Many management actions in aquatic ecosystems are directed at restoring or improving specific habitats to benefit fish populations. In the Grand Canyon reach of the Colorado River, experimental flow operations as part of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program have been designed to restore sandbars and associated backwater habitats. Backwaters can have warmer water temperatures than other habitats, and native fish, including the federally endangered humpback chub Gila cypha, are frequently observed in backwaters, leading to a common perception that this habitat is critical for juvenile native fish conservation. However, it is unknown how fish densities in backwaters compare with that in other habitats or what proportion of juvenile fish populations reside in backwaters. Here, we develop and fit multispecies hierarchical models to estimate habitat-specific abundances and densities of juvenile humpback chub, bluehead sucker Catostomus discobolus, flannelmouth sucker Catostomus latipinnis and speckled dace Rhinichthys osculus in a portion of the Colorado River. Densities of all four native fish were greatest in backwater habitats in 2009 and 2010. However, backwaters are rare and ephemeral habitats, so they contain only a small portion of the overall population. For example, the total abundance of juvenile humpback chub in this study was much higher in talus than in backwater habitats. Moreover, when we extrapolated relative densities based on estimates of backwater prevalence directly after a controlled flood, the majority of juvenile humpback chub were still found outside of backwaters. This suggests that the role of controlled floods in influencing native fish population trends may be limited in this section of the Colorado River.

Riverine ecosystems have been altered in many large catchments by dam development to provide water, power, flood control and navigational benefits to humans. Conservation actions in these river ecosystems are commonly focused on minimum releases of water to downstream ecosystems. Increasingly minimum release approaches are being replaced with 'experimental' flows that mimic natural conditions in order to benefit riverine ecosystems. While these new policies are intuitive in their design, there is limited data of how riverine ecosystems actually respond to more natural flows. A test of more natural steady-flow water release was compared with typical fluctuating hydropower flows in the adaptive management programme at Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, during 2008-2011 to assess growth improvements of endangered juvenile humpback chub Gila cypha. Our results are counterintuitive and show that more natural steady flows reduced growth rates of juvenile humpback chub compared with fluctuating flows when both treatments occurred within the same year. Daily growth rates during steady flows of 2009 and 2010 were 0.05 and 0.07 mm day À1 slower, respectively, than fluctuating flows those same years, despite similar water temperatures. Juvenile humpback chub also grew more slowly during steady flows that occurred in the same season. During the summer, juvenile humpback chub grew 0.12 and 0.16 mm day À1 in fluctuating flow regimes in 2009 and 2010, respectively, and only 0.07 mm day À1 in the experimental steady flow regime in 2011, despite higher water temperatures. Our results suggest that optimal conservation management policies for endangered species in regulated rivers may not always be achieved with more natural flows.

The Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, is part of an adaptive management programme which optimizes dam operations to improve various resources in the downstream ecosystem within Grand Canyon. Understanding how populations of federally endangered humpback chub Gila cypha respond to these dam operations is a high priority. Here, we test hypotheses concerning temporal variation in juvenile humpback chub apparent survival rates and abundance by comparing estimates between hydropeaking and steady discharge regimes over a 3-year period (July 2009-July 2012. The most supported model ignored flow type (steady vs hydropeaking) and estimated a declining trend in daily apparent survival rate across years (99.90%, 99.79% and 99.67% for 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively). Corresponding abundance of juvenile humpback chub increased temporally; open population model estimates ranged from 615 to 2802 individuals/km, and closed model estimates ranged from 94 to 1515 individuals/km. These changes in apparent survival and abundance may reflect broader trends, or simply represent inter-annual variation. Important findings include (i) juvenile humpback chub are currently surviving and recruiting in the mainstem Colorado River with increasing abundance; (ii) apparent survival does not benefit from steady fall discharges from Glen Canyon Dam; and (iii) direct assessment of demographic parameters for juvenile endangered fish are possible and can rapidly inform management actions in regulated rivers.

Determining the population status of endangered Humpback Chub Gila cypha is a major component of the adaptive management program designed to inform operation of Glen Canyon Dam upstream from Grand Canyon, Arizona. In recent decades, resource managers have identified a portfolio of management actions (with intermittent implementation) to promote population recovery of Humpback Chub, including nonnative fish removal, changes in water release volumes and discharge ramping schedules, and reductions in hydropower peaking operations. The Humpback Chub population in Grand Canyon has increased over this same period, causal factors for which are unclear. We took advantage of unusual hydrology in the Colorado River basin in 2011 to assess trends in juvenile Humpback Chub length-weight relationships and condition in the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam as well as in the unregulated Little Colorado River. Within each river, we observed higher length-weight b-parameter estimates (exponent of the standard power equation) at higher water temperatures. We also found higher slope estimates for the length-weight relationship at higher temperatures in the Little Colorado River. Slope estimates were more variable in the Colorado River, where mean water temperatures were more uniform. The next step is to examine whether Humpback Chub length-weight relationships influence population metrics such as abundance or survival. If these relationships exist, then monitoring condition in juvenile Humpback Chub would provide a quick and low-cost technique for assessing population response to planned management experiments or changing environmental conditions.

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