A local legend purports that anyone who drinks from the river can never again tell the truth.

As an anonymous poet wrote: This lush streamside habitat is home to some of the desert's most spectacular wildlife.

Yet many of them have become dangerously imperiled as riparian areas have disappeared from the Arizona landscape.

An estimated 90 percent of these critical wet landscapes have been lost, damaged or degraded in the last century.

This loss threatens at least 80 percent of Arizona wildlife, which depend upon riparian habitats for survival.