California water expert Kristi Diener notified the Globe that a petition to request the Delta Smelt fish be declared extinct is going to be filed. Diener said this has never been done before, and currently there isn’t one single petition to have a species delisted under review in the United States.
The U.S. and California Departments of Fish and Wildlife have been put on the required 30-day notice, with the petition to follow.
Diener explains:
Only four smelt have been collected since July 2018, after thousands of Department of Fish and Wildlife trawling surveys. Nonetheless, pumping water into storage is always throttled back about Jan – May when it is thought smelt could be migrating. The problem is, this is also during the Spring thaw, and we are not able to take full advantage of the snow melt before it meets the ocean. A declaration of extinction would allow us to access massive amounts of new water for families and farmers that is currently being squandered to the sea for smelt in which these government agencies have failed to save for nearly 30 years. MORE
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See Also: Facing Dry Year, CA State Water Board is Draining California’s Folsom Lake Reservoir.
‘The State has been holding Folsom Lake artificially low at just under 400 feet for months now.’
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Best of luck with the petition, but it’s never been about the little fishies; it has always been about control over our lives AND the valley farmers trying to produce food.
I suspect the majority of the farmers are conservative/republican, so no water for them.
“Siri, define insanity.”
Something fishy going on.
Something smelt real really bad in Sacramento. It smelt so bad that the ecoweenies killed agriculture or attempted to anyway because of a damn endangered fish. Farmers rule, Delta smelt drool. It’s not like you can’t buy smelt at the grocery store, Winco had some the other day and my grandmother loved the darn things when I was a kid.
Smoke the Smelt.
I figured there was a ‘smelt it, dealt it’ joke in here somewhere.
Simple cost benefit analysis:
Restrict water usage and maybe possibly save an endangered species that also may not exist because it is already extinct, while simultaneously killing off millions of acres of crops; vs,
Use common sense methods to conserve and store water, restoring vibrant farming to the fertile California valleys at the risk of a small fish species that is probably extinct anyway.
Liberals: Let’s disrupt as many human lives as possible.
California needs an extinction of meddling government bureaucrats.
Most unfortunately, the commie, liberal ASSHOLES have no limit to their ‘new found fears’ that are meant to keep the rest of America ‘scared’, ‘confused’ and ‘nervous’.
It is sickening and tiring.