Environmental groups are sounding the alarm over plans that threaten a desert spring that’s home to rare fish and turtles and sacred to the O’odham people

Quitobaquito Springs in south-west Arizona has been called a biological wonderland with few equals.

The springs are an oasis in the vast Sonoran desert along the US-Mexico border, held sacred by the O’odham people, who call it A’al Vaipia. Here, water flows out of an aquifer at the bottom of a hill, runs along a short concrete channel and collects in a pond.