An "Extinct" Fish Finds Life Again in a Parched Desert: The Saga of the Shoshone Pupfish

The pupfish habitat at the springs in Shoshone, east of Death Valley National Park

Of all the things one might look for while exploring intense desert environments, what is the most unlikely form of life you would expect to encounter? Fish of course. It's practically an oxymoron to use the term "desert fish". But in the harsh desert environments of eastern California and western Nevada, there are indeed fish. And not just a single species, but around a dozen species and subspecies. There are nine distinct populations of the Cyprinodon Pupfish, three species of Speckled Dace, and a Poolfish. How they survive today, and how they got there in the first place is a fascinating story.

How they survive is not difficult to understand: despite the aridity of the California desert, there are sources of water. There are permanent springs and pools of water scattered all around Death Valley and the Amargosa River Basin, and the fish have adapted to life in waters that might be hot, cold, fresh, or salty.

How they got there in the first place is a little trickier to understand. Our climate has been subject to huge variations over the last two million years, and more than a dozen times, it got much cooler and glaciers developed and expanded, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Some of the meltwater from those glaciers flowed into the deserts of the Basin and Range province and accumulated in huge freshwater lakes. As a lake basin filled (such as at Mono or Owens Lake), it spilled over into the next lake basin until a network of lakes extended from the Sierra Nevada to Death Valley. The Amargosa River flowed through western Nevada, also ending in Death Valley. So there was plenty of water once upon a time.

At some point in time, a connection was made with the Colorado River, and fish were able to make their way into the network of freshwater lakes, and they thrived. But as each glacial stage ended, the lakes would begin drying up and most of the fish lost their habitat and went extinct. But those very few species that could adapt quickly enough took refuge in the rare and isolated springs and pools. A few, including the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout survived in the cold streams, lakes and rivers of the eastern Sierra Nevada. Those trapped in saline waters had to adapt to the salty conditions. Some fish adapted to high temperatures,  and unlike pretty much any other fish in the world can survive in water that reaches a hundred degrees or more.

One of my very few photos of the Devils Hole Pupfish, taken from around 100 feet away.

Perhaps the most famous of these fish is the Devils Hole Pupfish (above), found in a single cavern opening in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge (the spring officially lies in an outlier of Death Valley National Park). Their story is compelling, but they are not the fish I'm discussing today. You can read about them if you wish here or here.

 

The various populations of pupfish survived for thousands of years in isolation from human developments. But the colonization and occupation of the desert by miners and ranchers spelled doom for some of them. One species, the Tecopa Pupfish, was driven extinct pretty much in an afternoon when pipes were installed at the one spring where they lived. A similar fate apparently happened to a different subspecies, the Shoshone Pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis shoshone) in the 1960s as springs in that area were developed for domestic use at the village of Shoshone. The species was declared extinct in 1969, as none could be found anywhere.

Improbably, a small population of the fish actually survived the devastation of their original habitat by taking refuge in a nearby irrigation ditch, unnoticed by anyone. In 1986 they were rediscovered, and a cooperative effort by the private landowner and several environmental organizations resulted in a resurrected habitat. This habitat was actually expanded to three pools and some artificial off-site refuges as well. Despite visiting Shoshone yearly for the last three decades, I never heard about the efforts being made on behalf of the fish's well-being. 

That changed last week when I found out that a nature trail had been constructed, and interpretive signs posted that allowed for some close viewing of the diminutive fish (as well as another highly endangered creature, the Amargosa Vole). The site also serves as an excellent habitat for a large variety of birds, and we saw Western Bluebirds, Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-crowned Sparrows, a Costa's Hummingbird (a life-lister for me) and we could hear Verdins chattering away in the brush.

The trail is just off the main highway in Shoshone, and the locals seem proud of the efforts and can easily point the way to the trailhead, next to the local school. If you ever travel to Death Valley from the east, you can't miss the town. It's the only gas station and food stop for many miles. Don't forget to stop in at the local museum for a look at the Columbia Mammoth fossils on display inside!

 

Echoes of a Watery Paradise in a Forsaken Hellscape - The Brief Return of Death Valley's Lake Manly

Imagine a lake that's six miles across flanked by dramatic mountain peaks reaching heights greater than 10,000 feet. We're in California, so it's got to be Lake Tahoe, right? But it's not. It is the lowest and driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world. It's Death Valley. And big lakes are not a normal part of the scenery here. Badwater Basin is normally a dry salt flat. What has happened here?

In a word, it's rain. An extraordinary amount of rain has fallen in and around Death Valley this year, around 300% of what is normal. That sounds more dramatic than saying that 4.8 inches has occurred so far. A "normal" year to this point would see about 1.5 inches. And the rain did not fall in Death Valley alone. Death Valley is the lowest basin in a very large drainage system, and the surrounding landscape received even more. It was primarily the result of two events: the remnants of Hurricane Hilary in late August 2023 provided the floodwaters that resulted in the first iteration of the lake. In the hot months that followed, much of the accumulated water evaporated, but then the first week of February brought an atmospheric river storm to California that rejuvenated the shrinking lake. We were lucky to arrive a week later.

This kind of thing doesn't happen often. Some water was present on the valley floor in 2010, and earlier in 2005. But both of those years, floods had damaged the road to Dante's View so I haven't had a birds-eye view of the lake in at least three decades. It was fantastic.

When I and my students travel to Death Valley they get a packing list, but I tend not to put 'kayak' or 'raft' on that list. But we knew the lake would be there, so our long-term friend and trip volunteer Ryan actually packed one, so we had the spectacle of the Hollister family rafting Death Valley. 

The lake has been in the news, so we weren't surprised to see a multitude of tourists gathered in the parking lot at Badwater. I didn't think they'd all opt to go walking in the slimy muddy salty water, but you can see that they did. I was much happier to have stopped along the lake a mile to the south where there was no one but ourselves.

It was along that quiet shoreline that I was able to hear the echoes of a distant past when Death Valley was a watery paradise rather than the hellscape it is today (albeit a very beautiful and dramatic hellscape). That is what is revealed by the geological evidence scattered along the normally parched lake margins. 

At the south end of Death Valley there is an old basalt cinder cone with a strange name: Shoreline Butte. In the picture above, the shoreline terraces are highlighted by the "Superbloom" of 2016 (with all the rain this year, there is at least a possibility of another superbloom in a few weeks). Each of those horizontal terraces was carved by wave action. This and other clues scattered around the margins of the basin are evidence of a lake that existed here for thousands of years. It was as much as 600 feet deep, and more than 100 miles long. 

Where did all that water come from?

Along Beatty Cutoff Road, there is a beach berm covered by rounded flattened pebbles. This was along the northern shoreline of Lake Manly when it was 450 feet deep.

Evidence suggests that Lake Manly existed during a period from 186,000–120,000 years before present, dried up, and then returned again between about 35,000 to 10,000 years ago. It can't be a coincidence that these dates are identical to the dates established for the Tahoe and Tioga stage glaciations that took place in the Sierra Nevada. No glacier ever reached Death Valley, but the Sierra glaciers contributed vast amounts of meltwater to the dry basins east of the mountains. These waters filled present-day Mono Lake to overflowing. It spilled over and flowed in the Owens River to Owens Lake, which actually persisted into the modern era when LA water diversions caused it to dry up in the 1920s.

Pluvial lakes of Eastern California. Source: Philip Stoffer of the U.S. Geological Survey

Ice-age Owens Lake reached a depth of 300 feet and spilled over into China Lake, then Searles Lake, Panamint Lake, and finally Lake Manly in Death Valley. These ice-age bodies of water are called pluvial lakes. The cooler wetter conditions allowed two other river systems to contribute water, the Amargosa River out of Nevada, and the Mojave River out of the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California. There may have even been a temporary connection with the Colorado River, which resulted in one of the most surprising aspects of Death Valley biology: fish!

Salt Creek Pupfish from the middle of Death Valley

Yes, there are fish in Death Valley! In fact, there are several species. They survive in widely scattered springs and short stretches of perennial streams that exist in the desert. The pupfish (cyprinodon) are of particular interest because they probably once were a single widespread species, but when isolated in springs that were either hot or cold, or salty or fresh, they were forced to evolve or perish. Today there are four species in the confines of the park and several others in outlying areas, especially the Owens Valley and Ash Meadows in Nevada. I've found their story to be intriguing and I've written about them a number of times. These diminutive fish survive in the saltiest and hottest water of any known fish species.

Mammoth bones on display at the Shoshone Museum, east of Death Valley

Imagining this vast ice-age lake meant led to another vision of past worlds. In the early 1980s, some students on a geology field trip were hanging out near their camp in the Shoshone area when they discovered bones sticking out of a gully wall. These bones proved to be specimens of Columbian Mammoths and other ice age mammal species (the specimens are currently on display in the Shoshone Museum east of the park). The Death Valley region was a much cooler and more verdant environment during the ice ages, and the shoreline of Lake Manly was populated by grazing animals including the aforementioned mammoths, camels, horses, bison, and the carnivores that would have preyed upon them, including the large cats and perhaps relatives to today's wolves and coyotes.

Looking at the shore of Lake Manly at Badwater from a vertical mile above from Dante's View

To see a lake that only comes into existence every decade or so is a spectacle (in the best sense). But to understand the deeper implications suggested by these lakes that speak of past worlds is the magic of geology. See it if you can. It won't last much longer!

The Islands of Interior California: There's a Reason I Don't Hug Ducks

There are islands in the interior of California. They aren't islands in the normal sense of the word, and are actually pretty much exactly the opposite. In the great California Desert, consisting of the Colorado (Sonoran; also the Lower) Desert, the somewhat higher Mojave Desert (the "High" Desert), and the Basin and Range, there are islands of water. And it is water, of course, that makes life possible in these harshest of climates.

Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley National Park is one of these islands. Tucked along the base of Tucki Mountain at the north end of the Panamint Range, Stovepipe Wells is a small resort complex consisting of a hotel/restaurant, bar, store, gas station, and campground. The resort is not actually at the location of the original Stovepipe Wells. That locality was located several miles to the northeast on the other side of the Mesquite Dunes.

Death Valley is the driest place in North America and the hottest place in the world. It is also the lowest region in North America, and this leads to some unexpected discrepant facts. There is actually lots of water in Death Valley. It doesn't come from the rainfall, but instead it comes from the ground. Water underground tends to flow downhill from higher elevations, and Death Valley is the lowest place there is, so springs flow in unexpected places. And even if there are no springs, the water may still be only a short distance beneath the surface.

That was the case for the Old Stovepipe Wells. At the edge of the sand dunes, there was a low spot where a bit of digging and scraping could cause fresh water to flow to the surface. The spot was utilized in ancient times apparently, but it was more developed in the mining days of the late 1800s. It was the only water source on the floor of Death Valley between Furnace Creek and the mining towns of Skidoo and Rhyolite. Dunes sometimes obscured the site, so it was marked with an old stovepipe, hence the name.

The water at Old Stovepipe Wells was of variable quality and could apparently be dangerous at times. According to one account, "...the water is very low in the spring, is of a yellowish appearance and intensely nauseating in taste. Its odor is very disagreeable, and it can be smelled for half a mile away." The man went on to describe getting very sick and nearly dying before reaching his destination fourteen miles away. One of the problems is that the water became stagnant quickly and that it was important to drain away the fetid water so that fresher water could flow into the hole. Although there were efforts to develop the site, it was clear that Old Stovepipe Wells was not going to become a permanent resort.

There is no information that I could uncover regarding natural flora and fauna around the original Stovepipe Wells. There no doubt was life of some kind, but none is recorded. During my stays at Stovepipe, I've wandered the dunes and found plenty of evidence of life in the early morning sun. Tracks of insects, reptiles and mammals cover the rippled sands. But for the most part the life remains hidden during the day, burrowing underground to escape the harsh surface conditions. It's a little trickier for birds, and they are not often seen in the dune environment. Despite decades of observations, birdwatchers have reported a mere fourteen species at Mesquite Dunes.

But the modern resort of Stovepipe Wells a mere two miles from the dunes? The total number is species reported there is 197! How in the world is such diversity possible? It's the water of course, but perhaps not in the way that you might think. Fresh water is now pumped from deep underground, providing plentiful clean water for the resort. They don't waste the water (aside from the swimming pool perhaps) having little in the way of landscaping (just a few tamarisk trees around the property). There are no open water sources for birds. For years I've camped at Stovepipe, and I've seen only Common Ravens and the invasive and ubiquitous House Sparrow that seems to follow humans wherever they go. I was intensely curious where all the other birds must be hiding, and this year it finally occurred to me.

One of the things they never tell novice birders like myself is about the absolute best place to see birds. It's not, as one would imagine, standing at the edge of a beautiful meadow with the forest and dramatic snowy peaks in the distance. And it isn't necessarily along the crashing surf near coastal estuaries. It's sewage treatment lagoons...really. Back home, the sewage treatment ponds at Modesto host 234 species. The nearby National Wildlife Refuge has fewer than 200.

Consider. A resort, even a modest one like Stovepipe, produces thousands of gallons of liquid waste and sewage every day, and by law the water must be treated. One of the best ways is to use settling ponds and bacteria that consume the worst of the waste material. The treated water can then be allowed to soak back into the ground where the sand and silt provide a natural filtering effect. The sewage lagoons have to have open ponds, and these are the "islands" that attract the multitudes of bird species that have been spotted here over the years. One can imagine that some birds memorize the localities and return during migrations, while other are desperately lost and find the settling lagoons entirely by lucky chance. Some species can be seen daily, while many others were one-time "accidents" and haven't been seen in decades.

Once I figured this out, I made sure to explore the vicinity of the sewage ponds at sunrise before most of my students were up and preparing for the day. For the record they did not smell terrible as one might think. But they finally provided me with some interesting bird species, including the Red-winged Blackbird (above), dozens of American Coots, a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (below), the ever-present Common Ravens, a Say's Phoebe, a Great-tailed Grackle, and a Black-throated Sparrow, a species I never see back home in Modesto.

On the final morning of the trip, I saw the birds that inspired the title of today's post. There were four Cinnamon Teals in the pond. They are among my favorite ducks, given their unique coloration. But despite knowing that the water is not necessarily putrid, I still would not be thrilled with grabbing them close and hugging them. That's just asking for trouble in many ways...

The Islands of Interior California: A New Geotripper Series

I've always been fascinated by islands. I visit the Hawaiian Islands every chance I get, and I am literally haunted by the vast expanses of open ocean that separate the islands from any other landmasses. It's an odd combination of loneliness and wonder. It's not something you ever feel when you are staying in Waikiki hotels and sunning yourself on a crowded beach. The sense of isolation comes when you spend time in the rainforests, the alpine deserts, and the barren volcano slopes. When you read about and experience the incredible biological isolation, it becomes an incredible story of survival and adaptation that has produced hundreds of unique endemic species found nowhere else in the world.

Which leads to a question: what does that have to do with a bunch of pictures of localities in the California desert?

I was in Death Valley National Park for much of the past week, and while I was teaching a field course, I also had a few moments of observation and reflection about life in the desert. I was watching for bird species in particular, and I was struck by an odd contradiction: Death Valley (Furnace Creek specifically) has more bird species (339) than my county in California's Great Valley (315). It doesn't seem possible, since conditions are far more benign at home, and in fact the Great Valley can support vastly greater numbers of birds. But Death Valley has a way of forcing more species together in one place where they can be seen and recorded...it is a system of biological islands. The islands are made of water, and the intervening space is largely barren land.

The concept of biologic islands in a landscape is not a new concept at all, so I am not introducing any kind of new idea here. It's just that I sensed the concept more than usual during the recent trip. So in the next few posts I want to describe some of the unique and different "islands" that exist in the California desert, and the geological conditions that caused them. Some of these we explored last week, but as I considered the idea of a series, I thought of a few unique spots I've visited in earlier journeys, so I will include a few of them as well.

Coming up in the next post: the spot that made me think of islands in the first place...

Part 1: The Littlest Islands of All
Part 2: The Pygmy Mammoths and the Doomed Sky Islands
Part 3: There's a Reason Why I Don't Hug Ducks

To the Unprepared, it is the Place of Death; For Scholars of Earth History, it's a Wonderland. Join us, February 13-17, in Death Valley!

Re-posting from 1/10/20. Our organizational meeting is on Thursday, January 30, at 5:30 PM in Science Community Center Room 326 (the Geology Lab). If you can't make the meeting but wish to join the class, contact me.

Some lands are harsh and lie at the limits of human survival...visiting or inhabiting these lands without preparation would be deadly, and if you are dying of thirst or exposure, you're hardly going to care about the rugged beauty around you.

People have lived in this place in small numbers for at least 10,000 years. Four distinct cultures are known, including the Timbisha Shoshone who still live in the region. They were able to live and thrive within the limits imposed by this extreme desert environment. The first Europeans to arrive during the Gold Rush era were not prepared for the conditions, and it was they who conferred the present-day name of the park: Death Valley.

We are privileged to live in a time and place where technology allows us to visit these lands with our basic needs fulfilled, allowing us to appreciate the landscape and story behind the scenery. This is not to minimize the risks involved when the technology (or basic intelligence) fails us. Death Valley continues to be a dangerous place for the unprepared and people get into serious predicaments every year.

But what a place it is! Death Valley National Park is the largest park in the lower 48 states, and it preserves upwards of 2 billion years of earth history. The story in the rocks is more complete than any other park in the country, including even the Grand Canyon. The Paleozoic sediments alone are 20,000 feet thick, and the late Proterozoic rocks add 15,000 feet more. There are metamorphic rocks that are among the oldest in the American west, and volcanic rocks that are among the youngest (perhaps only a few hundred years).

The landscape is spectacular as well. The floor of Death Valley is the lowest and driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world. Elevations range from -286 feet to more than 11,000 feet. There are times when one can stand in the broiling sun at Badwater and look at snowbanks on Telescope Peak. There are faults and badlands, alluvial fans and barren salt flats. There are hundreds of plant and animal species, including four species of fish (seriously).

Does this sound intriguing, a kind of place that you might like to visit? You could be there in a few weeks, and learn the details of the geologic story of this unique and precious place. I'll be teaching a 2-unit course on the geology Death Valley through Modesto Junior College on Feb. 13-17, 2020. We'll be camping out and spending our days hiking and exploring this fascinating place. If this all sounds interesting, join us! If you live in the Modesto area, we'll have an informational meeting on Thursday, January 30 at 5:30 PM in Science Community Center Room 326. If you can't make the meeting, all the trip information is available at the class website  at: http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/Death_Valley_Field_Studies.html. Information on registration for classes at Modesto Junior College can be found at https://www.mjc.edu/.

Come and join us!

To the Unprepared, it is the Place of Death; For Scholars of Earth History, it's a Wonderland. Join us, February 13-17, in Death Valley!

Some lands are harsh and lie at the limits of human survival...visiting or inhabiting these lands without preparation would be deadly, and if you are dying of thirst or exposure, you're hardly going to care about the rugged beauty around you.

People have lived in this place in small numbers for at least 10,000 years. Four distinct cultures are known, including the Timbisha Shoshone who still live in the region. They were able to live and thrive within the limits imposed by this extreme desert environment. The first Europeans to arrive during the Gold Rush era were not prepared for the conditions, and it was they who conferred the present-day name of the park: Death Valley.

We are privileged to live in a time and place where technology allows us to visit these lands with our basic needs fulfilled, allowing us to appreciate the landscape and story behind the scenery. This is not to minimize the risks involved when the technology (or basic intelligence) fails us. Death Valley continues to be a dangerous place for the unprepared and people get into serious predicaments every year.

But what a place it is! Death Valley National Park is the largest park in the lower 48 states, and it preserves upwards of 2 billion years of earth history. The story in the rocks is more complete than any other park in the country, including even the Grand Canyon. The Paleozoic sediments alone are 20,000 feet thick, and the late Proterozoic rocks add 15,000 feet more. There are metamorphic rocks that are among the oldest in the American west, and volcanic rocks that are among the youngest (perhaps only a few hundred years).

The landscape is spectacular as well. The floor of Death Valley is the lowest and driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world. Elevations range from -286 feet to more than 11,000 feet. There are times when one can stand in the broiling sun at Badwater and look at snowbanks on Telescope Peak. There are faults and badlands, alluvial fans and barren salt flats. There are hundreds of plant and animal species, including four species of fish (seriously).

Does this sound intriguing, a kind of place that you might like to visit? You could be there in a few weeks, and learn the details of the geologic story of this unique and precious place. I'll be teaching a 2-unit course on the geology Death Valley through Modesto Junior College on Feb. 13-17, 2020. We'll be camping out and spending our days hiking and exploring this fascinating place. If this all sounds interesting, join us! If you live in the Modesto area, we'll have an informational meeting on Thursday, January 30 at 5:30 PM in Science Community Center Room 326. If you can't make the meeting, all the trip information is available at the class website  at: http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/Death_Valley_Field_Studies.html. Information on registration for classes at Modesto Junior College can be found at https://www.mjc.edu/.

Come and join us!

Tales From the Semi-Super-Bloom Tour, Part 2: Death Valley National Park

The Desert Five-Spot (Eremalche rotundifolia) has to be one of my favorite desert wildflowers. I don't see it often because it is rarely blooming during my customary visits to Death Valley National Park in February. It's mysterious because it always seems to be hiding its five spots in a globular-shaped bloom that doesn't seem to open out entirely. For these reasons, our visit at Death Valley National Park was extraordinary. We saw some of the Five-Spots in all their revealed glory.

We were on the third day of our Semi-Super-Bloom Tour of California. We were seeking out not the news-making corners of the state that are attracting tens of thousands of people, but the quieter places that haven't been in the news because they didn't quite as much rain as the places like Elsinore and the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve. There are flowers out there, maybe not as abundant, but beautiful just the same, and there were no crowds.

Death Valley is the driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world (so far). Wildflowers are a precious gift in such a place, although they are not in any way out of place. Life finds ways to thrive in even the harshest of Earth's environments, and the flowers of Death Valley are no exception. The seeds can lie dormant in the soil for years, and once they germinate they can grow fast and lay down more seeds for the future. In the process the plants become a food source for all kinds of insects and animals, and as such are an important link in the ecosystem.

Knowing where to look for wildflowers is important when the rainfall is more sparse or later than usual (as is the case in 2019). Many of the usual tourist magnets like Zabriskie Point and Badwater were lacking in flower displays but a drive south towards Jubilee Pass and the ruins of Ashford Mill (15 miles or so) provided some scattered color. We saw what I assume were Yellow Cups (above) and Phacelia (below). Gentle corrections are encouraged!

I haven't figured out the name of the flower below yet.

But Desert Gold is hard to miss. When a super-bloom does occur in Death Valley, there are millions of them on the slopes of Jubilee Pass. There were scattered patches of them, especially along the highway, where the runoff from the pavement provides an extra edge in the water supply for the seeds.

Hairy Sand Verbena is a familiar sight from super-blooms past. We found a few of them along the road near Ashford Mill.

These are plants at the cusp of existence. They arose out of some late storms that provided the water needed to germinate, but it is a only few short weeks before temperatures soar and the desiccating winds begin to blow. Life will once again go into hiding to wait out the searing months.

Death Valley is Actually a Tropical Rainforest...except for the Caterpillars

They SAY Death Valley is the hottest place in the world. They SAY it is the driest place in North America. But I found out the truth on my trip there this weekend. Death Valley is a tropical rainforest, and it would look like one were it not for the billions upon billions of caterpillars that eat up all the vegetation before it can turn the "desert" green.

I mean, think about it. Have you ever actually BEEN to Death Valley when it was actually 128 degrees? If you haven't experienced Death Valley in those kinds of temperatures, then how do you know they happen? The powers-that-be work hard to scare you from visiting during the monsoon season by telling stories of dead tourists and melting tires and that sort of thing while convincing us to visit in February or March, when it's "cooler". But, during the "inferno" of summer, the rains fall plentifully, and plants cover the whole landscape, and the salt pan is a beautiful inland sea with date palms gracing the beautiful sandy beaches. The National Park staff looks forward to these beautiful days of tropical bliss when tourists are nowhere to be seen.

But then the caterpillars come...and they eat everything green to the root just in time for the return of the tourists when the desert has "cooled off" (but actually has been stripped bare by the voracious creatures). I know this to be true because I SAW THEM. I saw the beastly creatures that are eating all the plants of Death Valley!

So, don't just accept the words of the "experts". They've been part of a vast conspiracy to have the paradise of Death Valley to themselves during the "hot" summer. Death Valley is a verdant oasis, or it would be if it weren't for those darn caterpillars.

PS: I'm late to all the great April Fools stuff today, but the caterpillars I saw this weekend in Death Valley are quite real and quite voracious. They will eventually metamorphose into a massive flying creature called the Sphinx Moth. And they do consume a lot of greenery! More information on these interesting creatures can be found here: https://www.desertusa.com/insects/sphinx-moths.html