Cooperative Agreement R24AC00529

This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation under the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (CFDA 15.517) provides $147,666 in funding to Kansas State University to evaluate long-term trends in the abundance and distribution of native and non-native fish species within the Gila River Basin in Arizona and New Mexico. The award supports conservation activities to protect and recover federally-listed fish and amphibian species, as well as control or remove non-indigenous aquatic species, as mitigation for Central Arizona Project water deliveries to the region. The three main objectives are to: 1) establish a baseline for non-native fish abundance, 2) test for trends in species abundance over the 30-year dataset, and 3) evaluate the statistical power of the current sampling protocols. The project involves compiling and analyzing monitoring data, reporting findings annually, and presenting results to the Gila River Basin Native Fishes Conservation Program.