Federal Government Restores Funding for Delta Smelt Captive Breeding Program

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday said it will keep funding a captive breeding program for Delta smelt run by U.C. Davis, despite the antipathy towards the fish displayed by Donald Trump and his agribusiness allies on social media and in press conferences.

The five year contract for the Fish Culture and Conservation Laboratory (FCCL) that raises Delta smelt in Byron, California expired on Feb. 28 — and 17 staff members were laid off.  

The laboratory focuses on providing “a safeguard against extinction of the Delta smelt and maintaining a population in captivity that is as genetically close as possible to the wild population,” according to UC Davis spokesperson Bill Kisliuk. Its  primary source of funding has been a five-year grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.   

“Reclamation recently awarded a five year financial assistance agreement with UC Davis so it can continue its support of Delta Smelt supplementation using the hatchery, work that helps Reclamation meet regulatory requirements to maximize water supplies from the Delta,” David Mooney, the manager of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Bay-Delta office, revealed in a statement.

“I can confirm that the Bureau of Reclamation has agreed to continue funding of the laboratory,” said Kiuslik in an email today.   

No details were released on what transpired to get the Bureau to renew the funding after the contract expired.

We do know that the Bureau and UC Davis have been working cooperatively on the FCCL for more than 15 years, and had been working on the five-year renewal for over six months prior to the expiration of the contract. “Delta smelt supplementation production at the lab started under BOR’s 2020 Record of Decision and has continued as a protective measure for the species to allow water deliveries for the Central Valley Project and State Water Resources Project,” Kiuslik said in a previous email.

“The FCCL’s work is vital for the long-term health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the endangered aquatic life currently at the site, including the Delta smelt. The lab is a resource for understanding the entire San Francisco Bay delta ecosystem as well as training leaders in the fields of biological science, environmental science and conservation biology,” Kiuslik said.   

No Delta smelt reported in CDFW fall survey for 7 years

The news of the renewal of the grant comes at a critical time for Delta smelt and other Bay-Delta fish species. Zero Delta smelt were caught in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the seventh year in a row in 2024.

It is significant that zero Delta smelt were caught in the survey despite the release of tens of thousands of hatchery-raised Delta smelt into the Delta over the past few years by the state and federal governments.

“The 2024 abundance index was 0 and continues the trend of no catch in the FMWT since 2017,” reported  Taylor Rohlin, CDFW Environmental Scientist Bay Delta Region in a Jan. 2 memo to Erin Chappell, Regional Manager Bay Delta Region: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

“No Delta Smelt were collected from any stations during our survey months of September-December. While FMWT did not catch any Delta Smelt, it does not mean there were no smelt present, but the numbers are very low and below the effective detection threshold by most sampling methods,” she wrote.

The CDFW  has conducted the survey to “index” the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes annually since 1967 (except 1974 and 1979), Rohlin stated. The index is a relative number of abundance.

Why is this survey so important?  It’s because “the FMWT equipment and methods have remained consistent since the survey’s inception, allowing the indices to be compared across time,” Rohlin wrote. “These relative abundance indices are not intended to approximate population sizes; however, indices reflect general patterns in population change (Polansky et al. 2019).”

Other surveys last year also reveal the functional extinction of Delta smelt in the wild. A weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt in the summer of 2024. “A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: calsport.org/...   

Trump villainizes Delta smelt

In a January post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Governor Gavin Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”

I break down the four falsehoods that Trump made in this post here: sacramento.newsreview.com/...

To summarize, the Delta Smelt is definitely not a “worthless fish.” In fact, the Delta Smelt is a key indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The 2 to 3 inch fish that smells like a cucumber is found only in the Delta.

It was once the most abundant fish in the Delta, numbering in the millions, but now is functionally extinct in the wild due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and pollution, over the past several decades.  

The significance of the Delta smelt’s role in the Bay-Delta Estuary can’t be overstated. ”Delta Smelt are the thread that ties the Delta together with the river system,” said Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “We all should understand how that affects all the water systems in the state. They are the irreplaceable thread that holds the Delta system together with Chinook salmon.”

Other Delta fish species are collapsing also

The other fish species collected in the fall survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the threadfin shad showed an increase from the last year’s index — and the population is still at just a fraction of its former abundance.

The survey uses an “abundance index,” a relative measure of abundance, to document general patterns in population change.

The 2024 abundance index for striped bass, an introduced gamefish, was 136, representing a 49% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 175 for longfin smelt, a native fish species, representing a 62% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 577 for threadfin shad, an introduced forage fish, representing a 12% increase from last year’s index.

The index for American shad, an introduced gamefish, was 1341, representing a 45% decrease from last year’s index.

The index for Sacramento splittail, a native minnow species, was 0, with 0 fish caught.

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The graphs in this CDFW memo graphically illustrate how dramatic the declines in fish populations have been over the years: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

The survey was released as the California Water Wars are heating up. Governor Gavin Newsom has been pushing three projects — the Delta Tunnel, Sites Reservoir and the Voluntary Agreements — that fish advocates say would hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento winter-run and spring-run Chinook populations, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.

It is likely that salmon fishing on California ocean and river waters will be closed again this year for the third year in row, due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River Fall Chinook salmon populations.

And both Trump and Newsom have issued executive orders that intend to increase water diversions to corporate agribusiness from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in a state where there are five times the water rights as there is actual water —what water policy analysts call “paper water.” For more information, go here: www.dailykos.com/...