The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday proposed protecting a rare fish found near the Nevada-California border, where groundwater levels have dropped as alfalfa farming thrives. “The Fish Lake Valley tui chub is barely clinging to existence,” according to Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. A petition and litigation by the conservation group could help save the fish after years of declining groundwater has reduced its habitat to a single spring on a private ranch in Esmeralda County. … Pumping for agriculture in Fish Lake Valley vastly exceeds the natural recharge to the aquifer, resulting in plummeting groundwater levels across the valley, according to a Center for Biological Diversity news release. According to the group, tui chubs used to live in a half dozen springs, all but one of which dried up due to the aquifer collapse. Flow at the one remaining spring has been documented to have declined by more than 50%.