Conservation and status of the fish communities inhabiting the Rio Conchos Basin and middle Rio Grande, Mexico and USA

The Chihuahuan Desert region contains a number of unique aquatic environments, but with few exceptions, these have been little studied. Because of the dearth of information about these environments and because many of the fish in the region are threatened with extinction or have gone extinct, we sampled the Rio Conchos basin and adjoining aquatic habitats in the Rio Grande to assess the status of the fish of this region. Most sites showed some degree of human-induced impacts. A number of potentially threatened fish were either abundant at only a few sites or rare or absent throughout the localities sampled. Without concerted binational efforts to conserve the fish of the region, further deletions to the native fish fauna will likely occur.