Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Colorado
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Non-native suckers in the Upper Colorado River are a major threat to the persistence of native suckers. Our project seeks to manage that threat by removing non-native suckers during the spawning migration. The project consists of 2 goals. First, we will preclude entry of non-native and hybrid suckers to the native spawning run, thus increasing the proportion of native sucker larvae produced in Roubideau Creek. Second, we will PIT tag some of the expected 10,000s of fishes to study the spawning tributary fidelity of Bluehead Sucker, Flannelmouth Sucker and Roundtail Chub. If these fishes exhibit spawning system fidelity the odds of long-term success via exclusion of non-native is possible.