The disinformation about the Delta Smelt spouted out by President Trump and his Big Ag allies has deluged social media and both mainstream and “alternative media” in recent weeks.
As an independent journalist who has covered the Delta Smelt and the California water wars for the past three decades, I was intrigued when I saw a piece in San Francisco Chronicle about the federal funding for the Delta smelt being cut: www.sfchronicle.com/...
“After President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the delta smelt — a fish he has tied to the lack of water for fighting the Los Angeles fires — his administration is planning to cut funding for a captive breeding program intended to ensure survival of the endangered fish,” reporter Kurtis Alexander wrote.
Concerned about the reported slashing of the captive breeding program funding by the Bureau of Reclamation, I contacted UC Davis spokesperson Bill Kisliuk, who sent me his statement about the current status of the captive breeding program, indicating that they were hoping to get funding for the program extended past Feb. 28:
“The UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory (FCCL) is working closely with the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and hopes to see funding extended past Feb. 28.
"The bureau and UC Davis have worked cooperatively on the FCCL for more than 15 years, and have been working on the five-year renewal for the past six months. 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.
“FCCL is committed to caring for and sustaining the population of endangered aquatic life at the facility and expects to maintain the lab’s core functions as we prepare to implement a continuity plan.
“Aside from the decision on extending the grant, other funding sources will allow us to keep core functions operating at least through the end of 2025.
“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.
“FCCL is committed to caring for and sustaining the population of endangered aquatic life at the facility and expects to maintain the lab’s core functions as we prepare to implement a continuity plan.
“Aside from the decision on extending the grant, other funding sources will allow us to keep core functions operating at least through the end of 2025.”
The Fish Culture and Conservation Laboratory (FCCL) was established in 1996 in Byron, California, according to Kisliuk. The FCCL is focused 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.” Its current primary source of funding is a five-year grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The news of the five year grant expiring at the end of February comes as zero Delta Smelt, an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish,” have been 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.
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 California Department of Fish and Wildlife (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 recent 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: 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.”
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 thread fin 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.
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/...