Three men face charges for killing tiny, endangered fish in drunken rampage

 Devils Hole pupfish, of which there are fewer than 115 in existence, found dead after men were seen entering fenced-off area of national park

Oliver Milman

Friday 13 May 201620.19 BST Last modified on Saturday 14 May 201603.41 BST

Three men have been arrested over a drunken rampage that resulted in the death of a member of one of the rarest fish species in the world.

The three suspects have been charged by police after allegedly breaking into a fenced-off protected area of Death Valley National Park in Nevada on 30 April. The men stomped around in the water of Devils Hole, strewing vomit, beer cans and boxer shorts over the area, and tearing up the habitat of the Devils Hole pupfish, one of the rarest fish in the world. One of the fish was later found dead.

According to the National Parks Service, the men fired a gun at least 10 times at gate locks, a motion sensor and several signs. Sensitive scientific monitoring equipment was also damaged. Three beer cans were left behind, as well as the vomit of one of the men and the boxer shorts of another.

The Nye County sheriff’s office said it has charged Steven Schwinkendorf, 29, Edgar Reyes, 35, and Trenton Sargent, 26, with the killing of an endangered species, destruction of property, trespassing and unlawful possession of a firearm. They face the possibility of fines of up to $50,000 and a year in prison.

“Their unlawful visit ultimately culminated with at least one of the suspects stripping off their clothes and entering the water of Devils Hole,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

“The suspect(s) in the water stomped around the shelf area of the critical ecosystem before swimming around the deeper water, leaving behind a pair of dirty underwear when finished.

“The intrusion is believed to have resulted in the death of at least one endangered Devils Hole pupfish, and fisheries biologists are trying to ascertain the extended damage that may have been done to food sources and egg sites which could lead to more loss of a species whose numbers are now below the last count of 115 in existence.”

Continued ...

Devils Hole pupfish found to be a lot younger than thought

January 27, 2016 by Bob Yirka report

 (Phys.org)—A team of researchers from several institutions in the U.S. has found evidence that suggests that pupfish living in Devils Hole are not nearly as ancient as has been previously assumed. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes a genetic study they conducted on the fish and others that are related to them, and what they found as a result.

The existence of small, goldfish sized, dark blue fish living in a water filled fissure in the Mojave Desert has led to many theories regarding how they got there and how they have survived. For many years, the consensus has been that they got there due to flooding during the Pleistocene epoch, approximately 10 to 20,000 years ago. How they managed to survive for so long in such a remote, small and hot environment has been a mystery. But now, new evidence suggests that the pupfish may not have been living in the Hole for nearly that long.

Prior research has shown that the pupfish are a unique species—with features that are unique to them alone among pupfish, such as the lack of a dorsal fin, bigger eyes and darker scales. To learn more about the origins of the species, which scientists have described as having the smallest range of any vertebrate on Earth, the group conducted a genetic analysis of 56 pupfish from around the Death Valley area (including one of the pupfish from Devils Hole which was found dead) and other parts of the world, sequencing over 13,000 different stretches of DNA—a process that allowed them to create a family tree. To gauge the historical age of the pupfish from Devils Hole, the team averaged the rate of gene mutations in its cousins. Doing so showed that the fish likely first inhabited their isolated environment approximately 105 to 830 years ago and then evolved very quickly to allow them to survive.

The researchers did not find any evidence that might explain how the fish got there during that time frame, but suggest it is possible that people living in the area put them there as a means of maintaining a food source in the desert, or perhaps birds carriedfish eggs from other, less remote water sources.

Read more at:

Climate change puts endangered Devils Hole pupfish at risk of extinction

28th August 2014

Climate change is hurting reproduction of the endangered Devils Hole pupfish, threatening the survival of this rare species that has numbered as few as 35 individuals, new research by the University of Nevada, Reno and Desert Research Institute shows.

Scientists report that geothermal water on a small shelf near the surface of an isolated cavern in the Nevada desert where the pupfish live is heating up as a result of climate change and is likely to continue heating to dangerous levels.

The hotter water, which now reaches more than 93 degrees, has shortened by one week the amount of time pupfish larvae have to hatch during the optimal recruitment periods. The recruitment period is the 10 weeks during which water temperatures are conducive to egg hatching and sufficient food is available to sustain the newly hatched larvae. This decrease contributed to the decline of the adult pupfish population, according to a scientific paper published in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Read more at: