Does this pass the smelt test?

I have just finished reading the most ridiculously illogical editorial in a long time (“Save the Delta smelt,” Feb. 28). You argue a good point for releasing water from the Sacramento Delta (”a crisis ... that has lead to the fallowing of millions of acres of Central Valley farmland, unemployment of 40 percent in some valley communities and severe water cutbacks ...”) and, yet, you close with “Long live the Delta smelt”!

I think most caring citizens realize that we cannot sacrifice wildlife and our natural resources for our selfish and unimportant interests. But to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of mankind in California’s Central Valley and beyond so that a tiny fish, whose value lies only in the very fact that it exists, causes the reasonable minds of people on this planet to question the motives of so-called environmentalists and makes a mockery of the efforts of true conservationists.

SANDRA RHATIGAN

Lake San Marcos