According to critics, using the Endangered Species Act to protect this little silver fish has caused a dust bowl in California’s Central Valley and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

Even an accused environmental radical like me can’t imagine throwing myself into the pumps to save a delta smelt.  So what’s the real deal?

The smelt has no commercial importance, and species go extinct all the time.  That is the nature of evolutionary biology.

But it’s never that simple, is it? Except on TV news.

Like the much vilified spotted owl, the smelt is a measure of how close we are to extinction of an entire ecosystem.  Cutting water to Big Ag to try to save the smelt was also aimed at saving the commercial salmon and recreational fishing industry, the farmers, and the Delta estuary itself where an urban megalopolis draws water.

Why am I surprised to read in RedState.com that the water shut off protecting the delta smelt had “nothing to do with the fish and was done on purpose to destroy the economy of the world’s most fertile growing area, taking our nation down a notch, making us even more dependent on foreign sources for food – and the administration was quite successful in creating a dust bowl region with over a 20% unemployment rate.”

The trumpeted loss of tens of thousands of jobs laid at the feet of the delta smelt have shrunk to much reduced estimates. Smelt protection may, or may not, have cost 5000 jobs and that’s nothing to sneeze at as people line up at food banks.

But has the world wide recession nothing to do with the Valley’s 20% unemployment rate?

What about job losses due to the collapse in dairy prices, the home foreclosure mess, construction slow down, and the past three years of drought? What about farmers selling their water to outfits like Tejon Ranch half a state away?

Even in the best of times, unemployment in the Valley is higher than the state.

But that little guy smelt makes a good sound byte, doesn’t he?  Busting the Endangered Species Act down to dust– as may happen over time in the courts–isn’t going to eradicate the real problems California faces.

And I’m still puzzling over why the administration would want to drive us to ruin, as charged by redstate.com?

I don’t think even George Bush wanted to drive us to ruin.  And I hated that guy!