California's Delta Smelt: Why Care?

Los Angeles Times writer Gordy Slack finds a brilliant metaphor for describing the connectedness of seemingly unimportant species to the health of an environment as a whole. “Why care? The species in an ecosystem are woven together like characters in a Shakespeare play. Start pulling them out, and the play’s integrity is lost. Removing the delta smelt would be like pulling the ghost from ‘Macbeth.’ Forever.”