Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.
While California’s drought is driving up food prices nationwide and causing some cities to ration water resources, the drought is also taking its toll on wildlife.
The delta smelt, a fish that lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, has been endangered for years. The drought, now in its fourth year, has driven population levels to the point that a July survey showed zero for the level of delta smelt abundance. Researchers found “a handful” of the fish but the number was too small to register on the population gauge.
“The delta smelt is basically on its last legs right now. We’ll be lucky if it survives the coming year,” said Peter Moyle, a fish biologist at the University of California.”The drought has basically made all the things that were bad for smelt worse.”
Other native fish are endangered because of the drought including longfin smelt, green sturgeon and Chinook salmon.
Moyle said that because the water releases from the Shasta Dam were so warm, an entire generation of winter-run Chinook was erased. The eggs either never hatched or the young died soon after hatching.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the operator of the dam, admitted miscalculating the volume of cold water and didn’t maintain the proper river temperature.
“We’re going to be losing most of our salmon and steelhead if things continue,” Moyle said. “It would be a major extinction event.”
With all due respect to the authors of this article, I see some major flaws. I began following this story since it’s onset several years ago.
Many Pacific habitat fish have been on the decline since the elevated radiation reached our shores from Japan. We have been told that the radiation levels are safe and yet they further state that young children are likely to get thyroid cancer later in life. The farmers in this extremely fertile valley have lost their livelyhood as well of thousands of other farm employees. Now that the minnows have died off, why haven’t they restored the water to the farmers of the nations? Why is all of this fresh water still being flushed into the ocean? We need food! We need the fresh water!
America no longer stockpiles wheat. We grow corn to put in our gas tanks. How much longer before the human race is on the endangered species list? Environmentalists never look at the bookends to see how the long term effects are far more damaging than the short term political gains they feel they are making. The insanity in this country is totally out of control.
Folks are always trying to engage me in political debates. My reply is they are all missing the core issue. Show me a candidate that will open their rallies and fundraisers with a prayer in the name of Jesus and I may debate them. In the mean time, I guess the only thing I can hope for is that some degree of common sense is restored.