The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to remove the endangered species status of San Francisco Bay longfin smelt – a fish that recently came into the crosshairs of U.S. Republicans seeking to blame California’s water policies for the state’s forest fires.
“The Biden administration and activist judges have used this listing as a political tool to block progress on California water policy,” U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa (R-California), who sponsored the bill, said in a statement after the House vote. “It adds yet another layer of conflicting regulations that dump tens of millions of acre feet of water out to the Pacific Ocean, with farmers receiving only 40 percent to 50 percent of their promised federal and state water.”
Once an abundant fish species in the San Francisco Bay, the longfin smelt population has dropped roughly 99 percent since the 1980s. Conservation groups have long argued that the decline is due, at least in part, to California’s water policies, which divert freshwater that would naturally flow into the ocean toward industrial agriculture, creating drought-like conditions for ocean-dwelling fish.
Those groups first petitioned for the fish to be granted Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections since 1994, but it took two decades and a lawsuit from Baykeeper of San Francisco Bay to finally secure an ESA listing, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) acknowledging that “the reproductive success and survival of longfin smelt depend on adequate freshwater flows for spawning and food.”
“Like many species of fish, wildlife, and their habitats, the hotter and drier climate has contributed to longfin’s decline, and the species needs our help,” USFWS Pacific Southwest Regional Director Paul Souza said. “We are dedicated to working with others to conserve longfin smelt while recognizing the importance of wetlands in our refuges and conservation areas, the benefits of agricultural lands, and the critical water resources that sustain California's communities."
In January 2025, USFWS proposed designated 91,630 acres – including the waters of San Pablo Bay, Suisun Bay, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta – as critical habitat.
“Like most of the delta’s native fishes, longfin smelt need high river flows to reach San Francisco Bay in the winter and spring,” Baykeeper Science Director Jon Rosenfield said at the time. “The mixing in the delta of fresh and saltwater creates the habitat that smelt, salmon, sturgeon, and countless other fish depend on for survival. Continued unsustainable diversion of water threatens to extinguish the bay’s longfin smelt and other native fish.”
However, when California wildfires became a controversial topic in national politics at the beginning of the year, Republicans sought to blame the state’s water policies, arguing that too much water is allowed to flow into the Pacific instead of being diverted to agriculture. They soon seized on smelt protections as ...
