The removal of a species from the government’s endangered species list is often a cause for celebration, as it means a plant or animal variety has somehow beaten the odds and recovered from its parlous condition. That’s not the case for 21 animal species just delisted from the Endangered Species Act by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They’re being taken off the list because they have moved in the opposite direction. They’ve gone extinct. … Conservatives and business lobbyists commonly dismiss concern about the fate of ostensibly unimportant species as pointy-headed liberal hand-wringing. A good example is the disdain shown by Central Valley farmers and their political mouthpieces for the unassuming delta smelt, a tiny endangered fish they blame for mandated diversions of the water they use for irrigation into rivers and streams to preserve the ecosystem.
-Written by LA Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik.​