This odd Colorado River fish faces an uncertain future

The plucky humpback chub has weathered dams and invasive species, but climate change and a dwindling river flow pose new threats.

Humpback chubs swim over bluehead suckers beneath a waterfall in the Little Colorado River, a tributary of the Colorado River in Arizona, during an annual spring survey conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Because humpback chub are difficult to find and often live in murky waters, they were lured into view using fish food placed in small mesh bags.
Photograph by David Herasimtschuk / Freshwaters Illustrated

The Colorado River has been called the American West’s hardest-working river. Lately, it’s been earning overtime. 

The river supplies water to some of the country’s largest cities, including Los Angeles and Las Vegas, as well as its most fertile swath of farmland, California’s Imperial Valley. Forty million people in seven states rely on the Colorado every day, and each year six million more visit its most magnificent stretch, the Grand Canyon.

But many non-human creatures also depend on the Colorado watershed, most of all the strange, hardy fish that prowl its turbid depths. This is the domain of the bonytail chub, the razorback sucker, and the Colorado pikeminnow, a six-foot-long predator that early anglers caught by

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