The Fish and Wildlife Service did not hide any of this, which is why it is worth reading.

On July 17 the Service published a final rule reclassifying the razorback sucker from endangered to threatened, effective August 17 [1].

The population numbers in that rule look like a triumph. More than 30,000 adults in the Green River. Five to eight thousand in the upper Colorado. About 3,000 in the San Juan. Roughly 5,000 in Lake Mohave, nearly 5,000 more in the Lake Havasu and Davis-Parker reach [1].

Then read the modifiers.

The Green River figure is 'adult stocked razorback sucker.' The Lake Mohave figure is 'hatchery-raised and stocked adults' [1].

These are fish that were bred and released. They are alive because that programme keeps running.

The Service's own summary is the sentence that should follow the headline anywhere this is reported:

'Only one population, the Lake Mead population, exhibits natural recruitment and stability. The overall status of each population depends on ongoing management actions' [1].

Lake Mead holds 578 adults [1].

That is the entire population of razorback sucker in the United States making more razorback sucker without human help.

The cause is named too. Predation of young fish by large nonnative piscivores - introduced predators that eat what hatches - is 'a major cause of recruitment failure' [1]. The adults survive. The young mostly do not.

On the criteria the rule is equally direct: 'The current condition of the razorback sucker partially meets the 2002 recovery criteria' [1].

Partially. Adult abundance exceeds the minimum viable population benchmark of 5,800 adults in both the Green and Colorado River populations, which is a genuine achievement, and the Lake Mohave genetic refuge criterion has been met [1]. Natural recruitment has not.

None of this makes the downlisting wrong.

A species with tens of thousands of adults in the water is in a different position from one with hundreds, and the 4(d) rule is written to keep the stocking, the habitat restoration and the nonnative-fish control legal. It even permits catch-and-release angling [1].

The point is narrower, and it matters: this is a recovery that exists because it is being actively maintained - and the document that declares it says so in its own words.