Valencia’s mother, who was born in the U.S., grew up in the Yaqui pueblo of Tórim in Mexico. Within weeks, all of them died. As they waded in the river, Hafen and his research assistant, Alex Gutiérrez-Barragán, periodically sampled the river. Today, the Yaqui catfish, a whiskery-looking creature that evolved at least 2 million years ago and was once common enough for people to catch for food, is functionally extinct in the United States. The Pascua Yaqui Tribe has already built microhatchery prototypes. For Arizona to take interest in the Yaqui catfish, there had to be a commercial value, such as a restaurant market for the fish, or an interest in sport fishing. … We call it cariño en español.” He always got excited when he saw a Yaqui catfish in the wild, wondering each time how many more he might see.
They estimated that, at most, just 30 fish remained. Today, the Yaqui catfish, a whiskery-looking creature that evolved at least 2 million years ago and was once common enough for people to catch for food, is functionally extinct in the United States. In reality, with low budgets and improvised tools, the researchers are learning how to work with the species.
In the distance I spotted a bright white post — a historic border marker, rising from the shrubs.
People have been looking for the Scioto madtom for years. To Valencia, the catfish ties Yaqui peoples to the Río Yaqui region, in part by embodying the importance of water to the tribes. Endangered Species Act back in 1975.
So, too, might the springs that the refuge’s fishes relied on.
Past that, the roof of a ranch house in Mexico. It’s easy to read their efforts as a comedy of errors, with fish found, lost, misidentified. “Since there was no NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act review) required, no prior studies, we are essentially navigating in uncharted territory, with no baseline for what the final effects might be,” Traphagen said.
His ancient black Lab, Shadow, raced happily through the shallows, huffing like a freight train. Thomas Hafen filters water through eDNA sampling equipment in Cajón Bonito. The Sonoran Desert’s fishes have evolved fascinating adaptations: Some give birth to live young; others snuggle down and wait out dry spells in the mud. Cattle, introduced in the 1500s by the Spanish, overgrazed the land, congregating around and trampling sensitive desert river systems. The river clattered through the small canyon, carrying dried leaves above its sandy bed. To people for whom “Sonoran Desert” conjures up images of steadfast saguaros or sun-struck lizards, the fact that a native catfish species existed in such a dry place can be surprising. All too often, humans don't even notice that a species has disappeared until years—if not decades—after the fact. “If we had a tapestry of our history on this side of the border, it would probably be missing a bunch of big chunks.”. After a week of searching, they could catch only two wild fish. Only later did it occur to me that perhaps, if I couldn’t tell the difference between a Yaqui catfish and a channel catfish, that was because they communicate in the language of fish, not primates — that their seeming interchangeability said more about my limited understanding than it did about their limited distinctions. about Yaqui catfish, dusky animals that live at the bottom of ciénegas and streams, growing up to about two feet long. Scioto madtom photo by M.R. Another biologist on the trip, Chuck Minckley, was an original member of the Desert Fishes Council, a nonprofit research organization for desert fish biologists in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.
If Yaqui catfish breed in captivity, Hafen’s research will help identify where to release their young, and which rivers to protect. Maya L. Kapoor is an associate editor at High Country News.
To Valencia, the catfish ties Yaqui peoples to the Río Yaqui region, in part by embodying the importance of water to the tribes.
“What’s that adage about how far you can lean off a cliff before you fall? We’re looking at — on both sides of the border — what are important parts of history we don’t know, or we need to know more?”, At one point, Valencia wrote down a Yaqui word for me in my notebook, after I struggled to sound it out myself. ONE WARM FALL DAY last September, I visited San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, a remote landscape of rolling hills with a backdrop of sharply angled mountains at the Río Yaqui headwaters in southeastern Arizona, where the last Yaqui catfish in the U.S. were caught for the failed breeding effort. … We call it. In all likelihood, it is gone for good—another species that disappeared when we weren't looking. Ranchers blindsided by Trump’s border wall. Here’s the thing about extinctions: They are very rarely witnessed. Emerged from their vehicles, the researchers gathered an assortment of buckets, field gear and notebooks and began walking in the creek, stopping periodically to document its condition. Using a boat Chuck Minckley has owned since he was a teenager, he and Thomas Hafen check netting for Yaqui catfish that escaped into a holding pond at Rancho San Bernardino in Sonora, Mexico.
Yaqui catfish may communicate with each other through drummings and stridulations, and they may hunt by tracking the electric discharges from other animals’ nervous systems. His ancient black Lab, Shadow, raced happily through the shallows, huffing like a freight train.
You are granted a personal, revocable, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Services and the Content conditioned on your continued acceptance of, and compliance with, the Terms. “It’s one of those things I think can be successful,” he said.
"No other fish has been searched for more persistently by researchers in Ohio than this species," according to the Ohio Department of Nature Resources.
“Since there was no NEPA required, no prior studies, we are essentially navigating in uncharted territory, with no baseline for what the final effects might be,” Traphagen said. By 1973, when the Endangered Species Act passed, such intensive pumping meant that the region’s ciénegas were almost all gone, including the tiny fragment of Yaqui catfish habitat in southeastern Arizona. Radke would not comment on the effects of the border wall construction, but he acknowledged that groundwater levels have always been a big concern for the survival of fish at the parched refuge. The current extinction crisis speaks to an uncomfortable truth: In a land of finite resources, every choice, big or small — irrigating an alfalfa field, taking a swing on a golf course, burning fossil fuels — means choosing what kinds of habitat exist, even far away from town. “We can’t let things go,” he said. But are there any fish left? Still, federal and state biologists felt they had to try one more time. Tiny Ohio Catfish Species, Last Seen in 1957, Declared Extinct. It took me a few minutes to realize why: They were preparing for the construction crews to arrive, to build the border wall. In almost a year of researching them, I still haven’t gotten a glimpse of one. One sunny morning in September, I met James Hopkins (Algonquin and Métis), a law professor at the University of Arizona who directs the Yaqui Human Rights Project Clinic and has legally represented Yaqui pueblos in Mexico, in a parking lot near the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s Casino del Sol. We crowded over it, and I found myself getting unexpectedly emotional, looking at what might be one of the last of an under-studied, barely known species, trying to escape from a plastic box.
I wondered whether the loss of a species that looked just like one of the most common fish species on the planet really mattered. By 1973, when the Endangered Species Act passed, such intensive pumping meant that the region’s ciénegas were almost all gone, including the tiny fragment of Yaqui catfish habitat in southeastern Arizona.
Now, he was surveying as much of the remaining Yaqui catfish habitat in Mexico as he could for traces of the elusive animals, hoping, eventually, to be able to identify the best habitat for the species. Now in his 70s, he waded slowly down the canyon as Hafen’s crew sampled the water, pausing to rest at times on an overturned bucket. After years of neglect, the Yaqui catfish is rare enough that every fish matters, making it hard to experiment with ways to breed them, or even to keep them alive. To people for whom “Sonoran Desert” conjures up images of steadfast saguaros or sun-struck lizards, the fact that a native catfish species existed in such a dry place can be surprising. And yet the Yaqui catfish’s looming extinction bothers me for the simple truth is represents: The Borderlands can’t have its rivers and destroy them, too. Biologists then spent years looking for signs of the fish and information on how to protect it. A combination of colonialism and human-caused climate change turned rivers and wetlands to dust. by But now, the ponds themselves are endangered, collateral damage in the Trump administration’s determination to construct a border wall before the November election. One sunny morning in September, I met James Hopkins (Algonquin and Métis), a law professor at the University of Arizona who directs the Yaqui Human Rights Project Clinic and has legally represented Yaqui pueblos in Mexico, in a parking lot near the Pascua Yaqui Tribe’s Casino del Sol. But before colonization, networks of riparian areas, wetlands and slow-moving rivers flowed through the region, where Indigenous peoples have lived and farmed for millennia.