Here is what I found out on Wednesday:

The Prebles meadow jumping mouse, which is on the endangered species list, only exists along the front range of the rockies in Colorado and southern Wyoming. Its habitat is the riparian zone along rivers and streams (the grassy/weedy area). They are true hibernators, coming out in April or May.

As far as actually completing flood recovery projects, it's a big pain if you find one on your land because it's endangered, and all kinds of legal stuff has to be done in order to even get started. My place is on the edge of their range, so Eloise is probably not decimating them in the course of her daily hunt.

One of the farmers who lives in the plains east of here told me we can save a lot of trouble by building a big dam like the Hoover Dam across our river at the bottom of the canyon in the area called the Narrows. Let the whole canyon become a big lake to store water for agriculture. The current landowners would have first choice of lots up high around the edge of the new reservoir.



I'd never heard of this idea before, and it is an entertaining notion.

We're not supposed to say 'woody debris' any more; now it's 'large wood' because 'debris' sounds like trash that needs to be disposed of rather than used to stabilize river banks. They use uprooted trees with the roots attached (rootwads) buried in the banks with the roots sticking out into the water to make good habitat for the bugs and fish that eat them.

And it's no longer 'bio-engineering,' it's 'nature-like engineering.' People are also getting tired of the word 'resiliency' but I don't know if anyone has come up with a substitute that doesn't require a whole phrase to express.

There are little tiny fish around here that most of us would lump under the name of minnows, but there are about five different species. They can only jump about 1 3/4 inches, so when designing rivers, we have to keep this in mind. Some fish will have a range of 90 miles. They are native to our area, and the trout that eat them are not. But trout fishing is a big business around here, so guess which is more important.

I'm still envisioning that Hoover Dam idea.