“What it means is, ‘In the beginning,’ ” he explained. His ancient black Lab, Shadow, raced happily through the shallows, huffing like a freight train. Like most of the Southwest’s aquatic species, Yaqui catfish have struggled to survive since European colonization.

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. The Mekong giant catfish is an impr­essive sight, but one that is rapidly vanishing from the wild. United States biologists Thomas Hafen and Chuck Minckley work with Mexican biologists Alex Gutiérrez-Barragán and Alejandro Varela-Romero (pictured from left) to measure the distance to an eDNA sampling site while conducting fieldwork in northern Sonora, Mexico, in September 2019. As they waded in the river, Hafen and his research assistant, Alex Gutiérrez-Barragán, periodically sampled the river.

“They killed us, shipped us off as slaves in Yucatán, did whatever they could.” People were sent as far away as the Caribbean and Morocco, never to return.

Meanwhile, residents of the Southwest — including me, for approximately half my life — have washed our dishes, cleaned laundry, swum in pools, watered plants, and generally gone about our daily lives by tapping into what water persists, including the Colorado River and underground aquifers. Yaqui people regularly move back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, although that’s been harder since the 9/11 terror attacks, Valencia said. Now, the hunt is on to find more Yaqui catfish in Sonora, Mexico. by 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.

Without water, there would be no future here for the Yaqui catfish. To Valencia, the tribe’s history is too important to lose. Ranchers blindsided by Trump’s border wall. As these introduced species have pushed the Yaqui catfish to extinction at lower elevations, the species survives higher up, in hard-to-reach, isolated mountain headwaters. According to Myles Traphagen, a field biologist and GIS specialist who previously worked at San Bernardino, no environmental analysis has been conducted on the impacts of wall construction on the region’s water, or on its fish. Unseen since 1957, the small catfish has now been listed as "extinct" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, following decades of fruitless searches. We may change the Terms at any time, and the changes may become effective immediately upon posting. In reality, prior to European colonization, the region supported rich waterways and aquatic communities.

But he sees advantages to its independence from the federal government. He had a feeling that a Yaqui catfish might appear. After they checked its pit tag, however, they realized it was a hybrid of a Yaqui catfish and a channel catfish.
In the distance I spotted a bright white post — a historic border marker, rising from the shrubs.

One sunny morning in September, I met James Hopkins (Algonquin and Métis), a law professor at the University of Arizona who directs the. When Hafen got his eDNA results months later, they would show that almost everywhere in Mexico where he found Yaqui catfish, he’d found channel catfish, too. 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. “We have to always remember what we had in the beginning.

In the 1900s, enormous dam projects began sending the Southwest’s water far away, irrigating California’s agriculture, even as Sunbelt cities kept growing. Varela-Romero and Minckley are determined to catch and breed Yaqui catfish in Mexico as quickly as possible, even though no one really knows how. 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. Working with the eight Yaqui pueblos in Mexico, Valencia wants to create family-based “microhatcheries.” Partly, this is for cultural reasons — the Yaqui catfish is a traditional food — but it would also be part of the Yaqui pueblos’ long battle for the Mexican government to honor their treaty rights, which include extensive control of water and other natural resource in the Río Yaqui basin.
On the Sonoran Desert’s version of a fall day, the afternoon high hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a binational group of researchers gathered in Cajón Bonito, a canyon that cuts through former ranchland, “You develop some kind of love.

So, too, might the springs that the refuge’s fishes relied on. The small, soot-gray animal burrowed into the corners, seeking an escape with its mouth and barbels. John R. Platt is the editor of The Revelator. 10 hours ago — Chelsea Harvey and E&E News, 17 hours ago — Carolyn Barber | Opinion. 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. “In the past, there were no exotics in the (river) basins,” Varela-Romero explained. 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. Only about 2% of their historic range lies within the United States; the rest is in Mexico.

On the U.S. side of the border, Valencia would like the Pascua Yaqui Tribe to raise Yaqui catfish in captivity, in part for a commercial market.

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In the distance I spotted a bright white post — a historic border marker, rising from the shrubs.

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. 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.

A friendly, quiet worker in his mid-20s, with brown hair and a stubbly beard, Hafen spent two years before college on a Latter-day Saints mission trip in Mexico, becoming fluent in Spanish.

All too often, humans don't even notice that a species has disappeared until years—if not decades—after the fact.

Catfish are named for the long, flexible barbels that sprout from their faces like a cat’s whiskers, helping them feel and taste their world. IF HAFEN AND HIS TEAM represent cutting-edge fisheries research, with fussy portable filters and slick sampling methods, Varela-Romero embodies an older approach to natural history, his expertise earned through hours spent studying different species, counting bent spines, describing the exact color of scales, trying to think like a fish.

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.

After a week of searching, they could catch only two wild fish. In a few months’ time he will get the results: Both Yaqui catfish and introduced channel catfish, which hybridize with them, are present.Roberto (Bear) Guerra/High Country News. … We call it, Because the Yaqui catfish is dying out, Varela-Romero said, “you develop some kind of love. Robert Valencia, then-chairman (now vice chairman) of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, says the catfish ties Yaqui peoples to the Río Yaqui region, in part by embodying the importance of water to the tribes.Roberto (Bear) Guerra/High Country News.

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Get your twice-weekly fix of features, commentary, and insight from the frontlines of American food. Fish and Wildlife Service would like to reintroduce Yaqui catfish, if Mexico agrees. Refuge staff declined to comment on the impacts of the border wall.