BLM Colorado Participation in Korean Shale Gas Workshop

by Public Affairs Specialist, Vanessa Lacayo

    "The workshop focused on how oil and gas leasing, permitting and development may play out and influence the future of shale gas development in the United States, and its subsequent implications for South Korea’s future energy outlook,” Bagley said.

     Bagley’s visit was coordinated through the BLM national office and the Department of the Interior. Bagley was joined by two other panelists from the United States. James A. Slutz, president and managing director for Global Energy Strategies, LLC., provided an industry perspective on shale gas development and advancements in hydraulic fracturing. Hannah Wiseman, assistant professor for Florida State University College of Law, presented information on how

   state governments address issues tied to shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing.

    South Korea is the world’s second largest net importer of liquefied natural gas and coal, the fourth largest of iron ore and fifth for oil.  As of 2012, the Korea National Oil Corp has invested more than $2 billion on shale gas assets in the United States. The Korea Gas Corp also announced its intention to invest in American shale gas assets that would lead to another 3 million metric tons of imports a year. Currently, the discussion in Korea on this topic has focused on the economic and technical aspects of hydraulic fracturing. The BLM’s participation was simply to present information on managing energy resources on federally-owned public lands. 

Rare fish discovery shedding light on endangered fish ecology

 By David Boyd, Public Affairs Specialist

  BLM Colorado Fishery Biologist Tom Fresques wasn’t sure what he would find when he began the first intensive sampling of Yellow Jacket Canyon in southwestern Colorado, but he certainly didn’t think he would find one of the most endangered fish in the Colorado River Basin.

  The single specimen Tom and the summer wildlife crew from the Tres Rios Field Office found that summer morning in 2007 is helping shed new light on the ecology of Colorado pikeminnow, information that may prove important in the recovery of the species. 

  Tom’s findings, published this month in Southwestern Naturalist, highlight the important field work BLM’s specialists and seasonals conduct each year to inventory and monitor the biological resources found on BLM lands. 

  The project also underscores the importance to BLM of interagency partnerships and coordination.

   Tom and the Tres Rios Field Office were working on a cooperative monitoring effort with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to measure the success of roundtail chub stocking efforts in the stream.

   On the morning of Aug. 27, 2007, Tom met Tres Rios Field Office Wildlife Biologist Eric Freels and three of his summer seasonals at Yellow Jacket Canyon, a secondary tributary of the San Juan River that averages 15-feet in width in this area. The creek is within BLM’s Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

   “We set up a 500-foot transect, blocking off the creek at either end with nets,” Tom recalls.  “Then with a backpack electroshocker, we began sampling fish in the creek, stunning them long enough to capture them with a hand net, which allows us to get an  estimate of the number and density of fish species present.” 

  Tom wasn’t sure what they would find because this was the first recent intensive sampling of the creek, but Colorado pikeminnow were far from his mind.

   The Colorado pikeminnow is a top predator that grew to more than 6-feet in length and was once widespread in the larger rivers of the Colorado River Basin. Young fish use backwater habitats in the lower reaches of these mainstem rivers.  It has rarely been found in small streams such as Yellow Jacket.

   “When you are running a transect, it’s pretty hot and heavy,” Tom says.  “It was pretty clear we were finding a healthy native fishery during our sampling effort, but until we finished and began working up the fish, we hadn’t noticed anything unusual."

  Once the biologists completed their transect, they began identifying and measuring the fish before returning them to the creek. They caught about 100 fish, ranging in size from about 2 inches to 12 inches. Most were speckled dace, flannelmouth suckers and other native fish including the targeted roundtail chub, although a few introduced species like red shiners and channel catfish were also captured.

  The pikeminnow they captured was just under 8 inches, and hadn’t stood out in a bucket of many larger fish.

   “When we got to the pikeminnow, I knew what it was right away, and I was very surprised,” Tom says. “I had no idea what it was doing in this little creek.  It was really cool, but given the known habitats used by this species, I considered it an anomaly.”

   Tom and a seasonal crew sampled the site again in 2008, and again found a single pikeminnow, this time just a little bit larger than the 2007 fish.

   “We assumed we had captured the same fish, different year,” Tom says.

   But when they found three pikeminnow at the same site in 2009, Tom began thinking something else was happening. So did the biologists involved in the recovery of the species, who Tom had been keeping informed since he found the first fish.

In 2010, Tom conducted the surveys with the help of a “PIT-tag” reader, which would detect the electronic chips placed in some of the pikeminnow that had been hatchery-raised and released in the San Juan River Basin. Of the six pikeminnow they captured that year, one had a PIT-tag.  Based on the tag information, the fish had been stocked in the San Juan River two years before, more than 50 miles from where Tom captured it.