Background and Guidance
The Gila River Basin Native Fishes Conservation Program (Program), formerly referred to as the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Fund Transfer Program, is a Reclamation-funded program that was developed to mitigate the transport of non-native fishes via the CAP aqueduct system from Lake Havasu on the Colorado River to the Gila River basin in Arizona and New Mexico. Non-native species present in the CAP have the potential to escape the canal and travel upstream into water inhabited by threatened or endangered native fishes. To reduce the threats of non-native fish and assist with the recovery of native fishes in the Gila River Basin, Reclamation and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed a series of conservation measures that were incorporated into the biological opinion addressing the impacts of the CAP to native fishes. For more information on the Program's background and guidance, please visit the Biological Opinion and Program Guidance pages.
