Obama Admin Decreases Protections for Nearly Extinct Delta Smelt:

[amborin]

Obama Administration Uplists Delta Smelt from Threatened to Endangered

Agency Says In Spite Of Threat of Extinction, It’s Business As Usual!

by Dan Bacher

A news release issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento on April 2 regarding the uplisting of Delta smelt from “threatened” to “endangered” is one of the most bizarre releases I’ve ever read.
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced that, based on accumulated scientific data, the delta smelt warrants uplisting from ‘threatened’ to ‘endangered’ under the Endangered Species Act but that uplisting at this time is precluded by the need to address higher priority species first,” the release states.

What the heck? The fish is right on the abyss of extinction, but there are other “higher priority” species that need to be addressed first? What species are these? Westlands growers or Southern California water agency officials?
“The finding of ‘warranted but precluded’ will have no practical effect on protections for the delta smelt, existing federal actions, or water flows in the delta smelt habitat,” the release goes on.

So what they’re saying is that they aren’t going to do anything more, even though the smelt has been changed from “threatened” to “endangered” – threatened with imminent extinction! What bizarre kind of circular logic is this?
“The Service is still unable to determine with certainty which threats or combinations of threats are directly responsible for the decrease in delta smelt abundance,” the release continued. “However, the apparent low abundance of delta smelt in concert with ongoing threats throughout its range indicates that the delta smelt is now in danger of extinction throughout its range.”
Actually, the threats to Delta smelt have been pinpointed by a team of state and federal scientists, the Pelagic Organism Decline team. The causes of the decline are led by increases and changes in water exports, followed by toxics and invasive species. Ammonia releases from sewage treatment plants are also a potential factor.

Bob Simms, host of the KFBK Outdoor Show, described this document as the “worst press release I’ve ever read.” His assessment is right on – and I’ve seen some really bad press releases come out of state and federal government offices over the years.

This just goes to show you that the “Change” that President Obama promised is just more of the same old dirty corporate politics that caused Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, threadfin shad, juvenile striped bass, American shad and Sacramento splittail populations to collapse to record levels"

snip

http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2010/04/03/1667/

[xxqqqzme]

1. Are they doing this now because the water bond is going

to fail?

[amborin]

5. WH is siding with big ag on this

"Still, the fishermen acknowledge "Big Ag" tends to hold more political sway in California.

Feinstein has long favored exporting more water to farms in the valley, which is considered a pillar of the state's economy, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) was able to push through a series of water bills last year that could lead to billions of dollars invested in infrastructure designed to store more water and transfer it around the state.
Schwarzenegger and Feinstein both support an $11 billion water bond that goes before voters in November. The campaign on the bond is expected to pit environmentalists and fishermen against irrigators and farmers, with Democrats and Republicans slugging it out on the sidelines depending on their constituency.

To Collins, who calls the forthcoming ballot fight "David vs. Goliath," the future of his industry is linked to that bond like no other piece of policy. If it passes, Collins says he might as well start planning for retirement.
"We're done if that thing passes," Collins said. "The farmers are never going to stand up and say, 'We have enough water now.'"
Miller said the answer is to "back up" the fishing community's passion in Washington, where he wants Congress to approach the delta's maze of problems with the same kind of state-federal partnership responsible for attempting to restore the Everglades. Miller has met recently with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley to urge a deltawide approach, as opposed to a piecemeal project-by-project strategy.

As for the farmers, Miller said he wants to reach out to them and bring all interests to the table.
"We asked our colleagues in the Central Valley, were they willing to check their guns at the door?" he said. "We can't go back to the old way of doing business."
The White House appears to be listening to both sides. Salazar conceded to Feinstein when she demanded the NAS study of the delta."

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/04/02/02greenwire-salmon-fishermen-swim-against-political-tide-i-12098.html?pagewanted=2&sq=sacramento water bond&st=cse&scp=1

[Peregrine Took]

2. So what else is new from the Busho'bama administration?

One disappointment after another....

[emilyg]

7. There will be many more disappointments.

[mitchtv]

3. "it's only a couple of inches long"

Oh well no suprise here

[proud patriot]

4. sigh

I live nearthe delta :-(

[malakai2]

6. Uplisting doesn't really change anything

Whether threatened or endangered, the same rules and prohibitions apply to federal agencies and non-federal entities (and those are not entirely the same rules and prohibitions for feds versus non-feds). However, to process an uplisting, or publish any other finding in the Federal Register is time consuming and expensive. Since there are a limited number of biologists in the Fish and Wildlife Service who work on species listing and status review, they focus their time and effort on species that are currently not listed. This way, those that need protection but currently have NONE can be assessed and then listed, if necessary.

This as opposed to pouring resources into what amounts to a semantics game with already listed species that have protection, while waving goodbye to other species. A list of candidate and proposed species is available at www.fws.gov. Quite a few of the species on there are narrow range endemics-Hawaii has a bunch of plants with global ranges of less than ten acres-and those are the types of species assigned high priority numbers for listing.

Really, it comes down to funding levels. FWS is split up into ecological services (the branch that does listing and recovery and reviews federal projects for compliance with ESA and other environmental laws), refuges, law enforcement, realty (buying easements and refuge land), private lands (working with landowners to conserve habitat off refuges), and so forth. Those branches work together in a sense but a refuge biologist is not trained to do the work of an ecological services biologist, and vice versa. The FWS budget does not cover all this stuff as well as we'd like. There are ecological services offices (something like 50 or 60 nationwide) that are operating at 1/4 of the staff they had twenty years ago, and the workloads are higher than they were back then. But then refuges are consolidating management and not filling necessary staff positions, and in some cases are shutting down visitor services altogether. So there's a shrinking budget, a shrinking workforce, and what are they gonna do? Pour money into revising the already listed status of the delta smelt? List and delist and list and delist the gray wolf? Expand a refuge that includes a globally unique habitat? Work with several dozen private landowners to maintain habitat for some listed species on their property? Or use the same money that they would otherwise be spending on just one of the above to list two or three other rare critters than need it?