SAVING THE LONGFIN SMELT

Longfin smelt were once one of the most abundant open-water fishes in the San Francisco Bay Estuary — commercially important fish, key to the Bay food web. Today the species’ numbers have plummeted to record lows in the Bay-Delta, and it’s nearing extinction in other northern California estuaries. Thanks to poor management of California’s largest estuary ecosystem, which has allowed excessive water diversions and reduced freshwater flow into the Bay, the longfin smelt has undergone two catastrophic declines in just 20 years.

Formerly so common that it supported a commercial fishery in San Francisco Bay, the longfin smelt was long assumed by government agencies to be undeserving of Endangered Species Act protection. But this fish is far from immune to the devastation of its habitat, and its rapidly falling numbers are a bright-red flag. To ensure that the smelt receives the protection it needs, in 2007 the Center, the Bay Institute, and the Natural Resources Defense Council petitioned for state endangered species protection for the longfin smelt in California and federal endangered species protection for the San Francisco Estuary population. Eventually, both petitions were received positively, and in 2009, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to declare the smelt threatened under the state’s Endangered Species Act. But in April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to our petition and a notice of intent to sue by denying federal protection to the San Francisco Bay-Delta population while promising to look at the status of the species as a whole — though rangewide protection may come too late.