FORT COLLINS — Wildlife specialists and an irrigation company worked together to build a special fish passage into a diversion structure on the Poudre River.
The passage will allow many fish species to migrate upstream to expand their habitat and seek refuge from predators — a move that will counteract habitat destruction without affecting agricultural use and water rights.
“We saw this as a win-win to work with North Poudre,” said Jennifer Shanahan, watershed planner with Fort Collins Natural Areas Department. “Our goal is, over the next decade or two or three, to improve the river by creating more fish habitat.”
The Poudre River is a popular recreation spot for anglers. However, trout and native fish species are declining in the river in part because of habitat loss.
Part of this habitat loss is attributed to diversion structures that fragment the river every 1.7 miles from the mouth of the Poudre Canyon to Interstate 25.
One way to combat this is to give the fish a passage through the diversion structures, which essentially widens their potential habitat.
North Poudre Irrigation Co. was willing to work with the natural areas specialists and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to build one such diversion into the structure that pulls water from the Poudre River to fill Fossil Creek Reservoir.
The original diversion structure was constructed between 1902 and 1910 and was rebuilt in the 1980s. Then, the 2013 floods took out the entire structure.
The North Colorado Irrigation Co. built a new diversion structure in the same location, next to the Environmental Learning Center, last month.
Included in the $860,000 project, completed with a loan from the Colorado Water Conservation Board was the fish passage, designed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
“This is the first true fish passage to be constructed into an operation (on the Poudre) that has been a truly agricultural operation,” said Scott Hummer, general manager of the irrigation company.
Fort Collins Natural Areas Department, excited to cooperate on the project, pitched in $30,000.
The passage is designed with specially placed rocks that allow the fish to migrate upstream, stopping and resting behind the rocks when needed, Shanahan explained.
That means that there would always be a certain level of water in the river, which sometimes runs dry in areas depending upon how much water is being diverted for agricultural and domestic water use. Natural areas officials understand the importance of water rights and in no way want to challenge or limit those uses, Shanahan said.
