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initial diversion and the location of the 1938 fish sample. The area covered <br />by Lake Leon in 1971 (the date for the map traced in Fig. 1) was probably <br />less than that when the lake was full as the "level" mapped is 1 foot lower <br />than the eroded and settled spillway. Presumably all spring heads were <br />originally inundated. Water use reports for the lake indicate Lake Leon <br />was full until 1932 (6 annual reports), had seasonally deficient supplies <br />from 1939 until 1946, and that the source for irrigation water included <br />artesian supplies consistently until 1946, alternated between creek or <br />lake water and spring or artesian water from 1947 to 1951, and subsequently, <br />the irrigation water was primarily or exclusively pumped ground water. De- <br />spite the 'change from artesian flow to pumped water, water use also suggested <br />a decline in supply, above 5000 acre foot/year until 1932, above 4000 <br />acre foot/year until 1944, above 3000 acre foot/year until 1960 and <br />use was as low as 1000 acre foot in 1971. At the present, Lake Leon is <br />formed from water pumped from wells and stored for gravity flow irriga- <br />tion. The surrounding land is planned for development into a residential <br />subdivision. <br />W. L. Minckley and W. E. Barber collected a pupfish from "Willbank <br />Spring," north of Fort Stockton in December 1965 (Minckley and Arnold, 1969). <br />The property at that time was owned by Henry Wilb.ank but the spring is properly <br />,,named Diamond-Y Springs (Brune, 1975). Its location 310 N, 102 54' W <br />clearly does not correspond to that recorded by Lt. Whipple for Leon Springs <br />and its elevation is lower than Fort Stockton, thus in contrast with the <br />higher (1000 ft.) elevation of Leon Springs compared with Comanche Springs <br />on Graham's (1852) elevation profile. Minckley thought the newly located <br />population might be C. bovinus, a tentative identification confirmed by <br />Echelle and Miller (1974). Hubbs and Echelle (1973) had previously dis- <br />cussed Cyprinodon bovinus as extant and endangered. Prior to the water <br />depletion that accompanied extensive irrigation in the Leon Creek valley <br />it is likely that water flowed from Leon Springs to that segment of Leon <br />Creek adjacent to Diamond-Y Springs (if not permanently, at least with <br />sufficient frequency that the population would have occasional genic <br />interchange). Echelle and Miller (1974) report that the six remaining (of <br />16) syntypes (except for deterioration due to the age of the material) match <br />well the attributes of pupfish recently collected from Leon Creek. <br />As Echelle and Miller (1974) point out, the entire range is in the mid- <br />dle of an oil and gas field and Diamond-Y Springs is less than one kilometer <br />north (and down slope) from the Gomez (gas cracking) Plant of Northern <br />Natural Gas Company. The oil field was developed in the 1940's (Ross L. <br />Shipman, pers. comm.) and the pupfish have survived oil (and later gas) <br />well drilling as well as more than 30 years of oil field operation, during <br />which time a contamination sufficient to exterminate the fish did not occur <br />before the fish was found to occur in the creek. Officials of Northern <br />Natural Gas Company and Exxon Corporation (a primary participant in the oil <br />field) have been receptive to ecological recommendations. In May 1974 <br />the Soil Conservation Service built an earth dike to protect Diamond-Y <br />Springs from possible problems that might occur in the Gomez Plant. <br />Existing permanent water inhabited by Leon Springs pupfish occurs <br />in two semi-isolated segments about 15 km north of Fort Stockton (Fig. 2). <br />The most pronounced spring source is Diamond-Y Springs which is located <br />500 meters north of the Gomez Plant. Water flows NE from Diamond-Y <br />Springs for about 1 kilometer where it joins the main channel of Leon <br />Creek. Leon Creek originates about 1 km to the west of the junction in