•      "The San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary – the largest estuary on the west coast of the United States – is in a state of decline with several species, including indicator species like the longfin smelt, careening towards extinction. Degradation of this ecosystem, which has led to water shortages in California, has been driven primarily by outdated water quality standards, increased industrial pollution, and diversion of water away from the ecosystem to help industry interests over the last several decades. Ensuring adequate river flows into and through the Delta is essential for the survival of native fish, clean water, and productive fisheries. Rather than working to protect the Bay-Delta estuary, some politicians instead inaccurately portray environmental needs as conflicting with human needs, and scapegoat endangered species protection – smelt conservation efforts in particular – as the cause of the industrial water shortages. This backwards thinking has led to political attacks on the San Francisco Bay-Delta DPS of the longfin smelt, which the FWS recently found was in grave danger of extinction. Scientists first identified the San Francisco Bay-Delta DPS as a species that warranted Endangered Species Act protection in 1992, more than 30 years ago. Responding to a petition to list the DPS filed in 2007 and to a court order requiring action, the FWS finally listed Bay-Delta longfin smelt in July 2024. Preventing this long overdue rule from taking effect, as H.J. Res 78 proposes, could doom the San Francisco Bay-Delta DPS of the longfin smelt to extinction, and with it, the ecological integrity of, and environmental services provided by, the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem." Source: Defenders of Wildlife

•      "Delta smelt happen to be one of the best indicators of environmental conditions in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. This ecologically important estuary is a major hub for California's water system — and an ecosystem that’s now rapidly unraveling. The “smeltdown in the Delta,” as the extinction trajectory of delta smelt is known, has left the once-abundant species in critical condition due to record-high water diversions, increasing water temperature, pollutants, and harmful nonnative species that thrive in the degraded Delta habitat. This smelt's catastrophic decline is a warning that we may lose other native Delta fish species that have also fallen to alarmingly low levels — including longfin smelt, numerous Central Valley runs of salmon and steelhead, and green and white sturgeon. In fact more than a dozen of the original 29 indigenous Delta fish species have either been eliminated entirely from the estuary or are threatened with extinction. From 2018 to 2023, no delta smelt were found. That’s shocking for a fish that was once common in the upper Sacramento-San Joaquin Estuary. Delta smelt probably now exist in the wild only because of emergency hatchery efforts by the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory." Source: Center for Biological Diversity