If fish could celebrate, there would have been a major party going on among silvery minnows yesterday, when a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must take the species into account when managing New Mexico’s water system. State officials, who have long been fighting environmentalists over the endangered silvery minnow, claim the decision jeopardizes urban and agricultural water supplies and pledged to appeal it. In its decision, the appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the bureau must abide by the federal Endangered Species Act when releasing water from federal reservoirs or diverting water from the Rio Grande, even though the water is owned by cities, irrigators, and other non-federal entities.
