Fishery Biologist: Delta Smelt are Likely "Virtually Extinct in the Wild" counterpunch.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from counterpunch.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published on February 2nd, 2021
Please join a coalition of environmental, Tribal, fishing and environmental justice groups on Tuesday, February 2 to urge the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt and implement new flow standards. More flow is needed to protect the fish and wildlife in the Bay-Delta ecosystem and the rivers that flow into it – including the salmon runs that support salmon fishing jobs from Morro Bay to Fisherman’s Wharf and into Oregon.
(Dan Bacher photo)
By Dan Bacher
The State Board has been paralyzed for years. We need strong public support to get them to do their job.
Richie Cosgrove/Stuff
Central South Island Fish & Game staff have been surveying the Rangitata River for Stokell s smelt. “Once the most abundant fish in the entire estuary, numbering in the millions, it is on the verge of extinction in the wild.” Trolove said Stokell’s smelt was in a similar endangered position. “The species is an important element in the food chain web that involves native seabirds, native fish and sea-run trout . if the Stokell’s smelt go extinct, the species that feed on the smelt have the potential to go extinct as well. “It’s like a red light – you have to stop or there will be a crash.”
Sunday, 17 January 2021, 3:29 pm
A drastic decline in an important native fish in New
Zealand has been matched by a similar decline in a similar
species in the USA.
On the east coast of the South
Island Stokell’s smelt is the species of the rivers of the
Canterbury coastline, which until relatively recently,
occurred in huge numbers from about Canterbury’s Waiau
River south to North Otago s Waitaki River.
However
depletion of river flows due to irrigation in rivers such as
the Rangitata, Ashburton, and Rakaia Rivers where the smelt
was most abundant, has seen a drastic decline in numbers,