Living Rivers

WildEarth Guardians' Living Rivers campaign seeks to give rivers back rights to their own waters.  This campaign is focused on the West's greatest river – the Rio Grande – and her tributaries.

The Rio Grande

The mythical Rio Grande – which stretches nearly 2,000 miles from its headwaters in the snow-packed Rocky Mountains in Southern Colorado to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico – is the cultural and ecological lifeblood of the region. It has been the subject of great books, films, works of art and, with increasing frequency, many a battle over its limited water supplies.

Today this Great River is in dire straights, primarily because there are too many straws—agricultural, municipal and industrial—tapping its limited supplies. In addition to water diversions and ground water pumping, pollution, development and habitat destruction are threatening the Rio Grande and its bosque. As a result, many of the more than 400 species of fish and wildlife—including the Rio Grande silvery minnow—are in danger of extinction.

Water Bill Check-off Programs

In an effort to re-connect people with the waterways that sustain us, WildEarth Guardians has created the Living River Check-Off. This program gives residents the opportunity to check a box on their monthly water bill to donate $1 (or more) towards water that is not diverted. Due in part to our work, the City of Santa Fe implemented this program in 2007. WildEarth Guardians will continue to work to see the program implemented in cities all along the Rio Grande.

More Good News for the Great River

After more than a decade of struggle to protect the river, in February 2005 WIldEarth Guardians and other conservation organizations reached an agreement with the City of Albuquerque. In addition to the check-off program, this agreement committed $250,000 towards a pilot agricultural water-leasing program, which will provide important flows for the Rio Grande. While wasteful and inefficient agricultural water use is a substantial cause of the Rio Grande’s low flows, agriculture can also be part of the solution. The agreement also created space to store environmental water in a reservoir.

This will become one of the only reservoirs in the West with a significant amount—30,000 acres/feet—of its space allocated to the storage of water to be used exclusively for environmental purposes.