Water Rights and Devil's Hole Pupfish at Death Valley National Monument
Williams OR, Albright JS, Christensen PK, Hansen WR, Hughes JC, Johns AE, McGlothlin DJ, Pettee CW, Ponce SL. 1996. Water Rights and Devil's Hole Pupfish at Death Valley National Monument. Pages 161-183 or 265-293. In Halvorson WL and Davis GE. Science and ecosystem management in the national parks. University of Arizona Press. Tucson, AZ
About the condition of Devil's Hole pupfish at Death Valley National Monument.... In 1849. William Manly recorded the first observations of unusual geological formations in Death Valley and the Devil's Hole pupfish, Cyprinodon diabolis. He remembered the "night [he] camped near a hole of clear water [Devil's Hole] which was quite deep and had some little minus [sic] in it" (Johnson and Johnson 1987, p. XXX). Located in the Death Valley drainage basin of southern Nevada and southeastern California in the Great Basin physiographic province (Kilroy 1991 ), Devil's Hole is a planar fissure located at the base of a carbonate-rock hill (see Fig. for location). Faulting formed Devil's Hole in Ash Meadows (Hoffman 1988) on the edge of a 94.7 km: oasis that constitutes relic habitat for at least 23 endemic taxa of plants and animals. the largest such assemblage in so small an area in the United States (Cook and Williams 1982; Hershler and Sada 1987; Deacon and Williams 1991). The pool is situated on land owned by the United States since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1849 (9 Stat. 922). Biologists originally described specimens of Cyprinodon at Medbury Spring, Ash Meadows, Saratoga Springs, and Amargosa Creek in California on the Death Valley Expedition of the United States Biological Survey in 1891. Charles H. Gilbert ( 1893) described the pupfish as C. macularius. At that time, he thought the Devil's Hole fish were young individuals and therefore he did not describe them as a separate species (Wales 1930). In 1930, Wales sampled fish from five apparently distinct populations of Cyprinodon in Ash Meadows, Nevada, and the central part of the Amargosa Desert. He determined that the Devil's Hole pupfish was a separate species and named it C. diabolis.
- Type
- Book Chapter
- Authors
- Williams, Owen; Albright, Jeffrey; Christensen, Paul; Hansen, William; Hughes, Jeffrey; Johns, Alice; McGlothlin, Daniel; Pettee, Charles; Ponce, Stanley
- Units
- PORE
- Keywords
- Death Valley National Monument, Pupfish