Can the Colorado River Survive 2026? This mighty river’s water levels are approaching dangerous lows, which could impact millions of people. Sierra Club Morgan Sjogren May 1, 2026 The Colorado River is reaching a breaking point. A 26-year drought is sucking the river dry, and unprecedented heat is rapidly evaporating this year's record-low snowpack. These two conditions are leading to low water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s two largest reservoirs. That, in turn, jeopardizes critical water infrastructure for a large swath of the West.  If water levels fall below 3,500 feet in Lake Powell, water releases, which help create hydropower and serve as the primary water source for millions of Americans, could be halted. To stave off such a catastrophe, dam managers with the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) are impounding water in Lake Powell and unleashing trillions of gallons of water from Flaming Gorge, an upstream reservoir. Complicating matters, the seven states that count on the river disagree on a long-term plan to deal with the shifting climate. And recently, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the BOR, announced an imminent federal intervention that he said, “nobody will be happy” with. It’s an untenable situation that water managers, experts, and even state leaders say puts the river and those who rely on it on a disastrous collision course. “There’s only so much water that can be shuffled around,” Eric Balken, executive director of the nonprofit Glen Canyon Institute, told Sierra. “Eventually, every state will have to make a sacrifice.” 

Sharing a shrinking river....  The Colorado River problems started over a century ago, when the federal government divvied up the water. Under an agreement signed in 1922, the Southwest was split into two basins. The Upper Basin includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin is Arizona, California, and Nevada.Under an agreement, called the Colorado River Compact, each region is allotted a certain amount of water measured in million-acre-feet (MAF)—an acre-foot of water is the equivalent of a football field in a foot of water. Seven and a half MAF of water goes to each basin annually. And 1.5 MAF goes to Mexico over the same period.However, the compact doled out more water than what actually flows through the Colorado River, and that was long before the current drought. "The conventional wisdom is that the 1922 compact commissioners did the best they could,” Brad Udall, a climate research scientist at Colorado State University's Colorado Water Center, explained. “But the truth is that they didn’t do their homework—there was plenty of evidence at the time to suggest that the river had much less flow than they allocated." The region is now suffering as a result of that ill-fated decision. Since 2000, Colorado River flows have shrunk by 20 percent compared with 20th-century amounts. 

To cope, water managers rely upon a series of drought-management plans. The latest guidelines, from 2019, expire this October. Earlier this year, the BOR, also referred to as Reclamation, released five proposed updates to manage future releases from Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Despite testing them for extreme ranges of future river flows, all proposed plans would fail under the current drought conditions. State leaders were supposed to agree to one of the proposals or put forth their own. After blowing past a February 14 deadline to submit a plan, the only common ground between the states is disapproval for all alternatives put forward.  In all proposals, drought-induced water cuts are enforced only on the Lower Basin states. Without mandatory cuts for the Upper Basin, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs said she wouldn’t sign an agreement. On the other hand, Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s appointee to handle river negotiations, countered that Upper Basin states are already constrained by Mother Nature's variability. “Fundamentally, there's not enough water for everybody who says they're entitled to a certain amount of water to be right," Aidan Manning, rivers and waters program associate at New Mexico Wild, said. "And that's true regardless of how much runoff we get."......read on   https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/can-colorado-river-survive-2026

As well as sea level rise, glacier loss will increase ice lake collapses that devastate downstream communities and the loss of wild ecosystems, while regions dependent on glacier tourism will also suffer.“Our study makes it painfully clear that every fraction of a degree matters,” said Dr Harry Zekollari at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, who co-led the research. “The choices we make today will resonate for centuries, determining how much of our glaciers can be preserved.” Dr Lilian Schuster, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and co-lead author, said: “Glaciers are good indicators of climate change because their retreat allows us to see with our own eyes how climate is changing. However, since they adjust over longer timescales, the situation for glaciers is actually far worse than visible in the mountains today.”Schuster added that it was “not too late to act now, because this study shows every tenth of a degree less of global warming matters”, potentially reducing the human suffering caused by glacier loss. “We hope the message gives people some hope that we can still do something.” The baseline year for the analysis was 2020, but glaciers had already lost huge amounts of ice before this due to global heating over the last century. Quantifying this loss is difficult, however, due to the scarcity of historical data. “Glaciers were way bigger [in 1850] than they are today,” said Zekollari.

The study, published in the journal Science, used eight different glacier models, each calibrated using real-world observations. These estimated the ice loss of the world’s 200,000 glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica under a range of global temperature scenarios, with that temperature remaining constant for thousands of years.....read on    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/29/almost-40-of-worlds-glaciers-already-doomed-due-to-climate-crisis-study

Pratt, a conservation leader and wildlife advocate, has spent more than a decade observing the tiny mammals and the other inhabitants of these serene granite domes and the alpine meadows they overlook, which gleamed gold on a crisp afternoon in mid-October. Their stories are woven into Pratt’s new book, Yosemite Wildlife: The Wonder of Animal Life in California’s Sierra Nevada – the first in more than a century to focus solely on the more than 150 species who call the park home. Pratt’s book is designed to be more than a coffee-table tome. Each chapter features stories, facts and intimate insights about a different animal. The book isn’t necessarily meant to be read cover to cover. Rather, she was inspired by the encyclopedias she got lost in as a child. Paired with hundreds of photos from naturalist-photographer Robb Hirsch, as well as archival images, natural history and research, her storytelling transports readers into a world they don’t often have access to. Published by the Yosemite Conservancy, proceeds also directly benefit the park.

Along with a glimpse into the lives of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects who dwell in one of the country’s most treasured parks, Pratt hopes to foster a deeper connection to the tenacious creatures who are surviving through the harshest conditions.“We think we as humans are so exceptional, but come up here and even the smallest of critters will put you in your place very quickly,” she said. The world Pratt captures is fierce and fragile: Butterflies, weighing no more than a feather, fly over 12,000ft (3,650-meter) peaks. Freshwater crustaceans called fairy shrimp spring to life in small temporary ponds left after the mountain snow melts, their eggs able to last up to a century waiting in suspended animation for the right conditions. Pratt even saw a marmot chase off a coyote. But it also highlights how exceedingly vulnerable these animals have become. The climate crisis and the encroaching development into once-wild places have added challenges even for the most hardy. “People don’t understand that wildlife operate on the barest of margins,” Pratt said, pausing to ferry a caterpillar off the trail and onto the underbrush in the direction it was heading. “Something like trampling their nest or leaving trash out can result in dead animals or a loss of habitat or scaring an animal who doesn’t have a lot of energy reserves to begin with.”

‘Stuff your eyes with wonder’.......For more than 30 years, Pratt has worked in environmental leadership roles, including heading the campaign behind the world’s largest wildlife crossing of its kind, stretching across 10 lanes of a bustling highway near Los Angeles.

Her work helped the city fall in love with P-22, a celebrated urban mountain lion who lived in Griffith Park and died after being struck by a car in 2022, which inspired the P-22 Day festival – held in October this year – to honor and increase awareness around protecting wildlife. She is also the author of I Heart Wildlife and When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors. But from her first visit after she moved from Massachusetts to California in 1991 at the age of 22, “Yosemite claimed me”, she wrote in the book’s preface. Her adoration of national parks, first introduced in a book she dreamed over in middle school, was cemented during a first winter trip to the park that she now refers to as “her north star”.      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/02/beth-pratt-yosemite-author-wildlife#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20I%20was%20younger%2C%20it,They%20are%20equal%20to%20us.%E2%80%9D   

SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF LARGE-SCALE RIVER AND WETLAND RESTORATION. WWF Investing in restoration of rivers and wetlands worldwide has significantly benefited people and economies. Looming water supply 'bankruptcy' puts billions at risk, UN report warns.This is according to a technical report commissioned by WWF that collects evidence and case studies from more than 30 countries across 6 continents to demonstrate the importance of rivers and wetlands not only environmentally but economically and socially, and how they can be restored.  The world’s wetlands are under threat. Since 1970 the world has lost a third of its healthy wetlands and an 85% decline in freshwater wildlife populations. This is the worst decline of any habitat type.  

Wetlands are facing damage from over-abstraction of water, fragmentation of rivers by dams and other infrastructure, land-use change, pollution, aquatic invasive species, over-harvesting and the climate crisis. This decline has led not only to a collapse in freshwater wildlife populations but also to material risks to human wellbeing, economic development and international water security. Looming water supply 'bankruptcy' puts billions at risk, UN report warns. WHY HEALTHY RIVERS AND WETLANDS ARE IMPORTANT Rivers and wetlands have always given us so much more than water. Through the ages, they have shaped civilisations as much as they have shaped landscapes. We have relied on them for food, transport, water, energy and building materials. We have worshipped them as places of inspiration, power and life. For most of our history, we have been dependent on rivers and wetlands. Now they need us. When rivers and wetlands are healthy, they deliver many benefits that underpin water and food security, and build climate resilience. However, since 1970 the world has lost a third of its healthy wetlands and we’ve seen a shocking 85% decline in freshwater wildlife populations, the worst of any habitat type.......read the full report    https://wwfint.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_the-benefits-of-restoring-rivers-and-wetlands_briefing-paper_2026.pdf