Applying a market-based approach to Colorado River management could ensure more robust and reliable supplies for farmers, communities and the environment, a new study has found.

Without considerable cutbacks in basin-wide water consumption, fish populations could face dire consequences for at least one month of the irrigation season, scientists warned in the study, published Friday in Nature Sustainability.

But if action were taken to deploy strategic water transactions among the basin’s stakeholders, resultant reductions in usage could improve the situation of more than 380 miles of restorable segments, per the research.

“By strategically directing river water to the right places, even under drought conditions, fish can be saved with targeted restoration at nominal additional cost,” said senior author Steven Gorelick, a hydrologist at Stanford University, in a statement.

The 1,450-mile Colorado River provides drinking water and agricultural irrigation to about 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico. On the domestic side, the region is divided into the Upper Basin — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico — and the Lower Basin — California, Nevada and Arizona.

As the West becomes increasingly arid and a growing population consumes more water, this critical transboundary artery is dwindling. Meanwhile, the U.S. basin states are

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