BEST AVAILABLE SCIENCE AND MANAGING THREATENED ECOSYSTEMS

The Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis), a member of the first class of 78 species placed on the U.S. Endangered Species list in 1967 and a flagship species for conservation efforts, occurs only in Death Valley National Park’s Devils Hole. Located in southern Nevada’s Mojave Desert, the sole natural population of Devils Hole pupfish has been pushed to near-extinction multiple times. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the development of nearby groundwater resources for irrigation dewatered its primary spawning habitat, driving the population into a sharp decline. Although litigation succeeded in halting groundwater withdrawals and the population appeared to have recovered from this crisis, a second decline began in the mid-1990s and the population fell from more than 500 to fewer than 200 individuals. This decline became an existential crisis in 2006, when a spring survey counted just 38 individuals, and again in spring 2013 with a survey of just 35 fish.

Here we review the responses of both scientists and resource managers to these crises, as well as the role played by scientific research in formulating management responses. In the 1970s, resource managers and other partners began a collaborative effort to continuously monitor the ecosystem. By the 1980s, however, the ongoing research and monitoring of the Devils Hole ecosystem was halted by limited budgets. In 2006, most of the research on the Devils Hole ecosystem was 20-30 years old, and the lack of current knowledge hampered the management response to the critically low population survey. The 2006 survey, though, spurred further research in the ecosystem, and the management response to the 2013 survey was both better informed and more effective than the 2006 response. Using Devils Hole as a case study, we argue that research into threatened and endangered ecosystems – even when they appear to be stable – is critical to the management and conservation of these resources.