In the 1970s the Devil’s Hole pupfish was the focus of a famous U.S. Supreme Court water rights case, brought by the federal government against a farming concern that was pumping water from wells associated with Devil’s Hole (5). In 1976 the courts decided in favour of the fish, upholding a lower court order to establish a minimum water level in Devil's Hole that would ensure the continued existence of the pupfish (4). In 1984, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) was able to purchase the surrounding land and create Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge to protect the area’s unique fauna (5) (7). Artificial lights have been installed over the shallow breeding shelf to stimulate diatom and algae growth to provide more food to the pupfish, and routine census taking was also instituted (4).
Attempts have been made to relocate some of the population and induce spawning in other environments such as the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, but have mostly been unsuccessful (7). The idea is that spreading the fish out would minimize the possibility of the species being wiped out completely by a single catastrophic event (7) (10). Fortunately, efforts to rear the fish in a tank near Hoover Dam have proved successful, with an original sample of just eight individuals having grown to over 74 (7) (10). However, individuals here have exhibited different growth patterns to those in the wild and no one is sure if these fish could survive if released into the wild (7) (10). Wildlife biologists are therefore planning to build another refugium that better replicates the actual conditions of water temperature, oxygen content, sunlight and algae in Devil’s Hole (10). These findings only serve to demonstrate how this pupfish, as perhaps one of the most geographically isolated organisms in the world, is highly adapted to its unique environment (7) and, despite significant conservation efforts, remains in an extremely precarious position (4).