Tuesday, June 6, 2006 | 7:12 a.m.
Millions of dollars are turning a former resort 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas into a working refuge for a rare, federally protected desert fish.
Bulldozers are creating a parking lot that should open up the 106-acre Moapa Valley National Wildlife Refuge to the public within the next two years. New restrooms are nearly completed.
But perhaps the most important part of the work is to be done on the streams and tiny, bubbling springs that support the refuge's most important inhabitant: the endangered Moapa dace.
Once choked with cattails and filled with invasive, non-native species, the streams flow clearly to nourish the dace, a species originally listed for federal protection in 1967. The Moapa dace is dependent on the warm springs that flow in and immediately next to the refuge.
The streams were once chlorinated with concreted wading and swimming pools, part of a resort that included snack bars and recreational vehicle hook-ups.
Contractors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lead agency on the effort to rescue the Moapa dace, have painstakingly simulated a natural streambed that includes rocky overhangs, tiny rapids and calm pools.
And the dace, which numbered just a few hundred by the late 1970s, are coming back. In a new viewing chamber, the dace swim comfortably in flowing water in the heart of the refuge.
Amy Sprunger-Allworth, Fish and Wildlife refuge manager, says that within the next two years the public should be able to come and get an up-close view: "The ultimate goal is to show the public the endangered species - the fish - as well as other endemic species."
Small groups may be able to visit the refuge on a limited basis sooner, officials say.
Federal authorities and other dace advocates want to make sure that the water keeps flowing. While it bubbles up from deep within the ground now, they have been concerned that development in northern Clark County and Lincoln County could take water that would otherwise flow to the Moapa Valley springs.
Managers for Fish and Wildlife believe they have such a guarantee even as development continues. In April, Fish and Wildlife, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Moapa Band of Paiutes and developer Coyote Springs Investment signed an agreement that would collectively keep the water flowing in the numerous springs scattered around the refuge.
Among the provisions of the agreement: The Water Authority will provide more than $1.2 million in funding for the dace, the Moapa Valley Water District will contribute 784 acre-feet yearly to the refuge and the Coyote Springs developer will contribute at least another 460 acre-feet and $200,000.
In the 23-page agreement, the parties agreed to cooperate on management and monitoring to ensure the dace and other species continue to have fresh water. For the water agencies, the agreement also eliminates protests filed against well-development projects in rural Clark and Lincoln counties.
Bronson Mack, a Water Authority spokesman, says the agreement serves two needs: "Our interest is to develop ground water rights to be used for municipal purposes. The agreement really facilitates water resource development up in that area, and it helps protect sensitive environmental resources. It really benefits everybody. This was a five-year effort to resolve the issues up there.
"To get everybody to an agreement is pretty monumental. It shows that we can develop water resources in harmony with the environment."
The refuge also has benefited from federal land sales in Clark County, receiving about $1.2 million in proceeds from the sales under the 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, according to Sprunger-Allworth.
The Moapa dace can use some friends. It has some enemies that pushed it to the brink.
During the last Fish and Wildlife count in February 2005, there were 1,300 individuals counted on the public land and on the private land nearby - a 44 percent increase over February 2003. But in 1994, the agency counted 3,800 Moapa dace.
Federal officials blame the dramatic falloff on non-native tilapia, a voracious fish that took over much of the stream and spring complexes in and around the refuge. Tilapia moved upstream from the Colorado River into the Muddy River, and then up to the warm streams that are the only habitat of the Moapa dace.
The tilapia first ate the algae, then started on the Moapa dace after the algae was depleted.
Other invasions have come from mollies, a common aquarium fish probably dumped into the streams by a well-meaning person in the early 1960s, and even native cattails, which if unchecked will choke streambeds.
The cattails and tilapia are gone from what will be the public part of the refuge. The mollies remain, but the Moapa dace and the native White River springfish share the small pools and streams in the refuge.
Fish and Wildlife and its contractors have removed the thickets of non-native vegetation such as salt cedar and planted native mesquite, ash and willows.
"A year from now you'll be astounded at how big and thick this stuff has become," says Sprunger-Allworth, who calls this work the best of her 17-year Fish and Wildlife career.
"This is definitely the highlight of my experience. It wraps everything together, restoring habitat, for this case for an endangered species."
Protecting - and restoring - endangered species is, of course, what Fish and Wildlife is supposed to do. But Sprunger-Allworth says everyone has a stake in biological diversity.
The loss of one species can affect other species in ways not always obvious, she says, and losing many species can have an even greater impact. Sprunger-Allworth says she doesn't know when a habitat reaches that trigger point, but it is there, she believes.
The loss of one species after another, she says, "will have a cumulative effect at some point on the entire environment."
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