Travel Photography > Desert Southwest > Death Valley

The case went to court, and the issue ultimately centered on water rights. Does the shitty minnow have right to the water, or do we the generous and humble farmers and developers of this great land? More 'Save the Pupfish' bumperstickers were showing up on cars, and an environmental commission was formed.

The closest town of any significance to Ash Meadows is a place called Pahrump. Pahrump is Nevada's most well known brothel town, and home to the famous Chicken Ranch brothel. It's also known for gunslinging clubs, and a man named Art Bell, who hosts a talk radio show late at night about aliens, UFO's and the supernatural. Here in Pahrump, it's easy to see where the other side comes from. It’s a place of unkempt billboards and ugly homes, the car dealerships and food chains being for the worse. It's a place not entirely unlike the third world, where the priority is self-preservation, and not much more.

By 1972, the case went federal and the fish won.

Even now, saved by the Supreme Court from man, the fish at Devil's Hole are constantly at risk from nature itself. Several times - bad weather or bad water, the fish have almost perished.

The Devil's Hole, which has since become regulated by Death Valley National Park in California, is now plastered with complicated bits of machinery meant to help ensure the population's survival.

One pupfish scientist is often asked, what good are they? To which he answers, 'what good are you?' This same scientist once held the entire population of one species of the pupfish in two buckets of water.

Of course, extinction happens.

But not at the pace created by man. In a short period of time, say between 1900 and now, we have set in motion the beginning of the most accelerated rate of extinction in Earth's history.

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