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JIM ROBBINS
NYT Syndicate
The Amargosa, a slender thread of a river that flows through a parched landscape, begins with a few springs bubbling out of the ground in the Oasis Valley near Beatty, Nevada.
Shortly thereafter, the stream disappears underground, and it flows south hidden for 100 miles or so until surfacing again near this desert outpost, home to 31 people.
From here, the Amargosa, nicknamed the hide-and-seek river, alternately flows above ground and below, mixing with groundwater and water heated by geothermal sources in a complex subterranean puzzle. The river is nourished by an assortment of springs and creeks, and though its Spanish name means"bitter," the water is sweet enough to cultivate a string of biological pearls along its length.
"Places where water surfaces in the desert are rare, and that's where biodiversity is high," said Sophie Parker, a senior scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Los Angeles, which has helped buy and protect key areas along the Amargosa."These are true oases."
The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, part of the Amargosa River system, hosts more endemic species ” those found nowhere else ” than any other place in the United States, surpassed by only one other location in North America, a desert oasis in Mexico. Some species of snails and fish exist only in a single pool in the Amargosa region.
All this in a place that is one of the hottest and driest places in North America. Just a few inches of rainfall here annually, and temperatures routinely soar to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Nearby Death Valley holds the record for the world's all-time hottest temperature: 134 degrees in 1913.
Many of the region's most stunning features ” deep turquoise springs, warm pools, hanging gardens ” are protected in Ash Meadows, where 11,000 gallons of water pour into desert pools each minute.
The Amargosa is protected along an aboveground length of 15 miles. Piecing together the oases needed to conserve disparate species here has taken decades.
The Ash Meadows refuge, for example, was slated to be the Calvada Lakes housing development ” including more than 30,000 homes, golf courses and strip malls ” when the Nature Conservancy bought it in 1984 and donated it to the federal government. Conservationists and refuge employees have been working to restore the landscape ever since.
There are persistent threats along the Amargosa, despite its protections. Work crews have removed miles of invasive tamarisk trees, for instance, because they take up and transpire so much of the river's water. But the federal and private protections are useless against the biggest threat of all: the pumping of groundwater from the giant underground aquifer that feeds the Amargosa, which eventually could throttle the river and the delicate ecosystems it supports.
Much of the regional groundwater system that feeds these protected features comes from the flanks of Yucca Mountain, some 70 miles or so to the north. The Trump administration and Congress are working to restart moribund efforts to bury nuclear waste in the repository there.
While there is concern that someday ” centuries or millenniums in the future ” radioactive waste could contaminate the water in the Amargosa watershed, the more immediate threat is the need to pump enough groundwater to support the huge repository infrastructure.
"That would require thousands of acre-feet of water per year for up to a century," said Robert J Halstead, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Development, which opposes a Yucca Mountain repository."That would clearly threaten the sustainability of the groundwater resource in Amargosa Valley."
A tiny fish in danger
But the greatest threat of groundwater pumping is to several species of inch-long pupfish, tiny iridescent blue fish so named because they seem to play with one another like frisky puppies.
The pupfish's size belies its long, controversial history. One pupfish species inhabits the small, deep crack between rocks in just a single pool that is now locked behind steel fences and barbed wire and watched over with cameras and other security.
The legendary Devil's Hole pupfish is the world's rarest fish species and one of the first species in the United States to be listed as endangered. It lives in a pool in a limestone cave so deep that divers have not been able to find the bottom.
But the 150 or so pupfish that live here breed and die almost entirely on a rock shelf no bigger than a large tabletop, which sits several inches below the surface in water that is 93 degrees all year and has extremely low oxygen levels. It's the tiniest habitat of any endangered vertebrate species. The population at Devil's Hole has been dropping in recent years, and the pupfish's existence remains precarious.
Groundwater depletion is the biggest threat. In the 1960s, pumping on a nearby ranch began to dry out the shelf. A legal fight over water rights and the Devil's Hole species went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1976, the justices upheld the federal government's water rights in the national monument, and pumping was halted.
But pumping farther afield has continued ” the vast underground aquifer is the only source of water in this desert ” and experts say there is strong anecdotal evidence that levels in some springs are dropping.
Climate change plays a role, as well. The average temperature in the Mojave has increased some 3 degrees in recent years, and warming of another degree or so could prevent the Devil's Hole pupfish, which already has poor reproductive capabilities, from propagating at all.
Habitats and hot springs
The number of endangered and extinct species here speaks to the precariousness of life in the Mojave. The Tecopa pupfish is extinct because a local hot springs facility drained its habitat. The marsh of the endangered Amargosa vole ” which numbers a few hundred ” was accidentally drained by a road crew last year. The dried-out marsh caught fire, destroying 10 to 20 percent of the vole habitat.
Vole numbers are so low that the species is being bred in captivity at the University of California, Davis. Still, the Bureau of Land Management, which manages this refuge, allows people to soak in a hot springs adjacent to the vole's habitat.
(Cover photo: A spring in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, fed by an aquifer that also supplies the Amargosa River, in Amargosa Valley.)
