On May 31st of this year, many news outlets released the variations of the same confusing title: California Bees are now Fish.

While this is a head-scratching sentence, what this meant was that California’s courts has ruled that four species of bumblebees; the Western Bumblebee, Franklin’s Bumblebee, Crotch Bumblebee, and Suckley Cuckoo Bumblebee; that are all classified as threatened are now able to be protected under the California Endangered Species Act.

The California Endangered Species Act (CESA), first enacted in 1970 before being updated in 1984 is one of the first state acts to protect species that are threatened with extinction. It protects endangered species, which it defines as “a native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant which is in serious danger of becoming extinct throughout all, or a significant portion, of its range due to one or more causes, including loss of habitat, change in habitat, over-exploitation, predation, competition, or disease.” California’s endangered species list includes ten species of fish, three species of amphibians, two reptiles, thirteen birds, and nine mammals.

It does not, however, have any classification for insects. There is a loophole that legislators were able to take advantage of, whereby they could have the bee species be listed as invertebrates, which would allow the protections that are available for them as such to be enacted by the law. Based on California’s Fish and Wildlife, their classification of fish is “a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.

Essentially: bees equal invertebrates, which equals fish.

This opens a whole new avenue of protections for endangered species across the country if more states would be willing to take advantage of these loose definitions. As it currently stands in Nebraska, the current Endangered Species Act protects seven species of plants, two species of beetle, one reptile, six fish, six birds, and five mammals. While this is a good start, this does not cover all the possible animals and plants that call this state their home, and more could be done to protect them. With this change to the CESA, it is possible for other states to take advantage of this to start protecting more species in their state.

This area has only been in protected status since the 1980s, and while there are some conservation efforts in place, the works in place are limited. Most of the conservation efforts currently in place involve working with local farmers to curb damage from runoff, removing invasive tree species, and using carefully managed grazing patterns. There are also outside threats that they must keep an eye on, such as the Keystone XL Pipeline that was proposed to go through the Sandhills.

With changes in the CESA, we can hope to see other states follow suit and take a more proactive role in protecting their states’ environments.

For the list of California’s protected animals, you can go to wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fully-Protected. For a list of Nebraska’s protected species, go to http://outdoornebraska.gov/endangeredspecies/.And to see the work that Nebraska is doing to protect the state’s natural species, go to outdoornebraska.gov/conservation/.