On Endangered Species Day, Groups Tell Water Board Feds Are 'Unreliable Partners'

On the third Friday in May every year, thousands of people throughout the world celebrate Endangered Species Day by participating in events, learning about and taking action to protect threatened and endangered species.

But in California, supposedly the most “green” and “progressive” state in the nation, there is little cause for celebration on Endangered Species Day as both the state and federal governments amp up their attacks on the Delta Smelt, Central Valley salmon and other endangered and threatened fish populations.   

A coalition of eight organizations on Friday, May 16, alerted the California Water Resources Control Board that the federal Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation)—an agency under the Department of the Interior—has repeatedly exceeded water diversion limits set by recent federal and state endangered species act permits. 

The signatory groups include the San Francisco Baykeeper, Golden State Salmon Association, Restore the Delta, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the River, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and Defenders of Wildlife.

“Some of these provisions are intended to implement voluntary water use agreements that Governor Newsom has negotiated with water districts that serve cities, as well as massive industrial agricultural operations in the Central Valley (Voluntary Agreements),” according to a press statement from the groups. “These Voluntary Agreements are roundly opposed by environmental, Tribal, fishing, and human rights advocates.” 

"There's no scientific basis to suggest that Governor Newsom's Voluntary Agreements would work in the first place," said Baykeeper managing attorney Eric Buescher. "The Water Board is currently faced with a flawed water management plan that's made worse by an unreliable partner federal agency that serially refuses to obey the legal requirements it previously agreed were necessary to avoid harming endangered species." 

“Specifically, Reclamation is killing more endangered salmon and steelhead than its permits allow. The agency is also exceeding limits that protect the springtime river flows into San Francisco Bay that imperiled species and valuable fisheries depend on,” Buescher observed. 

The groups call on the Water Board to “avoid further degradation of Bay-Delta water quality, native fish populations and fisheries, and the public trust by abandoning Governor Newsom’s Voluntary Agreements altogether and adopting specific, science-based, and enforceable requirements for all water users in the Bay-Delta’s watershed—including Reclamation and other parties to the Voluntary Agreements.”   

“The Voluntary Agreements are doing what they were designed to do: relieving diverters from their obligation to comply with environmental regulations, while undermining the Water Board’s regulatory authority," noted Cintia Cortez, Policy Program Manager with Restore the Delta."We continue to urge the Board to reject the Voluntary Agreements and  protect the health and economic vitality of Delta communities.” 

Baykeeper's Eric Buescher said the state Water Board is neglecting its duty to ensure that there's adequate fresh water flowing into San Francisco Bay–Delta so the estuary and its wildlife can thrive. 

“The US Bureau of Reclamation has demonstrated that it’s an unreliable partner, and its conduct will harm the ecosystem and burden other water users. By refusing to stand up to agencies that would send all of the Bay's fresh water to massive agricultural operations in the Central Valley, the board is dooming iconic Chinook Salmon and other endangered species to extinction." 

The Bay-Delta estuary is in its worst-ever crisis, as evidenced by the closure of commercial salmon fishing off the California Coast for an unprecedented third year in a row, due to the collapse of the Sacramento and Klamath River Fall Chinook Salmon populations. Meanwhile, Sacramento River Spring Chinook and Winter Chinook Salmon — listed under both the state and federal endangered species acts — continue to decline.

“In addition to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, this crisis risks destruction of the Delta itself as a cultural place and harms the communities and California Tribes who live in and depend upon the Bay-Delta estuary,” the groups concluded. 

The data from the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) documents the abysmal situation that Sacramento River Fall Chinook Salmon, once the driver of the West Coast salmon fishery, and the Spring and Winter Chinook are now in.

Between 1996-2005 the average return for fall-run Chinook on the mainstem Sacramento River was 79,841 spawning salmon. In 2023 that number fell drastically to only 3,560 salmon – a 95% decline, according to an analysis by the Golden State Salmon Association.

Spring-run Chinook have also experienced a staggering 95% decline due to a lack of cold water flows in Central Valley salmon rivers. The average wild and hatchery spring-run return plummeted from 28,238 fish in 2021 to just 1,231 salmon in 2023.

And spawner escapement in 2024 of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook, an endangered species under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, was estimated to be only 789 adults and 578 jacks (two-year-olds).

Endangered Species Day was first created by the U.S. Senate in 2006, when it unanimously designated May 11, 2006, as the first ever “Endangered Species Day” to encourage “the people of the United States to become educated about, and aware of, threats to species, success stories in species recovery, and the opportunity to promote species conservation worldwide.” 

But in California, the situation with Central Valley salmon and  Bay-Delta fish populations has only become worse. In addition to the Voluntary Agreements, the Newsom Administration is also pushing forward with the salmon-killing Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir projetcts.

Delta Smelt is functionally extinct in the wild

I have written extensively about this in previous articles, but it’s crucial in understanding how bad the situation is in the once robust Bay-Delta estuary to review the current status of Delta Smelt and  other pelagic species on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

For the seventh year in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife CDFW found no Delta Smelt in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 2024. This 2 to 3 inch fish is an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish,”  

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 Fall Midwater Trawl Survey (FMWT) to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes annually since 1967 (except 1974 and 1979), Rohlin stated.

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/...   

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 snow melt 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: www.dailykos.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 cannot 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 pelagic fish species are in free-fall 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.

To put things truly In perspective, one must understand that these substantial decreases were from already abysmally low levels of abundance.

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/…