To attempt to save every small and insignificant fish and snail and mushroom, we are at least giving consciousness to the idea that we are starting to do something to slow the end of nature. Micromanaging pupfish may not be the way to curb extinction, but at least it's a start.

The thirteen species of desert pupfishes and the approximately seven additional subspecies will probably never serve much to man. But does that make them less valuable? Sure - they are a puzzle piece of our world's natural history. But the mission of saving endangered species is grand, and grand missions require small puzzle pieces.

Understanding how these fish lost their lake 10,000 years ago is one thing. But how did they get here in the first place? I don't think anyone knows the precise natural history of pupfishes, but they are widespread throughout North America. There are 119 species, living anywhere from the Atlantic Seaboard to Central Mexico.

My guess is that they evolved somewhere in the Caribbean Basin, followed seashores and rivers and maybe even oceans through the Isthmus - through Panama when Panama was water - and made their way north into the Sea of Cortez and finally up the Colorado River.

Back then, the Sea of Cortez was connected to the Salton Sea by a large, slow river. And the Salton Sea had river connections to all the lakes north of them.

As primarily freshwater or brackish water dwellers in tropical climates - places like mangroves and tidal flats, the pupfish required, and evolved a habit of high variability.

There have probably been many variations, many species, along the way.

Even though there was plenty of water in the deserts in the ice age, it had already been an arid region for millenia. Death Valley is adjacent to the high Sierra mountains, just to the west of here. These peaks have been growing steadily, and as they grew in the ancient ages, they blocked more and more Pacific moisture from the regions just to the east. Slowly, green forests dissipated and gave way to saltgrass and creosote.

The fight for the pupfish became national news in 1970, and it was the singular event that catapulted a national consciousness for the idea that man is plucking at the thin membrane of life. Endangered species’ became backyard conversation.