But the delta smelt couldn’t be as powerful as all that. The latest California fish population survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which along with San Francisco Bay is the species ...

Delta smelt protections haven’t limited any pumping during 2014 or 2015. State water quality regulations, not fish protections, trigger most limits on exports of Delta water during a drought.

“Delta smelt are at the lowest levels we’ve ever seen,” said Carl Wilcox, delta policy advisor for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A Delta smelt is shown at the University of California, Davis, Fish Conservation and Culture Lab in Byron, California. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP.

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. ...

By the mid-1980s, however, the delta smelt was on the road to extinction, the victim of numerous changes in its habitat. Water diversions from the delta to farms in Northern California and ...

The ruling, made Friday evening by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, was an attempt to help the delta smelt, a tiny fish once plentiful but now facing extinction.

The Delta smelt is on the brink of extinction in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. A UC Davis lab works to save the endangered California fish.

The delta smelt was also the subject of a memo that Trump published on his first day in office, in which he directed the Interior and Commerce departments to route more water from the delta “to ...

The delta smelt is a small, slender-bodied fish native to California's San Francisco Estuary. Listed as endangered under state and federal laws, ...

The Delta smelt has declined to the point of near-extinction in the wild due to several factors, including big changes to the Delta ecosystem resulting from water exports, the impact of invasive ...