Oasis in the Mojave, protected but at risk
SHOSHONE, Calif. — The Amargosa, a slender thread of a river that flows through a parched landscape, begins with a few springs bubbling out of the ground in the Oasis Valley near Beatty, Nev.
Shortly thereafter, the stream disappears underground, and it flows south hidden for 100 miles or so until surfacing again near this desert outpost, home to 31 people.
From here, the Amargosa, nicknamed the hideand-seek river, alternately flows above ground and below, mixing with groundwater and water heated by geothermal sources in a complex subterranean puzzle. The river is nourished by an assortment of springs and creeks, and though its Spanish name means “bitter,” the water is sweet enough to cultivate a string of biological pearls along its length.
“Places where water surfaces in the desert are rare, and that’s where biodiversity is high,” said Sophie Parker, a senior scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Los Angeles, which has helped buy and protect key areas along the Amargosa. “These are true oases.”
The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, part of the Amargosa River system, hosts more endemic species — those found nowhere else — than any other place in the United States, surpassed by only one other location in North America, a desert oasis in Mexico. Some species of snails and fish exist only in a single pool in the Amargosa region.
All this in a place that is one of the hottest and driest in North America. There are just a few inches of rainfall here annually, and temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Many of the region’s most stunning features — deep turquoise springs, warm pools, hanging gardens — are protected in Ash Meadows, where 11,000 gallons of water pour into desert pools each minute.
The Amargosa is protected along an aboveground length of 15 miles. Piecing together the oases needed to conserve disparate species here has taken decades.
The Ash Meadows refuge, for example, was slated to be the Calvada Lakes housing development — including more than 30,000 homes, golf courses and strip malls — when the Nature Conservancy bought it in 1984 and donated it to the federal government. Conservationists and refuge employees have been working to restore the landscape.
There are persistent threats along the Amargosa, despite its protections. Work crews have removed miles of invasive tamarisk trees, for instance, because they take up and transpire so much of the river’s water. But the federal and private protections are useless against the biggest threat of all: the pumping of groundwater from the giant underground aquifer that feeds the Amargosa, which eventually could throttle the river and the delicate ecosystems it supports.
Much of the regional groundwater system that feeds these protected features comes from the flanks of Yucca Mountain, some 70 miles or so to the north. The Trump administration and Congress are working to restart moribund efforts to bury nuclear waste in the repository there.
While there is concern that someday — centuries or millenniums in the future — radioactive waste could contaminate the water in the Amargosa watershed, the more immediate threat is the need to pump enough groundwater to support the huge repository infrastructure.
“That would require thousands of acre-feet of water per year for up to a century,” said Robert J. Halstead, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Development, which opposes a Yucca Mountain repository. “That would clearly threaten the sustainability of the groundwater resource in Amargosa Valley.”
But the greatest threat of groundwater pumping is to several species of inch-long pupfish, tiny iridescent blue fish so named because they seem to play with one another like frisky puppies.
The pupfish’s size belies its long, controversial history. One pupfish species inhabits the small, deep crack between rocks in just a single pool that is now locked behind steel fences and barbed wire and watched over with cameras and other security.