After decades of advocacy by environmental groups, a tiny silver fish is finally getting federal protection in San Francisco Bay.
On Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the bay’s population of longfin smelt is now on the federal endangered species list, 12 years after the agency first deemed the fish threatened or endangered. Once so abundant that it was fished commercially, the fish has plunged in numbers by over 99% since the 1980s.