Straight Line of the Day: What in the world will California courts rule next?

California Court Rules That Bees Are a Type of Fish in Order To Protect Them Under the State’s Endangered Species Act
Insider | Jun 1, 2022 | Mia Jankowicz

Judges ruled on Tuesday that bumble bees can be classed as fish under California environmental laws.

This unlocks protections for the state’s four endangered bumble bee species.

The ruling clarifies the state’s confusing classification in its environmental protections.

A trio of judges in California said on Tuesday that bees can be legally classed as a type of fish as part of a ruling that brings added conservation protections for the endangered species.

“The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish,” the judges wrote in their ruling. And, they concluded, it does.

Formerly, the problem for bee-lovers ― and lovers of all Californian terrestrial invertebrates ― was down to the way protected animals have been classified in the state’s laws.

Although four different bee species were classified as endangered in 2018, land invertebrates are not explicitly protected under the state’s Endangered Species Act (CESA), which protects endangered “native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.”….

They also argued that land-based invertebrates have been protected under the category of “fish” under the statute in the past, such as in 1980 when the Trinity bristle snail was protected.