MISSOURI  RIVER  (CONT)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers currently releases water from its dams on a schedule intended to maximize the length of the commercial shipping season for a tiny barge industry on the lower third of the river. These unnatural flows have driven three species - the pallid sturgeon, piping plover, and interior least tern -- to the brink of extinction. The region also forgoes the economic activity associated with "nearly one million recreation-based days of hunting, fishing, sightseeing and boating annually," according to one Corps study.