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Ash Meadows NWR

It Is All About the Pupfish, Do You Remember the Brouhaha, and Rightly So, Over the Pupfish

Geologic Faults Forcing Fossil Water Up Into the Amargosa Valley Desert As Seeps and Springs Resulting In An Oasis In the Mojave Desert. Ancient Pupfish Living In Those Seeps and Springs

The Devil’s Hole Pupfish, the Ash Meadows Amargosa Pupfish, the Warm Springs Pupfish, and the Ash Meadows Speckled Dace Are All Endangered and All Inhabit Springs, Holes and Streams In Death Valley NP and Ash Meadows NWR.

Back In the Day, the Sixties, These Fish and Conservation Activists Championing Them, Brought Farming, Development and Ground Water Pumping In the Midst of the Mojave Desert In the Amargosa Valley To a Court Ordered Halt, Resulting In the Establishment of the Ash Meadows NWR.

It Is All About the Water, Fossil Water, and the Geology.

“Water is the key natural resource that makes Ash Meadows a unique ecosystem in the dry Mojave Desert. Where does it come from? Over 100 miles to the northeast water enters a vast underground aquifer system. This water, also known as fossil water, takes thousands of years to move through the ground. A geologic faultacts as an underground dam partially blocking the flow of water and forcing it to the surface into over 50 seeps and springs. Over 10,000 gallons per minute flow year round, most of which come from seven major springs.”

“Ash Meadows has the greatest concentration of endemic life in the United States and second greatest in all of North America.

At least 26  endemic species have adapted to live in and around the waters of Ash Meadows”

August 2016 US Fish and Wildlife Service Publication Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge