The Sargents’ home was filled with pictures of family, including several of Trent throughout the years. In one, the beaming 12-year-old holds up the first fish he ever caught, a minuscule rainbow trout. But now Trent can’t visit public lands or use a firearm. “Trent grew up hunting and fishing,” Norine said. “And now he’ll never get to go hunting with his dad ever again.”

Had that fateful evening unfolded just slightly differently—had that single pupfish not died—Trent would very likely be sitting in the living room with his family. Sometimes it is a bitter pill for the Sargents to swallow. “I understand the way people feel about the fish,” Josh Sargent said. “But what if someone runs over a cat? Are they going to stop and make sure the cat is alive? No, I don’t think so. They’re just going to keep on truckin’. But Trent kills a fish—and certainly not intentionally—and he’s in prison ... We’re not trying to defend him; the Sargent family is deeply sorry for what happened.”

Because there are so many endangered species, society is forced to make difficult choices about which ones to protect, and to what lengths we should go to save them. Climate change has quickened the pace of extinction, and already the number of critically endangered species exceeds our ability to save them all.

The Devils Hole pupfish, serene, obscure, and tiny, has survived a very long time in an unkind place, just one drunken night or one jug of poison away from oblivion. It is a wonder, to be sure. But how far do you go to save a species like this? For Wilson and the others at Death Valley National Park, it means surrounding this biological wonder with an impenetrable cage. Biologists occasionally feed the fish and clean out Devils Hole as if it were a giant aquarium. They even have a backup population held in a huge climate-controlled tank nearby, insurance against outright extinction. Protecting the species means harsh punishment for anyone who kills even just one fish, according to Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, which offered a $10,000 reward for help in identifying the drunken skinny-dipper and his friends. “We desperately wanted justice for this. If they didn’t get the book thrown at them, what’s stopping others from doing whatever they want and eliminating an entire species?”

Since the incident, Devils Hole has become an even more formidable fortress. The Park Service capped its towering fences with additional barbed wire. The public can only view the sunken cave from a distance now, more than 20 feet above it. And inside the fenced viewing area are even more cameras, motion sensors, and No Trespassing signs.

“I hate it,” Wilson told me this winter. “I hear from the public all of the time, ‘Why does this place look like a prison?’ People get really upset that they can’t get a closer look. But it’s just what we have to do—to stop people from doing stupid things.”

This post appears courtesy of High Country News.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Paige Blankenbuehler is an assistant editor for High Country News based in Colorado. Connect Twitter