ALERT: All US Fishermen, 'Catch Em While you Can', Possile Fishing Ban
Ahead



Mar 9, 2010
Robert Montgomery



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.

"When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal
Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario
government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in
North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe
economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of
communities across northern and central Ontario," said Phil Morlock,
director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the
administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in
America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green
anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The
current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened
in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working
American families and small businesses are being ignored.

"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern
for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order
creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task
force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any
priority."

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.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their
anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with "facts," in attempts to
ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial
fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource,
has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling
industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an
Executive Order to implement the task force's recommendations even before
the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea
that this was coming.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the New York Times reported on Feb. 12 that
"President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his
executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other
domestic policy priorities."

Morlock fears that "what we're seeing coming at us is an attempted
dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served
us so well. There's no basis in science for the agendas of these groups
who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

"Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It's all
just an excuse to put us off the water."

In the wake of the task force's framework document, the Congressional
Sportsmen's Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational
Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the
administration.

"Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have
the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only
contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in
tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the
backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic," said CSF
President Jeff Crane.

Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, "There are over one million
jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task
force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports
for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will
impact the fishing industry or related economies.

"Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of
policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the
omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."

This is not the only access issue threatening the public's right to fish,
but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national
conservation director for BASS.

"With what's being created, the same principles could apply inland as
apply to the oceans," he said. "Under the guise of 'marine spatial
planning' entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a
river drainage from the ocean.

"Every angler needs to be aware because if it's not happening in your
backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.

"We have one of the largest voting blocks in the country and we need to
use it. We must not sit idly by."

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Hell the Government cannot stop illegal aliens from entering our country to smuggle drugs. How the hell is the US Gov't. gonna stop John Q. American from fishing?

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