(H/T – Marcus Wilder)
ESPN reports on what is likely coming down the pike for anglers on virtually every body of water in the United States:
The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.
This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning….
Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for “marine spatial planning” by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.
Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.
Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.
As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.
Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.
As a reminder, fishermen and hunters have done more to protect the environment than the EPA, the environment-enforcement part of the DNR, Greenpeace, the WWF, et al. We have a unique stake in a clean environment. In fact, when I go canoeing, I drink right out of the lake.
Revisions/extensions (6:20 pm 3/9/2010) – Allahpundit tracked down an old campaign promise Obama made to Sport Fishing (emphasis in AP’s post):
My administration would place the emphasis in fishery management where it belongs: in ensuring the long-term health and sustainability of stocks through the use of effective and appropriate conservation measures. Such an approach would not provide a preference for one management tool, such as a marine reserve, over another. Given sufficient management controls and data, a fishery can meet conservation objectives through a variety of catch controls and habitat-protection measures, including gear restrictions, bag limits or closures. In some cases, additional conservation measures may need to be taken to ensure a positive recreational marine-fishing experience for future generations of Americans. Recreational fishermen have not shirked from embracing such measures when needed to achieve long-term stock sustainability, as long as measures are matched to the problem. While marine reserves may be an effective means of achieving important goals, their use and design must be based on an assessment of impacts and balanced by a strong respect for the ability of recreational anglers to practice their sport. In my view, we need to be open to the use of a variety of innovative conservation tools and be prepared to use them if the science justifies their establishment, and if it has been determined that less-restrictive options will not achieve critical goals like rebuilding fish stocks. The decision to establish marine reserves should be made as a result of a transparent, science-based process and be the least intrusive possible to get the job done. Such a process should include outreach to the sport-fishing community to explain both the scientific basis for the action and the expected conservation benefits to future fishing generations if it is to gain the community’s active support.
As AP notes, it is an “official Barack Obama campaign promise”, which means that under the Jim Geraghty Principle, sooner or later, it will reach its expiration date.
It likely won’t happen all at once, but it will happen in bits and pieces, with the ultimate goal of no legal fishing happening if Obama stays in office the full two terms.
“It likely won’t happen all at once, but it will happen in bits and pieces, with the ultimate goal of no legal fishing happening if Obama stays in office the full two terms.”
So they’re gonna take my guns and my fishin’ rod too?
Classic.
You’re making The Onion proud with this gem.
When the ones writing policy have as their personal ultimate goal the elimination of recreational fishing, and the plan they’re poised to foist upon us tracks with the previously-announced intermediate steps, it is prudent to plan as though they’re going to make that ultimate goal happen.
Let me tell you a story about the state of fishing in Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park (just on the other side of the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, with the same ban on motorized boats). Back in the golden days (up until the late-1990s), the possession limit on walleye was 6, with one over 23″, and one could fish with any standard bait, including live leeches. Then, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources dropped the limit to 4 as part of a province-wide reduction, and at the same time, banned importation of leeches into the province. A few years after that, they dropped the “one over” size to 18″ (again, as part of a province-wide reduction). Now, they’ve banned all live bait in the park entirely, as well as lures with barbed hooks.
It’s been a few years since I’ve fished Quetico, but the fishing was still just as good the last year live bait was legal to use as my first year there, back in 1992. Moreover, given taking fish out of the park involves portaging, there’s not even a lot of trophy-taking. Further, entry into the park is limited to a quota-and-entry-point system that hasn’t really changed since the early 1990s. Despite the fact there is no commercial fishing in Quetico, and the apparent self-sustaining fish population, the MNR did everything short of banning fishing entirely in Quetico just because they could.
Applying strict bag limits and banning live bait and barbed hooks in a park is not even close to the same thing as banning fishing entirely. Not even in the same universe.
…and the bag limits aren’t even a big deal either. So bag limits in Ontario are one walleye over 18″ and 3 a man per day. Our party of 12 guys can limit out on 16 & 17″ walleyes in a morning with a couple pike mixed in there, pig out on shore lunch and then go out and do it again the next day and the next…..yeah so we can’t bring the same number of walleyes home with us anymore. Big freakin’ deal. So the ministry’s a pain in the a$$. That’s life. I can tell you that socialist Canada is a far cry from banning commercial and private fishing and so are we.
Ain’t gonna happen now or ever.
P.S. the 16 inchers taste better anyway. Keep a trophy, throw the rest over 18 back. If a guy can’t pull in enough 16-17 inch walleyes in Canada they should take up bowling or something.
pursuant to the Mack/Printz ruling Scalia warned, “The federal government may neither, issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.” It is rather obvious that nationalized healthcare definitely qualifies as a “federal regulatory program.” PLEASE PERFORM CITIZENS ARREST AGAINST ANY ILLEGAL AGENT WHO PERFORMS ANY ILLEGAL ENFORCEMENT
I don’t like fishing, mostly because I don’t eat fish and I can find other activities that involve drinking mass quantities of beer, but……
If any of this goes on I’m going to take it up. I’ll be the fishingest fool you’ll see.
They just don’t seem to realize we’re Americans, not EUnuchs.
There’s a point beyond which we won’t go.