I gotta be honest, the name "humpback chub" sounds absolutely made up. That's like the name I'd give a fish as a joke when I was a kid.
But it's a real fish, and it's apparently so stinking important to the Arizona biosphere that the state is going to dump lethal chemicals into the Colorado River in order to protect its habitat:
The National Park Service will renew efforts to rid an area of the Colorado River in northern Arizona of invasive fish by killing them with a chemical treatment, the agency said Friday.
A substance lethal to fish but approved by federal environmental regulators called rotenone will be disseminated starting Aug. 26. It's the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle to keep non-native smallmouth bass and green sunfish at bay below the Glen Canyon Dam and to protect a threatened native fish, the humpback chub.
Rotenone, according to the federal government, is "an isoflavone compound that naturally occurs in the jicama vine plant as well as many Fabaceae plants." It "has broad spectrum insecticide and pesticide activity and is also toxic to fish." Dump it in the water and you can wave bye-bye to your invasive smallmouth bass.
People have been trying to save the humpback chub from extinction for years. It doesn't appear to be a keystone species of any kind; they just don't want it to go extinct. Which is, you know, that's admirable. If you can prevent a species from going extinct, that's good.
But by poisoning a river? Really? I don't get it.
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