For the second time, Grand Junction’s baseball team has chosen the name of one of the Colorado River’s endangered native fish. The Humpback Chubs have left town and the Razorback Suckers have moved in!
Native species like the razorback sucker and bonytail have spent decades fighting for survival in a changing river system. Thanks to long-term recovery efforts, they’re still here—and increasingly, they’re becoming something more than just a conservation story.
They’re becoming part of community identity.
“When a team takes on the name of one of these fish, it brings the story out of the river and into everyday life,” said Mike Gross, fisheries biologist at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “People start to recognize it, talk about it, and take pride in it.”
That kind of connection matters. Recovery isn’t just about numbers—it’s about whether people value these species enough to carry the work forward. It took an incredible amount of work to get us here, both from a recovery perspective and an outreach perspective. 30 years ago we were pulling the few remaining razorback sucker out of the river to develop a stocking program. Now they are thriving and reproducing across the basin. From a baseball perspective, this story started with a few upstart 20-year old baseball fans with a passion for the river and a love of native species. They designed their own t-shirts and harassed the team to change their name. Meanwhile, a teacher/football coach and a fisheries biologist decided to put a hatchery in an old school building at a high school. The kids have raised six batches of razorback sucker, releasing them all into the Colorado River to help with recovery efforts, building tangible real world skills while telling their parents about it the whole time.
Recovery is not just about numbers of fish. It’s about whether people value these species enough to sustain the effort over time.
Moments like this—when a baseball team adopts an endangered species as its identity—not only raise awareness, they build that connection in a way that feels organic, local, and lasting.
And the fact that this has happened twice in a row? That feels like something bigger.
“It gives me real hope that recovery is sustainable, that it isn’t just us, but a whole community behind these species” said Julie Stahli, program director. “That’s when conservation really starts to stick.”
To the Grand Junction baseball organization—thank you for embracing these species and helping tell their story in such a visible, meaningful way.
We’re proud of the work that has brought these species back from the brink. But we’re even more proud to see them embraced in ways like this—unexpected, joyful, and rooted in community.
Because in the end, recovery isn’t just about fish in a river.
It’s about people who care enough to name their team after them.