Local scouts help build pond for endangered pupfish

This weekend about 100 scouts and other volunteers with the 'Boy Scouts of America' put in over 600 hours of community service at The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens.  

It was all part of one scout's Eagle Scout Service Project.

The goal of the project was to help build a pond for the endangered 'Coachella Valley Desert pup-fish.' 

That pond will help fish for years to come. 

"What we are going to do today is grade the slopes. This is my Eagle Scout Project," said Life Scout Bernadette Flicker, from Scouts BSA Troop 451. "An eagle scout project is a requirement to become an Eagle Scout."

Officials with the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens say the help from the scouts in just two days is going to save the zoo a month's worth of staff time.

"We're at the Living Desert grading and digging the future pupfish pond, 2,000 pupfish, which are a very endangered species," added Flicker.

Experts with the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens share that the pupfish are the only native fish to the Coachella Valley.

"This is super important for the zoo because we want to have all of the populations," said Mary Thomas, Assistant conservation Scientist at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. "There are three of the Desert Pupfish represented on our grounds. So the other two are represented on two other ponds so this is the third home we need."

The pond itself is 30 feet wide by 50 feet long.

"They will be coming from the wild areas of San Felipe Creek on the South East Shore of the Salton Sea that will almost certainly dry up. It happens every year there, and there's always this rescue mission that happens to the fish were we race against time," said Dr. James Danoff-Burg, Vice President of Conservation at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens.

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