What's the Problem Again?

The Mohave tui chub is the only known fish that is native to the Mojave River. It is believed that the demise of the tui chub in its native habitat was due to a phenomenon called “death from a thousand cuts”, inferring that many individual assaults on its existence have “ganged up” on a species over time pushing it to the fringe of its original habitat and to the edge of extinction. The forces that are believed to have created this situation include: the introduction of exotic, non-native sport fish into the waters of the Mojave River watershed, the introduction of a next of kin baitfish called the Arroyo chub, and human encroachment on the resources that the tui chub rely upon. These outside influences coupled with natural cycles that bring storms and floods mixed with periods of droughts, the tui chub has been all but eliminated from the river it once called home, endanger of the final peril for any species, extinction. The last surviving remnant of this species in the “wild” was discovered isolated from the Mojave River in a small, spring fed pool on the shore of Soda Dry Lake, an ancient inland Mojave Desert lake near Baker, California.