Colorado state wildlife officials revealed Monday that the agency had confirmed the presence of adult zebra mussels in the Colorado River, marking a new stage of invasion for the nonnative species in one of the West’s major waterways.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said it had identified adult zebra mussels in early September in a lake in the James M. Robb-Colorado River State Park east of Grand Junction and nearby in the mainstem of the Colorado River.
Although CPW announced in July that it had detected mussel veligers — the larval stage of the invasive species visible only under a microscope — in the Colorado River, the agency has not previously found adult zebra mussels in the waterway.
“While this is news we never wanted to hear, we knew this was a possibility since we began finding veligers in the river,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in a statement. “I can’t reiterate this enough. It was because we have a group of individuals dedicated to protecting Colorado’s water resources that these detections were made. It is because of these same dedicated individuals and our partners that we will continue our efforts to understand the extent of zebra mussels in western Colorado.”
