The Long Valley speckled dace struggle to survive in just one spring and a small creek east of Mammoth Lakes.
By Chloe Baul, Courthouse News Service
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday proposed listing the Long Valley speckled dace, a rare minnow native to the eastern Sierra Nevada, as an endangered species.
The decision stems from a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity seeking to protect the subspecies on the brink of extinction due to various environmental threats.
“Endangered Species Act protections will provide a badly needed lifeline for Long Valley speckled dace, which survive at only two locations,” said Jeff Miller, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
The dace, found only in the Long Valley volcanic caldera and the upper Owens River watershed in eastern California, once thrived in springs and creeks throughout the upper Owens Basin in Mono County. Today, they struggle to survive in just one spring and a small creek east of Mammoth Lakes.
The rare fish faces threats from a variety of human activities such as gold mining, redirecting water for human needs, trampling and habitat damage from cattle and burros, pumping groundwater for solar energy development, and further adverse impacts from ongoing climate change.
These factors have dried up their natural habitats, leading to their drastic decline. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for the fish’s protection in 2020, highlighting the urgent need for conservation efforts.
According to the center, Long Valley speckled dace are specifically adapted to live in warm springs and creeks. However, geothermal energy development and water diversions have significantly reduced or dried up many of these springs.
Excessive groundwater pumping and climate change have exacerbated the problem, as the aquifers feeding these springs depend on snowmelt for recharge. As a result, the dace have disappeared from many suitable habitats, including Hot Creek, Little Alkali Lake, and various isolated springs and ponds.
Currently, only one small and declining natural population of Long Valley speckled dace remains at Whitmore Hot Springs.
Some fish have been relocated to a few locations along O’Harrel Canyon Creek. A few hundred of these fish are maintained in an artificial pond at a managed refuge in Inyo County, which is outside the species’ historical range.
By protecting the Long Valley speckled dace under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to implement measures that will help the fish recover and thrive once again.
These measures might include habitat restoration, management of invasive species, and ensuring sufficient water flow in their natural habitats. Without these protections, the Long Valley speckled dace could face extinction.
According to Miller, these protections are a vital step toward ensuring the survival of this unique subspecies in its natural habitat. Without immediate and sustained conservation efforts, the future of the Long Valley speckled dace remains uncertain.
“This is a good first step, but these tenacious minnows will need emergency action and a coordinated recovery effort,” he said in the statement.
Press release from the US Fish and Wildlife Service
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that it is opening a 60-day public comment period on the proposed rule to list the Long Valley speckled dace, a small freshwater fish native to California’s Owens Valley at the base of the Eastern Sierra, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Using the Service’s Species Status Assessment framework, we determined that Long Valley speckled dace, a subspecies of speckled dace, warrants the protections of the ESA due to ongoing threats from non-native invasive fish, disease, recreation, and water diversion, geothermal development, climate change and small population size.
Long Valley speckled dace are small, often less than 8 centimeters in length, and live in cold-water to hot springs with water temperatures up to 84 degrees Fahrenheit. The subspecies once lived in seven locations within the Long Valley Caldera in Mono County. Today just one wild population exists at Whitmore Marsh near the Town of Mammoth Lakes.
“Part of the magic of the Eastern Sierra is in the wildlife that live there, like these remaining fish populations. Habitat at the six historical sites has either disappeared or become unsuitable,” said Sam Luginbuhl, a fish and wildlife biologist for the Service in Reno, Nevada. “Some of the springs have been absorbed by other water bodies while other sites can no longer support the dace due to the presence of non-native fish or modification of habitat for other land uses.”
The Service works with our partners, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Whitmore Marsh landowner, UCLA’s White Mountain Research Center, and the Inyo National Forest to conserve the existing population and potentially establish new populations in suitable locations in the area.
In 2023, CDFW, who has led local conservation of the species, recorded the highest number of the fish in Whitmore Marsh in years. In 2022, CDFW, translocated Long Valley speckled dace from a refuge population at the White Mountain Research Center to suitable habitat in the Inyo National Forest.
“While it’s too soon to say if the translocated population is self-sustaining, I’m excited to work with our partners on future projects like the translocation for the benefit of Long Valley speckled dace,” said Luginbuhl. “They are a special, unique fish to this beautiful area and together we’ll work to help conserve them for future generations.”
A 60-day comment period on the proposed rule opens August 8, 2024 and closes October 7, 2024. Information on how to submit comments can be found at www.federalregister.gov by searching for docket number FWS-R8-ES-2021-0065.
