Dam Removal on Colorado’s Arkansas River

Photo: adifferentbrian/Flickr

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has announced they’ll be closing a portion of the Arkansas River near Salida to remove a dam, according to NBC9 News. This dam removal is entirely centered on opening up more than 85 miles of upstream habitat to trout below the dam. Doing so will give the fish in the river the opportunity to create more genetically diverse populations.

Dam removal is always something to celebrate, even if it’s helping nonnative sportfish in this case. The dam was originally built to capture water for a hatchery located downstream on the Arkansas, but that hatchery has since been retrofitted to work on spring water instead, to reduce the possibility of introducing disease into its fish populations.

You can read more about this dam removal project here.