On [June 1], an appeals court in California earnestly held that bees are fish. Or at least for regulatory purposes under the state’s endangered species law.
Call me narrow-minded, but bees … are not fish.
So how did the court arrive at such an absurd-seeming result? And one with potentially far-reaching consequences?
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The dispute began in 2018, when the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, the Center for Food Safety, and Defenders of Wildlife successfully petitioned the state of California to consider protecting four species of imperiled native bumble bees (including the delightfully named Suckley’s cuckoo bumble bee) under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
California’s endangered species law defines candidates for protection as “bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile or plant.” The statute doesn’t say anything about insects.
Insects, however, are invertebrates – creatures without a backbone, as are, for example, crabs, sea urchins, sponges and starfish.
Insects are invertebrates. Invertebrates are fish. Ergo, insects are fish — and can be protected under the endangered species law!
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As a Californian, I genuinely want bumble bees to be protected. But I don’t think the court can rightly get there by turning them into fish.
