The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed adding the Gila chub (Gila intermedia), a minnow native to southwestern streams, to the list of species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The chub is proposed as endangered with critical habitat along 208 miles of spring-fed and perennial streams and headwaters in New Mexico and Arizona.
Historically the chub was found throughout the Gila River basin in southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northeastern Sonora Mexico. Today only 31 isolated and vulnerable populations remain.
Humans have affected southwestern riparian riparian
Definition of riparian habitat or riparian areas.
Learn more about riparian systems over several thousand years. By the late 1800s, watersheds were in poor condition from uncontrolled livestock grazing, mining, expanded irrigation agriculture, hay and timber harvesting, and fire suppression. These activities led to such long-term habitat degradation that the impacts are still felt today.
"Although these changes took place nearly a century ago, the aquatic ecosystem hasn
