Tom Cantelme, age 107 of Phoenix, Arizona, for his question:

What are desert Pupfish?

This innocent little creature is the center of a stormy dispute. Scientists report that the pupfish is endangered and place him high on the list of creatures threatened with extinction. Conservationists, nature lovers and plain ordinary folk who respect our earthy environment are striving to serve him. Others think that he is not worth saving. They take the position that drainage projects and desert land developments are more important than a one inch fish and his few hundred surviving relatives.

The bitsy pupfish has an interesting history that might teach us a few things about surviving when things go wrong. In the past few thousand years, he and his small relatives have coped with sorts extremely severe hardships of nature. Somehow he managed to survive, out only here and there in small numbers. Now he is menaced by man, who threatens to destroy his few remaining  little pockets of water.

Pupfishes arms related to reddy carp and glamorous goldfish, to colorful dace and silvery minnows that hal, for all the world like miniature herrings. A few thousand years ago, as the glaciers of the last ice age retreated, many lowlands of North America were swamped with marshy lakes. These were food for fresh water fishes, including the dainty one in pupfishes . They thrived in lakes that then covered parts of Texas, Nevada and California. But gradually their supply of melting ice water diminished. Their lakes shrank to a few ponds and puddles in the dry prairies and deserts.

Times changed for the worse, but some pupfishes survived in widely separated puddles. They adjusted to their hardships and became different pupf fish species. In 1851, one species was identified at Leon Springs, Texas. But searches made in 1938 and 1950 proved that he later became extinct. In the early 1900s, another species existed in Parras Springs, Mexico, but laundry water and industrial pollution were too much for him and he too perished from the earth. Another species at Comanche Springs, Texas, was threatened when the springs dried up, but this sturdy character managed to survive =n nearby irrigation ditches.

Another pupf fish adjusted to life in Owens Valley, California. But in 1942, scientists failed to find him. Then in 1962, a small population was found in nearby Fish Slough. Perhaps the most famous pupfish species survives in Devil's Hole, a desert pond 30 miles east of Death Valley. In 1952, his home was made part of the Death Valley National Monument    and protected with a fence and a locked gate.

The desert pupfish of Devil's Hole ..s adjusted to a miniature ecology system.. His population varies between 200 and 500    and represents the total world population of this species. Chances are, conservationists will save him and perhaps other remaining pupfish from extinction. In the past few decades, at least 14 of North America's fresh water fishes have become extinct. Naturally, we want to save every remaining species, even a few hundred one inch pupf ish.