52: The rest of the chubs
I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. Before we start with today’s animal, I want to emphasize that biological classification as understood by western society has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.
Today we are going to tackle several closely related fish: the chubs. This includes the Flathead Chub, the Humpback Chub, the Lake Chub, and the Rio Grande Chub. These are all regional variants of the same basic fish: a chub, whose name I cannot find any explanation for, and who are small minnows who mainly (aside from the Lake Chub!) live in rivers. The Lake Chub lives, well, you guessed it, in cold lakes with gravel bottoms. Minnows are part of the larger family of carp, with the term minnow generally meaning a small freshwater fish.
The Humpback Chub came to my attention when a fan tried to convince the Grand Junction Rockies – a minor league affiliate of the Colorado Rockies – to rename themselves after the fish, which lives in the Colorado River where it runs through the city of Grand Junction and which has been reintroduced after becoming endangered for all the reasons other native Colorado River fish are – habitat destruction brought on by damming the river and draining many of its tributaries. The Flathead chub in contrast lives on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, in a range that extends from the Mackenzie River in Canada down to southern Colorado, especially on tributaries of the Arkansas such as the Purgatoire.