Patrick Donnelly, director of the center’s work across the Great Basin where the tui chub is found, said Nevada can’t afford to lose any more of its native fish species, like the Ash Meadows killifish and Raycraft Ranch springfish that became extinct decades ago.
“The Fish Lake Valley tui chub is barely clinging to existence,” he said. “I’m thrilled these fish are poised to get the life-saving protections they urgently need.”
Under the Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to kill, import, export, possess or transport those species.
The olive-colored minnow, which is less than 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) long, used to live in a half dozen springs in Nevada’s Fish Lake Valley, near the California border. But they are now found in just one pond between Las Vegas and Reno that environmentalists say is threatened by groundwater pumping, mainly for the production of alfalfa. Other threats include looming lithium mining and geothermal energy projects.
The fish are widely considered a health indicator for Fish Lake Valley, Donnelly said. The valley’s wetlands, which support all kinds of desert wildlife, including the pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep, are also dependent on the groundwater there.
“If the water level keeps going down and the Fish Lake Valley tui chub goes extinct, that whole ecosystem is going to crash, because it’s the same water that sustains both of them,” he said.
The pace of listings under the Endangered Species Act dropped dramatically during Trump’s first term. Now, his administration wants to redefine what “harm” means under the act, which has long included altering or destroying the places those species live.
In a proposed rule last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service said habitat modification shouldn’t be considered harm because it isn’t the same as intentionally targeting a species, which is called “take.”
If adopted, environmentalists say, the proposal would lead to the extinction of endangered species because of logging, mining, development and other activities. They argue the definition of “take” has always included actions that harm species, and that the definition of “harm” has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
