Thursday February 13, 2025
Sacramento News and Review —
The disinformation about the Delta Smelt spread by President Donald Trump and his Big Ag allies has deluged social media, as well as mainstream and alternative media, in recent weeks.
As an independent journalist who has covered the Delta Smelt and the California water wars for the past three decades, I was intrigued when I saw a piece in San Francisco Chronicle about the federal funding for the Delta smelt being cut.
“After President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the delta smelt — a fish he has tied to the lack of water for fighting the Los Angeles fires — his administration is planning to cut funding for a captive breeding program intended to ensure survival of the endangered fish,” reporter Kurtis Alexander wrote.
Concerned about the reported slashing of the captive breeding program funding by the Bureau of Reclamation, I contacted UC Davis spokesperson Bill Kisliuk, who sent me his statement about the current status of the captive breeding program, indicating that they were hoping to get funding for the program extended past Feb. 28:
“The UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory (FCCL) is working closely with the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and hopes to see funding extended past Feb. 28,” Kisliuk responded. “The bureau and UC Davis have worked cooperatively on the FCCL for more than 15 years, and have been working on the five-year renewal for the past six months. Delta smelt supplementation production at the lab started under BOR’s 2020 Record of Decision and has continued as a protective measure for the species to allow water deliveries for the Central Valley Project and State Water Resources Project.”