Rare Fish Find Backyard Haven
After vandals dumped a gallon of motor oil into a pond early last month, wildlife officials scrambled to save more than 700 endangered desert pupfish.
With no plan for such a crisis and few options for care of the tiny fish, the rescuers weighed the risk of driving the rare minnows 50 miles to holding tanks in La Quinta or at the Salton Sea.
That’s when Judy Whitcomb, a retired maintenance worker at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, rode up with a pickup full of nets and buckets and offered to shelter the fish in her Borrego Springs backyard.
Like wildlife volunteers who rally to wash petroleum-coated birds after an oil spill, Whitcomb and her 11-year-old granddaughter, K.C. Van Cleve, helped park ecologists catch and rinse the fish in an assembly line of freshwater buckets.
Whitcomb built temporary quarters in an old bathtub and a sawed-off water cistern shaded with plastic pallets and refreshed with electric aerators.
Whitcomb jury-rigged a drainage system and sprinkled handfuls of tropical and goldfish food into the tanks daily, guarding the silvery fish as park workers and volunteers cleaned and restored their permanent pond.
“She came to our rescue,” said Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Eddie Konno, who coordinated the pupfish evacuation. “We would have been hurting if she didn’t step forward.”
Desert pupfish once thrived in springs, streams, and mountain seeps throughout the arid Southwest. An inch-long member of the minnow family, they have adapted to life in inhospitable waters: stagnant pools, salty lakes and steaming hot springs.
But they have been threatened repeatedly by diversions that have drained their springs for farms or developments and by the invasion of exotic fish such as sailfin mollies, tilapia and pest-eating mosquito fish.
Pupfish are believed to remain at the Salton Sea, in San Felipe Creek near Salton City and in Salt Creek in Southern Riverside County, Konno said, although the Salt Creek population may have already vanished. The total number of fish is undetermined, but experts agree they are extremely rare, perhaps numbering in the thousands.
To protect the remaining pupfish from extinction, fisheries biologists built a dozen refuge ponds to maintain emergency reinforcements in case any of the three wild populations becomes dangerously small.
The tainted pond, the size of a small backyard swimming pool and about a foot deep, lies at the end of a parking lot in a public campground at Anza-Borrego.
It is easily accessible to the curious and malicious alike. Yet it remained secure for decades before the morning of Jan. 10, when a park maintenance worker noticed something amiss: the iridescent sheen of motor oil floating across the shallow, murky water.
Although the spill could have been the error of a careless camper tossing the remains of an oil change, park officials presume it was a deliberate act of destruction. The incident appears to be one in a series of pranks and vandalism directed against the park, said Supt. Mark Jorgensen.
Among the other incidents are the burning of six park signs, vandalism of the park’s bear logo and the distribution of fliers touting a sham hunt for endangered bighorn sheep. The hunt purportedly would benefit, among other things, the “pupfish cookbook.”
Officials suspect several local residents with a grudge against the park, Jorgensen said.
“It’s just a cheap, immature way to try to hit the park,” he said.
State law provides for fines of as much as $5,000 and as much as a year in jail for harming an endangered species. Federal felony charges of killing members of an endangered species carry fines of $5,000 to $100,000, said Game Warden Bart Bundesen, who is investigating the incident.
While law enforcement worked to track the vandals, park ecologists rushed to trap the fish and drain the polluted pond.
Biologists initially thought there would be no survivors, but they were pleasantly surprised to find 730 pupfish alive and only 11 dead, Konno said.
The park hired an environmental cleanup firm to excavate and dispose of the contaminated sediment, while community volunteers helped pour new concrete and raise $1,000 for repairs. A $500 reward is also being offered for information leading to the arrest of the vandals.
But Whitcomb provided the refuge that is getting the fish through their exile.
She is a retired park employee and lifelong outdoorswoman and angler who moved to Borrego Springs 15 years ago.
She became an amateur aquaculturist when a swimming pool became so infested with algae that she put catfish in it. Since then she has kept tanks and tubs of goldfish, mollies and other species around her backyard, converting many apparently useless items into fish quarters.
On Feb. 10, Whitcomb and granddaughter K.C. netted 271 of the creatures for reintroduction into the restored and tested pond.
By week’s end Whitcomb and Konno had released all the fish back into their pond ... and then some. A total of 764 of the silvery fish have been returned to the pond -- 34 more than originally evacuated. Whitcomb is watching closely to see if any more hatchlings are born after the end of their one-month stay in her backyard.
Whitcomb said she’s elated that the fish survived the ordeal.
“This is a momentous thing,” Whitcomb said. “If you’re into pupfish.”
