USFWS Issues Draft Report
On Arkansas River Shiner

TULSA, Okla. — The final decision on whether to list the Arkansas River shiner, a two-inch minnow, as endangered could be published in the Federal Register as early as November.

"This office has submitted a draft final package to our regional office, and it's undergoing review by listing biologists in our regional office, by our attorneys and by listing biologists in Region Six, which includes the state of Kansas," says Ken Collins with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife field office here.

After the field office gets comments back from their attorneys and other regions and listing biologists in the Southwest regional office in Albuquerque, they will make the necessary changes to the draft final rule. It will then be submitted to Washington for review and ultimately, if there's no significant problems, for publication in the Federal Register at that point.

The director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to publish the final rule by Nov. 15, according to a declaration of a federal district court in New Mexico as the result of a lawsuit brought by environmental activist groups earlier this year.

"That's the goal we're shooting for," Collins says. "We have another court date scheduled for Nov. 17."

If they don't make the Nov. 15 deadline, the judge will take corrective actions at that point.

Rather than list the minnow as endangered, officials say the minnow is being recommended for a "threatened" designation.

The minnow was first proposed for listing as an endangered species in 1994. The fish has all but disappeared from the Arkansas River in Kansas, but populations can apparently still be found in the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle and in Oklahoma, its native habitat. The Arkansas River shiner, moreover, appears to be doing well in the Pecos River as an introduced species.

Panhandle ranchers and farmers, along with a number of municipalities, opposed listing the minnow for fear that it would limit pumping water from the Ogallala Aquifer, an aquifer that was included in the initial notice proposing the listing. The aquifer extends from the Texas South Plains north into Nebraska and is widely used for irrigation. The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority also pumps from the aquifer to mix with water from Lake Meredith, a reservoir on the Canadian River north of Amarillo, to provide drinking water for 11 cities in the Texas Panhandle and on the South Plains.

The Texas Water Development Board provided the Fish and Wildlife Service with information indicating that the aquifer does not provide as much water to the Canadian River flow as previously thought, relieving some fears of making parts of the aquifer critical habitat for the minnow.

Following the first round of hearings over listing the Arkansas River shiner, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a conservation agreement in which the states would work to increase minnow populations, but the federal agency never signed the agreement.

A lawsuit against the agency by environmental activist groups brought the agreement into question and requested the court to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the minnow.

The most recent study, however, may well allow the agreement between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the states to move forward.

The recommendations of the Tulsa field office, officials say, are that the Fish and Wildlife Service will not restrict or regulate groundwater use of the Ogallala, nor will they adopt conservation measures that would adversely affect existing agriculture and land-management activities in the region.