Over the last several years, the timber industry and the Farm Bureau have filed litigation to force the federal government to produce "status reviews" of the spotted owl, the marbled murrelet, and the delta smelt. Such reviews are required by the Endangered Species Act for all listed species, and they're not exactly a high priority.

In these cases, the plaintiffs' hope was that the status reviews would provide justification for removing the three species from behind the protective shield of the law. In the case of the birds, the Fish and Wildlife Service took the unprecedented step of hiring an outside firm to conduct the reviews. Suspicious minds wondered if agency higher-ups feared that the perfectly competent biologists within the agency might fail to come up with the answer the timber industry wanted.

In any event, the reviews have been bumping along, with early drafts actually indicating that both the owl and the murrelet continue to decline and that reopening their old-growth habitat any time soon would be a disaster. The administration's response has been to delay formal release of both studies.

In California, meanwhile, things have been decidedly odd, smelt-wise.

The Farm Bureau filed suit in 2002 seeking a status review of the delta smelt, a tiny fish that lives in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The smelt -- considered an indicator of the overall health of the delta -- has been on the endangered species list since 1994. The government settled the case by agreeing to produce such a report by spring 2004. The review -- conducted by three FWS scientists in California -- was completed at the end of March and filed with the court. It concluded that the information on the smelt was way too sketchy to warrant delisting the species. So far, so good.

The day after the report was given to the court, however, one Julie MacDonald in the Interior Department in Washington, D.C. sent an outraged email to the three scientists. MacDonald suggested that they had betrayed her: that they had all agreed in previous meetings that the review would paint a far rosier picture of the smelt's status. "I did not insist on seeing any of the documents you and your staff were preparing because I understood the need for a speedy completion of the documents and I believed that we were in agreement. I see now that as a grave error in judgement [sic] on my part." And then, most curious of all, MacDonald telephoned the Farm Bureau's lawyer, Brenda Jahns Southwick, and read her the email. Southwick then filed a motion with the court seeking to reopen the case arguing that the review that had been filed with the court might not actually reflect the government's position. At press time the judge had not ruled on the motion. Meanwhile, word just reached us that a new biological opinion concerning the operation of the huge water system in the Central Valley argues that water exports from the delta can be substantially increased without harming the smelt, which is a little hard to fathom if the poor critter is threatened with extinction under present circumstances.

There's much about this story we don't yet know, but what we do know is here.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org