managed to maximize the fishery use of the reservoirs. Extreme drawdowns in critically dry years would still occur in some reservoirs but even they could be synchronized to some extent with rough-fish control measures. The required allocations of storage for fish conservation under coordinated operation of a large group of reservoirs would be small. The water requirements for evaporation from such storage also would be small. On the other hand, in the case of uncoordinated operations of individual reservoirs operated by various individual agencies, the maintenance of minimum fish conservation pools may require substantial quantities with specific allocations in the reservoirs. In the broad spectrum of current water use in the arid Pacific Southwest, fish and wildlife installations are supported by a slender thread indeed. The water so used is hardly commensurate with the importance of such installations or the purposes they serve. Obviously important to fish and generally to wildlife, water is especially important to waterfowl. Its close association with such birds is reflected in the collective term by which they are known. Such birds and other migrating water-loving birds occupy a special niche in the long American history of wildlife conservation. Protected on one border by a Federal treaty between the United States and Canada 13Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 3,082,250 byte