This shot pulled from a security camera video shows three men walking around the Devils Hole unit of Death Valley National Park/NPS
In a bid to arrest those responsible for vandalizing a warm spring with an endangered fish species, Death Valley National Park officials on Monday released a short video showing three men riding up to the Devils Hole unit of the park in an off-road vehicle and roaming around the grounds. Part of the video is from a camera in the warm spring itself. That segment shows one of the men in the water.
At least one pupfish was killed in the incident.
"At around 7:20 p.m. on Saturday, April 30, three men in an OHV drove off-road around a gate at the Devils Hole parking lot. They discharged a firearm at least 10 times, shooting locks on two gates, a motion sensor on the security system, and several signs," a park release issued Monday read. "One man swam in Devils Hole and left his boxer shorts behind in the water. Alcohol was involved; three beer cans were left behind and one man vomited.
"The OHV appeared to be a blue Yahama Rhino, which had been extensively customized with an added seat and safety cage," the release added. "A reward of up to $5,000 is available for information leading to arrest and conviction in this case."
Tips can be reported to the National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch at:
888-653-0009
https:www.surveymonkey.com/r/TipLine_InvestigativeServicesNPS
www.facebook.com/InvestigativeServicesNPS
The Devils Hole pupfish is something of an aquatic wonder, managing to live in a relatively small hot spring, one that denies them the ability to migrate up or down stream. Rather, they congregate in the spring, rising up to a small shelf of rock just beneath the water's surface both to feed and breed. While 40 acres around the spring, which isn't actually within the formal borders of Death Valley National Park but rather off to the east, were set aside in 1952 to protect the hot spring and its inhabitants, a fight over groundwater led to a 1976 Supreme Court ruling that the Park Service was entitled to a specific water right to maintain the hot spring for the fish.
Devils Hole pupfish populations numbered about 400-500 individuals until the late 1960s, when the water level in the pool dropped in response to pumping of nearby irrigation wells, according to the USGS.
As described in a UC Berkeley news release, the Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) is "considered the world's rarest fish, with one of the smallest geographic ranges of any wild vertebrate..."
This is a shot of the warm springs at Devils Hole/NPS
Comments
To what purpose?
Is that actually what endangered the species in the first place or is it natural causes like those that have killed billions of species in the past? Seems to me the steps and platforms make them more vulnerable to human interference, not less.
Is it possible to get DNA from the boxer shorts, beer cans (finger prints?), or vomit?
ecbuck - "To what purpose?" Are you serious?
If you don't understand the purpose of how "Monitoring helps gain a better understanding of the species, as well as tracks its continued existence on Earth." There is really no hope for you.
The purpose of monitoring is to help gain a better understanding of the species and track its continued existence. The purpose was clearly stated in the sentence you quoted for God's sake.
"Is that actually what endangered the species in the first place or is it natural causes?"
Obviously you didn't even read the article because it clearly talks about the species becoming critically endangered due to water levels dropping because of man-made wells in the area.
Stop trolling the internet and go back to school so you can gain a basic understanding of elementary school science.
Desert - Sorry you didn't understand my question. Yes I understand what monitoring does. The question is, what is the purpose of gaining "a better understanding of the species'?
As to the drilling the article indicates there where 400-500 fish before the pumping. The NPS says the pumping has stopped and there are between 100 - 200 in winter and 300-500 in late summer so it doesn't appear that any ongoing human activity is threatening the fish.
And now, for an update on the actual topic of the thread instead of this tangential quibble, the vandals have been identified.
https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/devils-hole-vandals-identified.htm
You can go visit and see the pupfish. You just can't get super close or get in the water like these idiots did.
Please don't take an unlawful event such this and turn it into something anthropocentrically focused to fit people's whims and unecessary needs, human entitlement, so to speak, seems to be an ever increasing focus of our society. Researchers are involved in obtaining data to understand the stresses impacting the pupfish to therefore hopefully facilitate increased populations so that one day people may be able to experience them at first hand. If one thinks King O is the primary financial impact to the well being of this facility, well he's not the only one taking vacations- let's not get ridiculous. The statement, 'it's just wrong to lock up my America from me.' Newsflash, this is the ultimate reason why sensitive areas like this are locked up, this is because humans have a natural tendency to destroy much of their surroundings. Don't believe it? Go to any national park and one can find graffiti, trash, and wanton displacement and destruction of wildlife. It's too bad your message ended with what sounds like selfish anger. One more thing, have you been to Death Valley? And if the fish were clearly accessible, what seriousness would you or any other American really transfer into effort to physically visit the site? Let's keep the focus on the vandals.
ec--
Monitoring is crucial in this case becaue there _are_ ongoing threats to the pupfish and their habitat. The Armagosa aquifer (pool of underground water) is already substantially over-allocated in terms of water rights for pumping for center-pivot irrigation being much greater than the average annual recharge rate. On top of that, large commercial solar power facilities on the BLM lands want water rights to pump groundwater to use for evaporative cooling, as cooling increases the efficiency (power output) of solar thermal (not PV) by 10-20%. Basically, any and all of that pumping of the aquifer can be sufficient to lower the water table and thus the water level in Devil's Hole. That's how the water level dropped too low before. If the water table & water level get below the shelf (or even makes the shelf too shallow), there will be too little algal growth to support the food chain to the pupfish (algae need sunlight, so they don't grow 10s of meters below the surface where there is no light).
Perhaps monitoring would not be needed if all water rights were suspended in the Armagosa Valley and the aquifer were left to recharge (or at least equillibrate). WIth monitoring, FWS (in charge of T&E, plus a rather large wildlife refuge in the Armagosa Valley) has the information to allow as much groundwater pumping for center-pivot as is compatible with pupfish survival. Is the value of the center-pivot ag greater than the cost of the pupfish & Devil's Hole monitoring? Perhaps not. But that's like Drakes Bay Oyster Co.: it would have cost at least $100-200k/yr to monitor the impacts of future DBOC operations (water quality, algae, native shellfish & fish, plus additional marine mammal monitoring). Making DBOC pay that much per year probably would have made it a money losing business. But why should NPS pay that much out of appropriated NPS funding to allow commercial operations inside a park? [Answer _way_ above my pay grade!] In this case of the Devil's Hole pupfish, I believe that much of the monitoring funding is coming from FWS, and the commercial operations are on BLM lands & private lands, not within the park. BLM can't legally let leaseholders do damage to FWS T&E species.
If that isn't sufficient explantation for you, I can try to go into what all they're monitoring (I'd have to track it down because I don't do pupfish, and my knowledge of pupfish is from academic friends, not NPS colleagues). It isn't simply water depth, because depth differs seasonally, and the effect of depth varies seasonally, so again, writing a prescription for the maximum water depth needed at any time fo the year would be easy, but would not minimize the impact on farmers and other water users in the area.
[Fun fact: NPS hydrologists used tidal fluctuations in monitoring wells across the Armagosa aquifer to estimate the size of the aquifer and the porosity/spatial flow of the aqauifer. I did the computations for fitting the nonlinear model: we know sun & moon positions and tidal pulls, so computing the time lags behind those peaks, and the amplitude of those high-low "tidal" ranges, lets hydrologists figure out how large the underground "ocean" is, and how much the rocks slow down the sloshing back & forth.]
I'm speaking for myself as a scientist & former academic, not NPS, NPS Inventory & Monitoring, DEVA, FWS, or any oher entity. They don't pay me (or pay me enough) to speak for them, and none of them are dumb enough to want me to speak for them.
The broader reason for monitoring the condition of natural resources lies in the dual mandate of NPS: manage scenery & resources for unimpaired enjoyment of this and future generations. Under the NPS Organic Act, NPS shouldn't lock everyone out of parks as nature preserves (that wouldn't work anyway), but NPS shouldn't let current use & enjoyment impair what will be there for future generations to enjoy. At best (at least in my opinion), balancing those legal mandates requires information about the status and trends of natural (& cultural) resources. The legal mandate is explicit in the 1998 NPS Omnibus act that established & required an inventory & monitoring program, and requires management decisions be based on data and science. Is that perhaps more aspirational than real? Perhaps, but that's the law, and quite a few NPS folks are trying to make it so. At the same time, science is only one input into management decisions. NPS Science can try to provide accurate data on status, trends, and even what-ifs under various management scenarios, but park managers need to base their decision on that scientific information plus other aspects.