Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

 

Page 1

 

Bumble Bee Is a ‘Fish,’ Under Statute—C.A.

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

A bumble bee is a “fish,” under a California statute, the Third District Court of Appeal proclaimed yesterday.

Accordingly, Justice Ronald B. Robie wrote, the state Fish and Game Commission did not exceed its authority under the California Endangered Species Act by declaring four types of bumble bees to be candidates for protection.

He pointed out that §45 of the Fish and Game Code, a part of that act, provides:

“‘Fish’ means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.”

Robie’s opinion reverses a judgment of Sacramento Superior Court Judge James P. Arguelles who granted a writ of administrative mandamus overturning the commission’s decision. He found that “the word ‘invertebrates’ as it appears in Section 45’s definition of ‘fish’ clearly denotes invertebrates connected to a marine habitat, not insects such as bumble bees.”

The justice wrote:

“A fish, as the term is commonly understood in everyday parlance, of course, lives in aquatic environments. As the Department and the Commission note, however, the technical definition in section 45 includes mollusks, invertebrates, amphibians, and crustaceans, all of which encompass terrestrial and aquatic species.”

He noted that §2067 declares the Trinity bristle snail — “a terrestrial mollusk and invertebrate” to be an endangered species, and it “could have qualified as such only within the definition of fish under section 45.”

The case is Almond Alliance of California v. Fish and Game Commission, C093542.

 

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