DYER, Nev.—A century ago, Fish Lake Valley looked much more like its name than it does today.
Ephemeral streams flowed from the mountain ranges surrounding this valley on the California and Nevada border, filling a lake that provided habitat for fish, including an endemic tui chub for which it was the only home.
But the invention of the hydraulic pump quickly changed that. Farms took over the region, diverting the water from the lake to grow alfalfa for cattle. By the end of the 20th century, Fish Lake was dry, as were many of the local streams. And so too was most of the Fish Lake Valley tui chubs’ natural habitat, reduced to just one spring located on a nearby ranch.
After a century of decline, the fish—a four- to five-inch minnow that comes in shades of silver, brown and olive—may soon finally have the protections it needs to recover. Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Fish Lake Valley tui chub warranted a listing as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The proposed listing is the first under President Donald Trump’s second administration.
The Fish Lake Valley tui chub populations have been extirpated in all but one of its historic locations. Credit: Nathan Hurner/USFWS
The decision has the potential to limit local Fish Lake Valley farms and slow the surge of geothermal and lithium mining projects proposed in the region, and it landed as the Trump administration is proposing to roll back ESA protections.
“This little fish lives in what’s basically a puddle, and no one’s ever seen it because it’s on private land and it’s just so obscure,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the petition to protect the species.
If the groundwater continues to decline, he said, not only would the Fish Lake Valley tui chub face extinction, but the entire ecosystem would fall apart.
“We’re talking about groundwater drawdown. We’re talking about the habitat drying up,” Donnelly said. “If the habitat for the tui chub dries up, that whole system is desiccating. You’re going to lose the golden eagles and the bighorn sheep and the mule deer and everything that makes it what it is. So there’s much more significance than just a fish.”
The aquifer under Fish Lake Valley feeding the groundwater-dependent ecosystem is heavily over-appropriated, meaning more water is taken out of it than goes into it each year. One acre foot of water is the equivalent to 325,850 gallons, or enough to supply two to three homes for a year, and the basin has a perennial yield of just 30,000 acre feet, according to state documents. But more than that is pumped out each year, and even more water is allocated on paper than what is currently taken.
The basin’s over-appropriation is somewhere between 150 to 250 percent. The aquifer’s water level has dropped two feet a year, the overuse drawing it down 75 feet since the 1960s.
Nearly all of that groundwater has gone to agriculture in the region, most of which is used to grow alfalfa, the water-intensive crop that primarily feeds cattle in the beef and dairy industries.
The groundwater pumping has caused the “Fish Lake Valley tui chub’s range to become greatly reduced, resulting in the majority of its historical habitat becoming uninhabitable,” the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote in its proposed listing for the species.
Alkali shooting star flowers are seen in an alkaline meadow in Fish Lake Valley, Nevada. Credit: Wyatt Myskow/Inside Climate News
The McNett spring system, found on a privately owned ranch, is the only historical habitat that the tui chub still calls home, although the species has also been introduced into Lida Pond, just outside of its historical range.
“The number one thing [to protect the fish] is groundwater levels have to stabilize in Fish Lake Valley, and the only way to do that is to pump a lot less water,” Donnelly said. “So the answer is we need to have farmers shut off their [irrigation] pivots, but not for a year—forever.”
While agriculture has been the primary driver of the fish’s decline, it is not the only problem the fish faces. The USFWS also identified lithium mining, geothermal energy development, climate change and invasive species as additional threats.
Eight miles away from the Fish Lake Valley tui chub’s habitat is the site of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine, which the federal government approved for construction last year. Rhyolite Ridge would impact critical habitat for another endangered species, Tiehm’s buckwheat, a rare wildflower found only in the area of the proposed mine, which has led the Center for Biological Diversity to file a lawsuit to stop the mine. The Fish Lake Valley tui chub is the second species to be proposed for a listing as endangered under the ESA following the proposal of the mine.
Donnelly said he calls the project the “‘extinction mine’ because it’s sending one species after another onto the Endangered Species list.”
Bernard Rowe, Ioneer’s managing director, said in a statement that the company’s groundwater monitoring has shown its operations will not affect the Fish Lake Valley tui chub and that the mine is in a different aquifer than where the fish are found.
“Rhyolite Ridge has been subject to careful planning, environmental review, and input from the Fish Lake Valley community for years, spanning multiple administrations,” Rowe said. “Few mining companies have done more than Ioneer to respond to environmental sensitivities. We are proud of that fact, and it has resulted in a better, more resilient project.”
Construction of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine, which has yet to begin, will require 500 acre feet of water a year. Once in operation, the mine is forecast to need 4,032 acre feet a year for mining, though company officials have said they hope to use less. And more water will be needed for dust suppression around the site to protect Tiehm’s buckwheat. Ioneer, the company behind the project, has purchased water rights in Fish Lake Valley for the project, but the water’s permitted use needs to be changed from agricultural to industrial, something the Nevada State Engineer, who oversees the state’s water rights, has not ruled on.
Bernard Rowe, Ioneer’s managing director, holds a piece of clay filled with lithium near the site of the Rhyolite Ridge Mine. Credit: Wyatt Myskow/Inside Climate News
The Center for Biological Diversity has protested Ioneer’s use change application with the Nevada State Engineer, arguing the water rights appear to “be unpumped ‘paper’ water”—some of the more than 20,000 acre feet of groundwater that has been allocated for agriculture, but so far gone unused. “As such, the State Engineer should consider [the application from Ioneer] a new use of groundwater that would be additive to the already unsustainable level of current annual pumping.”
Ioneer’s Rowe said that the company is committed to using less water than it is looking to secure rights to, and will recycle half of the water used on the mine site.
In its ruling, however, USFWS noted that other lithium projects have been proposed in the playa of Fish Lake Valley, and that any nearby mining operation could impact local water supplies, and in turn the fish.
Further east of the fish’s habitat is the country’s only operating lithium mine, the Silver Peak mine.
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“In conjunction with continuing agricultural uses and potential geothermal development …, water use for lithium mining will likely exacerbate the already over allocated Fish Lake Valley groundwater basin that supplies water for tui chub habitat in the McNett spring system,” USFWS wrote in the proposed listing of the fish as endangered.
The proposal is now open for public comment, and a final decision is expected next year. It’s unclear how exactly a listing would impact proposed geothermal and lithium projects in the area, Donnelly said, but it could result in further consultation between the company and USFWS to examine the project’s impacts to the species and determine if the project can continue without causing further declines. Additional hydrology analysis for any proposed or approved projects in the area might also be required.
In some cases, conservation agreements can prevent a listing, with states, conservation groups and other parties agreeing to a plan with the federal government to protect a species without being beholden to the strict requirements that come from an endangered listing.
But Donnelly said he is confident the Fish Lake Valley tui chub will be listed.
“This species is so profoundly endangered and has lost so much of its range that you could do all the conservation in the world that you want at McNett Ranch, but unless you can shut down the lithium mines and geothermal projects and shut down the alfalfa center pivots, you’re not going to remove the risk of extinction from the species,” Donnelly said.
It’s possible, but unlikely, that political interference could stop the listing, he said. The first Trump administration listed species under the ESA, and he expects the same during the second.
“It’s pretty hard to imagine that they just completely shut the door on all endangered species listings, this administration, because it’s still the law of the land, they will get sued and they will lose,” Donnelly said.
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Wyatt Myskow
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Wyatt Myskow covers drought, biodiversity and the renewable energy transition throughout the Western U.S. Based in Phoenix, he previously reported for The Arizona Republic and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wyatt has lived in the Southwest since birth and graduated from Arizona State University with his bachelor’s degree in journalism.
