Aren't restoring the San Francisco Bay-Delta and Central Valley salmon California Values?

SACRAMENTO — In the face of an incoming Trump administration, Governor Gavin Newsom on Nov. 7 issued a proclamation convening a special session of the California Legislature to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights,' but those values apparently don't include restoring the San Francisco-Bay Delta Estuary and Central Valley salmon populations. 

Newsom said the special session will focus on “bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.” 

This is the first of several actions by the Newsom Administration, in partnership with the Legislature, as the Governor begins “shoring up California’s defenses against an incoming federal administration that has threatened the state on multiple fronts,” according to the Governor’s Office. 

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle. California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.  

“No matter what the incoming Administration has in store, California will keep moving forward,” echoed Attorney General Rob Bonta. “We’ve been through this before, and we stand ready to defend your rights and protect California values. We’re working closely with the Governor and the Legislature to shore up our defenses and ensure we have the resources we need to take on each fight as it comes.”  

According to the Governor's Office, the special session "responds to the public statements and proposals put forward by President-elect Trump and his advisors, and actions taken during his first term in office — an agenda that could erode essential freedoms and individual rights, including women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights. A special session allows for expedited action that will best protect California and its values from attacks.”  

The special session will begin December 2, when the Legislature convenes.  

During the previous Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, the Governor and California Attorney General sued the administration on an array of issues. 

A day after Newsom’s announcement, the President-elect Donald Trump, in typical form, posted on his Truth Social account that “Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California” and “stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,” according to a tweet from CalMatters.  

Unfortunately, Newsom didn't include restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, now in its biggest ever ecological crisis, and California salmon fisheries in his campaign to “safeguard California values.” Under his administration, no Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have been found in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey for the past six years. 

Four runs of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species are at risk of extinction, due to the export of massive amounts of water to corporate agribusiness and other factors. A Big Ag-friendly Trump administration will only make the prospects for recovery of the state’s fish populations even worse. 

The return of fall-run Chinook salmon at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River, is at an all-time low during the second consecutive year of a complete closure of all California ocean and river waters to salmon. While the facility’s normal production is 12 million juvenile fall Chinook salmon, this year hatchery staff have collected only 5.4 million eggs at the hatchery. 

“Yesterday one million eggs were transferred from Feather River Hatchery to Coleman NFH,” according to the hatchery’s Facebook page. “As a result of our low run of fall Chinook salmon this year we have partnered with California Department of Fish and Wildlife to transfer eggs to Coleman from state hatcheries in the Central Valley.”  

Yet Newsom continues to promote the environmentally destructive Delta Tunnel, Sites Reservoir and Big Ag-backed voluntary agreements that will only hasten the extinction of salmon, Delta smelt and other fish species, according to a broad coalition of Tribes, fishing groups, environmental justice advocates, family farmers, boaters, elected officials and Southern California water ratepayers. It appears that Newsom’s “California values” don’t include saving imperiled salmon populations, the Delta smelt and the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem.  

Photo courtesy of the Governor's Office.