Yes, the human species does matter more than any other. Other species only matter to the extent that human beings value them. “Mattering” is a matter of evaluation, and only human beings evaluate. If human beings did not exist, nothing would matter, nothing could possibly matter.

How then has it come about that a tiny baitfish, in a world rich in bait, was deemed to matter more than people? Attempts were made to preserve the Delta smelt by sacrificing farms in California’s Central Valley.

How did the tragic farce begin?

From Investor’s Business Daily:

Back in 2007, [environmental radicals] convinced federal Judge Oliver Wanger to rule that the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government the right to cut water to thousands of farmers in California’s Central Valley to protect a 3-inch baitfish called the delta smelt.

That ruling turned many of the Valley’s prized vineyards and almond groves into wastelands. Jobs were lost, family farms were shut, fields went fallow and food prices rose. …

Unemployment reached 40% in some areas as a result of the cutoff, and even cities like Fresno (with an unemployment rate above 16%) ended up losing 25% of their water, too…

Food lines appeared in the world’s most fertile agricultural valley, with farmworkers accepting bags of carrots grown in China, a sorry emblem of man-made famine.

And for all that, the smelt will not survive. The sacrifices of thousands of livelihoods, the shrinking of food production, was all for nothing.

The smelt is doomed anyway. It is a dying species. Mourn if you must, but there’s no saving the precious thing.

The IBD continues:

While the Valley economy is now ruined, it hasn’t helped the smelt. …

A draft of a new study from the Delta Stewardship Council shows the water cutoffs had no effect on the smelt. The smelt remains endangered even as farmers have been punished with a policy that cut off as much as 90% of their water.

Environmentalists had claimed that “the only way to save smelt was to flush more fresh water to the ocean”, so they got water diverted from San Joaquin Valley farmers.

But it didn’t work… The Delta Stewardship Council [is now] saying “the species may not be saved”…

Well then, let it go.

“Let it go” could be the chorus of a song:

Now the Delta has a smelt and/ The smelt has cost my farm/ For I dare not go on farming/ In case I do it harm…

Why don’t the ruined farmers sue whomever is responsible for visiting this lunacy  upon them? They must have a very good case. And wouldn’t it be really nice if they brought the Green Lobby to a humilating end?