From Living the Scientific Life blog in the USA:
Julie MacDonald, a Bush appointee who resigned earlier this month as Interior Department deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, is being investigated by Democrats because she was involved with delisting an endangered species to protect her financial interests.According to the Contra Costa Times, MacDonald removed the threatened Sacramento splittail fish from the federal threatened and endangered species list while she was profiting from her farm that lies within the habitat area of the threatened fish.
California to shut water pumps to help fish
Thu May 31, 2007 8:29PM EDT
California to shut water pumps to help fish
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California’s Department of Water said on Thursday it would stop pumping water from an inland waterway east of San Francisco to protect a fish threatened with extinction, a move that would cut water supplies throughout the state for at least a week.
The Delta smelt is a small fish that lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a waterway in Central California that provides drinking water through the State Water Project to 25 million Californians.
Pumping operations by the State Water Project damage the smelt’s delta habitat by redirecting water flows, an especially dangerous change for the fish as it migrates past pumps.
“Drastic times call for drastic measures,” Lester Snow, director of the state’s water department, said in a statement.
“While there are clearly many factors at play in the current decline of smelt in the delta, we must act on the one that is within our control,” Snow added.
State water department spokeswoman Sue Sims said the State Water Project will be able to draw on ground water reserves and reservoirs to make up for lost water supplies after pumps in the delta are shut.
Sims said smelt populations are expected to migrate beyond the reach of the pumps in about 10 days, which would allow the state water department to resume pumping.
Comment by Administrator — June 1, 2007 @ 12:19 pm