Crops or Fish?

I read an interesting article in Time.com today.It was about saving an endangered species of fish.I have to look up the ecological importance of this fish apart from being a source of food. Last August, a Federal US court in California set limits on pumping water from the Joaquin-Sacramento River delta from December to June.It should be noted that these are the pumps at the Banks Pumping Plant that send water to Central and Southern California for agricultural and residential use. This measure was an attempt to save the endangered smelt fish. In a further measure to protect the smelt, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced just last week it would cut San Joaquin Valley farm water supplies to 40% of the contracted amount. Many of the farmers in the region have been alloted only one sixth of the water supply they need to sustain their crops through the dry summer months.

The local farmers are furious at the environmental priorities governing water use. Are fish more important than people?"We're looking after fish, and yet we're losing crops," says an almond farmer Another farmer cries, "We need legislature to overrule all our environmental impacts because humans come first over fish.Yet another farmer hopes this crisis will spawn better infrastructure for moving and storing of water.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation maintains that protecting endangered species is simply "something we've got to do".

Such a situation has not happened in our country yet and may never happen.However, one can never tell.Do we take precedence over fish or we just don't care?