National Parks Traveler | Devils Hole Pupfish

As hot, arid, and dusty as Death Valley National Park is, it might come as a surprise to learn that it has a very important fishery of sorts. There is a place in the national park where there is a warm spring that is home to a rare and endangered fish - the Devils Hole Pupfish.

Each year the population of pupfish can swing wildly between highs and lows. Recently, researchers completed their biannual count of Devils Hole Pupfish and the numbers are encouraging. Devils Hole is the only natural habitat where this critically endangered fish exists in the wild, and as the Traveler’s Lynn Riddick discovers from a chat with a park aquatic ecologist, the numbers are the highest in two decades.