Commentary: Defunding science for the Colorado River has consequences

I once held a Colorado Pikeminnow in my hands. It was freshly caught by biologists who were searching for this species of fish in the silt-laden Colorado River. Water dripped off the fish’s silver scales as it moved back and forth in my hands, trying to free itself. I stared down at it, remembering that less than a hundred years ago this fish species had been six feet in length with a powerful body that propelled it hundreds of miles down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California and, incredibly, back again. The squirming fish in my hands was less than a foot long, but that it was here, in southern Utah's Cataract Canyon, despite tremendous ecological changes to the Colorado River over the last hundred years, was no less incredible.