Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is a protected desert oasis in southwestern Nevada, east of Death Valley National Park, where ancient groundwater from a vast aquifer rises through more than thirty springs and seeps to create streams, marshes, and other wet habitats in the Mojave Desert. Established in 1984 after conservationists acquired land previously slated for development, the refuge preserves about 23,000 acres of unusually rich wetlands, dunes, and altered remnants of Carson Slough. Its greatest importance lies in its extraordinary biological rarity: at least 26 endemic plants and animals live there and nowhere else, giving Ash Meadows one of North America’s highest concentrations of endemic life.