White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP)
The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal.”The OMB outline for the Commerce Department for fiscal 2018 proposed sharp reductions in specific areas within NOAA such as spending on education, grants and research. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would lose $126 million, or 26 percent, of the funds it has under the current budget. Its satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, of its current funding under the proposal.The National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service would be fortunate by comparison, facing only 5 percent cuts.The figures are part of the OMB’s “passback” document, a key part of the annual budget process in which the White House instructs agencies to draw up detailed budgets for submission to Congress. The numbers often change during the course of negotiations between the agency and the White House and between lawmakers and the administration later on. The 2018 fiscal year starts Oct. 1.A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment. A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the process was “evolving” and cautioned against specific numbers. The official would not respond to questions about the four-page passback document.The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, known as the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which includes a key repository of climate and environmental information, the National Centers for Environmental Information. Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.Another proposed cut would eliminate a $73 million program called Sea Grant, which supports coastal research conducted through 33 university programs across the country. That includes institutions in many swing states that went for President Trump, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, the University of Florida and North Carolina State University.The OMB passback said that the administration wanted to “prioritize rebuilding the military” and would seek “savings and efficiencies to keep the Nation on a responsible fiscal path.” It said that its proposed funding cut for the Commerce Department “highlights the tradeoffs and choices inherent in pursuing these goals.”The OMB also said that the White House would come up with ideas to modernize “outdated infrastructure,” but it said that agencies should not expect increases in their fiscal 2018 discretionary-spending “toplines” as a result.On Wednesday, after his confirmation, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that drawing up a budget would be a top priority. “One of the first steps,” he said, “will be securing adequate appropriations from the Congress. In a period of budgetary constraint, that will be a major challenge.”The OMB passback document said that the Commerce Department, like other agencies, should “buy and manage like a business.” It urged the department to explore greater use of privately owned commercial satellites and commercial cloud services while submitting to the OMB a plan to retire or replace “at least one high priority legacy IT system” beginning in 2018.Many scientists warned that the deep cuts at NOAA could hurt safety as well as academic programs.Conrad Lautenbacher, a retired vice admiral who was the NOAA administrator under President George W. Bush, said, “I think the cuts are ill timed given the needs of society, economy and the military.” He added, “It will be very hard for NOAA to manage and maintain the kind of services the country requires” with the proposed cuts.Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator under President Barack Obama, said that 90 percent of the information for weather forecasts comes from satellites. “Cutting NOAA’s satellite budget will compromise NOAA’s mission of keeping Americans safe from extreme weather and providing forecasts that allow businesses and citizens to make smart plans,” she said.Rick Spinrad, a former chief scientist for NOAA, said: “NOAA’s research and operations, including satellite data management, support critical safety needs. A reduced investment now would virtually guarantee jeopardizing the safety of the American public.”
He said that weather warnings for tornadoes and hurricanes could be compromised and that navigational capacity used to help guide commercial ships and other mariners would suffer, leaving them without the “improved forecasts they need to safely maneuver coastal waters.” It could become harder to warn of tsunamis and forecast weather that will cause power outages.David Titley, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University who served as NOAA’s chief operating officer in the Obama administration, said that “oddly” the White House budget office, despite the president’s commitment to building infrastructure, would cut NOAA’s budget for ships and satellites. “These cuts will impact good private-sector jobs in the U.S.,” Titley said. “The loss of capability will make America weaker both in space and on the sea — a strange place to be for an administration that campaigned to ‘make America great again.’ ”
Read the original post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/
Climate-change ruling for Arctic seals has ramifications across U.S., California
This 2006 photo from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a bearded seal in Kotzebue, Alaska. Michael Cameron AP
In a ruling that has ramifications for land-use and water policy across the United States and California, a federal appeals court ruled Monday that scientists can draw on long-range climate projections to determine whether a species should be listed as threatened.On Monday, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a 2014 ruling made by a lower court in Alaska. The lower court determined federal regulators were relying on speculation and conjecture to determine that bearded seal populations would lose so much of their Arctic sea-ice habitat to a warming climate that they would be endangered by 2095. Noting that the sparse seal population is spread through a vast area of the Arctic making seals difficult to count, the lower court described the agency’s findings as “arbitrary and capricious.”But in Monday’s ruling, the appellate court ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service used the best available science and climate models to list the seals as threatened. Moreover, an agency “need not wait until a species’ habitat is destroyed to determine that habitat loss may facilitate extinction,” Judge Richard A. Paez wrote for the three-judge panel.The ruling was hailed by environmentalists and research groups, who say it allows agencies to take immediate action to protect species in the face of climate change. The ruling could spur new protections for numerous California species, from the bunny-like American pika to salmon and other fish under threat from droughts and warming rivers induced by climate change.“The implications for California, and frankly, the entire nation, are profound: This court ruling recognizes that climate change is a real threat, that climate science and models are scientifically sound, and that the Endangered Species Act requires we use information on future risks to protect species today, rather than waiting for the downward spiral of extinction to begin,” Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute said in an email.Conservative and business groups, however, decried the ruling as a dangerous precedent. They noted that it follows another recent 9th Circuit ruling that protected polar bears facing habitat loss from climate change, and said similar arguments could be used to limit logging and mining in California.“The takeaway from these cases is that the courts simply will not question scientific evidence offered by an agency in the same way that a court would question that same evidence were it offered in a dispute between private parties,” Damien Schiff of the Pacific Legal Foundation said in an email.The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned federal regulators to protect the seals in 2008. Groups fighting the petition included the state of Alaska and the American Petroleum Institute.
Read the original post: http://www.sacbee.com/
RELEASE: Ten Years after Magnuson-Stevens Act, U.S. Fisheries are the Best Managed in the World
Washington, D.C. — United States fisheries are the most sustainably managed in the world. Critical legislation has governed federal fisheries for the past four decades, and the enactment of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, or MSRA, 10 years ago provided science-based management measures that have maintained the health of the U.S. ocean ecology and economy.However, it is time to think about what comes next for the U.S. fisheries industry. The Center for American Progress has released a report looking at the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and offering science-based recommendations to maintain and improve the health of U.S. fisheries over the next 10 years. The report was released at an event on the legacy of the MSRA featuring former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco; Maria Damanaki, global managing director for oceans at the Nature Conservancy; and Margaret Spring, vice president of conservation and science at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.“It is no fluke that U.S. fisheries are among the best managed in the world,” said Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at CAP and co-author of the report. “The success of our science-based fishery management regime that has evolved over four decades of legislative oversight has made the resource far more sustainable while sustaining coastal economies. Now in the 21st century, federal fisheries face daunting challenges, including ocean warming and acidification stemming from climate change. The MSRA and its predecessors have made U.S. fisheries the healthiest in the world but it is now time to update these efforts to ensure their sustainability into the next century.”The paper makes the following recommendations:
- Regulators should work to account for changes in fishery dynamics that fishermen around the country are already experiencing as a result of climate change, including ocean acidification and warming.
- Ecosystem-based management should be prioritized as a tool to facilitate a holistic fisheries management.
- To increase accountability and data collection, NOAA should aggressively pursue the development and deployment of electronic monitoring systems for fishing vessels.
- Congress should appropriate additional funding for ocean observation and baseline research to facilitate data collection and stock assessment science.
- Using the MSRA’s strong international provisions, the Obama administration should finalize regulations aimed at curtailing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing abroad.
- U.S. leaders and government officials should press the International Maritime Organization to expand application of its vessel monitoring and registration standards to include all fishing vessels operating on the high seas.
Click here to read the report.Click here to watch the live stream of the event.
Will Obama fence off more of the ocean? US fishermen are fearful
U.S. fishing boats that are crewed by undocumented foreign fishermen are docked at Pier 38 in Honolulu, on May 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)
American fishermen are deeply fearful that the Obama White House could cut them off as early as this week from major fishing areas of the U.S. continental shelf on both coasts, further restricting one of the most highly regulated fishing industries in the world.At stake are millions of dollars in fishing revenue and hundreds of jobs -- and in some parts of the country, the survival of an embattled way of life that has persisted for centuries but is facing environmentalist pressures unlike anything before -- and without the chance for hearings and legislative back-and-forth that U.S. laws normally require.“This totally affects us, but we don’t know what’s going on,” one fishing boat owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News. “We are just out of the loop. No one even wants to say what effect it will have.”“They are throwing all fishermen under the bus, along with their supporting industries” declared Marty Scanlon, a fishing boat owner and member of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries advisory panel on highly migratory fish species in the Atlantic. “They’ve done everything they can to put us out of business.”What the fishermen fear most is the kind of unilateral action by the White House that they have already seen elsewhere. As part of their ongoing environmental ambitions, the Obama administration’s Council on Environmental Quality, and the president himself, are aggressively interested in creating preservation zones that would ban fishing and other activities within large portions of the 200-mile U.S. “exclusive economic zone” of maritime influence, and just as interested in getting other nations to do so, in their own as well as international waters.That aim, supported by many important environmental groups, is cited as urgently required for protection against diminishing biodiversity, overfishing and damage to coral and unique underwater geological features -- not to mention the fact that with only a few months remaining in his term, the president sees such sweeping gestures as part of his legacy of achievements, and as the boat owner put it, “the window is narrowing” for the administration to act.As one result, pressure from lobbying campaigns both for and against new declarations of such no-go zones both along the U.S. northeastern Atlantic coast and the coast of California have been mounting.So has, apparently, behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get influential Democratic legislators to support such new preservation areas publicly -- a tough call, since the affected fishermen are also constituents. So far, many of the Democrats are keeping a low profile.One exception has been U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut -- whose state does not loom as a major fishing center -- who earlier this month vocally nominated an area he called the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts for preservation status.Blumenthal was backed by some 40 environmental groups -- but not by many of his neighboring Democratic Senate colleagues. Fox News emails to a number of Democratic Senate offices regarding the issue went unacknowledged prior to this story’s publication.A more specific trigger for the nervousness in fishing communities is the upcoming September 15 start of a two-day, State Department -- sponsored Our Ocean conference, which has among other ambitions the extension of marine preserves across greater areas of the world’s oceans.More than 35 foreign ministers of various countries are expected to attend, and according to a State Department official, build on previous meetings that garnered international pledges of nearly $4 billion for ocean “conservation activities” globally, and also pledged to “safeguard nearly 6 million square kilometers” -- 2.3 million square miles -- “of ocean in Marine Protected Areas” -- essentially, natural parks for marine life.As the fishermen are well aware, two years ago President Obama dramatically kick-started the first-ever Our Ocean session by expanding the Remote Islands Marine National Monument by about 600 percent. He created a 140,000 square mile marine protected area northwest of the Hawaiian islands in which all commercial fishing and deep sea mining was banned.Last month, Obama upped the ante once more. He expanded the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a protected area west and north of his native state, to the edges of the U.S. 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The latest move created a 582,578 square mile preserve that is about double the size of Texas and West Virginia combined -- and roughly a quarter of all the protected waters that the State Department claims its Our Ocean conference process has so far achieved.According to Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council -- a joint federal, state and private sector agency set up under U.S. law to prevent overfishing and manage fisheries stocks in that region -- “someone sent us an embargoed press release” about the latest expansion a day before the announcement was made public.Simonds, whose agency had previously called for a “public, transparent, deliberative, documented and science-based process” in advance of the proposed monument expansion, called it “unbelievable that the government is kicking U.S. fishermen out of U.S. waters when the fishery is healthy.” Simonds and a coalition of local supporters are willing to live with the expanded preserve so long as it still allowed fishing under the supervision of the existing management authorities.Otherwise, she says, the restriction would force U.S. fishing vessels -- about 145 of them -- into international waters to make their catches, where they would compete against fleets from China, South Korea and Indonesia, among others, “that have lower fishing standards.” The move would also, she charged, increase fish imports -- currently about 92 percent of consumption -- rather than lower demand for seafood.The fishermen point out that in terms of many larger food fish, such as tuna, the preserve areas are meaningless. The bigger fish roam oceans worldwide, and the long-line equipment used to catch them does not damage coral reefs or the fragile ocean bottom.The monument designation also over-rode a 40-year-old, federally legislated process of managing fish stocks in all U.S. waters by means of fishery management councils like the Western Pacific agency. Eight councils were established around the country to manage fishing resources under legislation now known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act after its congressional sponsors.The councils are hardly passive when it comes to conservation issues, and have prohibited a variety of restrictive fishing practices, as well as placing monitors on board fishing vessels to make sure catch rules are enforced.Nonetheless, they did not speak to the kind of sweeping, surface-to-sea-bottom
Read the original story: http://www.foxnews.com/
U.S. Seafood Producers to White House: Don't Harm Fisheries for Ocean Monuments
WASHINGTON (NCFC) – September 12, 2016 – Today, in advance of the “Our Oceans” conference being held later this week at the State Department, the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) delivered a letter to the White House calling on the President to refrain from designating new marine monuments under the Antiquities Act. Copies of the letter were also delivered to the offices of Senators representing the states of the signers.The letter, with over 900 fishing industry signers and supported by 35 fishing organizations that represent the majority of domestic seafood harvesters, instead urges the President to conserve marine resources through the federal fisheries management process established by the bipartisan Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management Act (MSA).“The federal fisheries management process is among the most effective systems for managing living marine resources in the world,” the letter states. “The misuse of the Antiquities Act to create a marine monument is a repudiation of the past and ongoing efforts of almost everyone involved to continue to make Magnuson-Stevens management even more effective.”The NCFC members join an ever-growing list of fishing organizations and individuals opposing new ocean monuments via use of the Antiquities Act. TheAtlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the Council Coordination Committee, and over two dozen individual fish and seafood industry trade organizations have previously written to the White House asking for the MSA continue to guide fisheries management.Mayors from major East and West coast ports have previously expressed their concerns with monument designations in letters to the White House. NCFC members have also spoke out in opposition to designating a monument off the coast of New England, which would hurt the valuable red crab, swordfish, tuna, and offshore lobster fisheries.Today’s letter was signed by the following fishing organizations:
- Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers
- American Scallop Association
- American Albacore Fisheries Association
- At-Sea Processors Association
- Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Association
- Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association
- California Fisheries and Seafood Institute
- California Lobster & Trap Fishermen’s Association
- California Sea Urchin Commission
- California Wetfish Producers Association
- Coalition of Coastal Fisheries
- Coos Bay Trawlers
- Directed Sustainable Fisheries
- Fisheries Survival Fund
- Fishermen’s Dock Co-Op
- Garden State Seafood Association
- Golden King Crab Coalition
- Groundfish Forum
- Hawaii Longline Association
- Long Island Commercial Fishing Association
- Midwater Trawlers Cooperative
- National Fisheries Institute
- North Carolina Fisheries Association
- Oregon Trawl Commission
- Organized Fishermen of Florida
- Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
- Pacific Seafood Processors Association
- Pacific Whiting Conservation Cooperative
- Southeastern Fisheries Association
- Sustainable Fisheries Coalition
- United Catcher Boats
- Ventura County Commercial Fishermen’s Association
- Washington Trollers Association
- West Coast Seafood Processors Association
- Western Fishboat Owners Association
Download/read the letter here [PDF]
Pacific Council outlines offshore monument concerns in letter to White House
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) -- September 7, 2016 -- Last Thursday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Pacific Council) sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing concern over the impact of proposed offshore marine monument designations on sustainable West Coast fisheries.In the letter, Pacific Council executive director Charles A. Tracy emphasized the transparent and public fisheries management process already in place under the Pacific Council, one of the eight regional management councils established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).Through the Pacific Council’s essential fish habitat (EFH) process, nine of the eleven areas proposed for monument designation are already closed to bottom trawl fishing, Mr. Tracy wrote. In total, over 130,000 square miles of seafloor off the U.S. West Coast are closed to groundfish bottom trawling due to EFH provisions. Additionally, the two other areas proposed for monument designation are within the Cowcod Conservation Area West, and are therefore closed to all groundfish fishing in areas deeper than 20 fathoms.“The fishing industry has sacrificed much to achieve [fish stock] rebuilding goals, to minimize impacts with protected or non-target species, and to ensure sustainable fisheries,” Mr. Tracy noted.The Council also pointed out the potential unintended consequences of closing U.S. fisheries, including loss of American jobs and greater dependence on seafood imported from countries with illegal fishing.“Displacing domestic fisheries costs U.S. jobs and increases reliance on foreign fisheries, which in many cases are less sustainably managed than U.S. fisheries, and many of which contribute to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, a point of emphasis for your Administration,” Mr. Tracy wrote.Attached to the Pacific Council’s letter was a letter from the Council Coordination Committee, comprised of senior leaders from all eight regional fishery management councils, voicing concern over the use of the Antiquities Act to designate marine monuments.“We are concerned that authorities such as the Antiquities Act of 1906 do not explicitly require a robust public process or science-based environmental analyses,” the Councils wrote. “We believe fisheries management decisions should be made using the robust process established by the MSA and successfully used for over forty years.”
Download to read the letter and attachments here - [PDF]
Letters: Why Does President Obama Want to Eliminate Sustainable Commercial Fisheries?
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Letters] August 29, 2016 Dear Seafood News Editor,“Help us identify Champions who are helping the ongoing recovery of America’s fishing industry and fishing communities,” Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Council of Environmental Quality Director Christy Goldfuss posted on the White House Blog on August 10. They were appealing for nominees for this year’s White House Champion of Change for Sustainable Seafood.”The blogpost had many complimentary things to say about our U.S. commercial fisheries:“America’s fishers, and our seafood industry, have fed Americans and their families since our nation’s beginning. What’s more, this industry remains critical to the economic health and well-being of communities across the country.“After decades of decline, we are witnessing the economic and ecological recovery of America’s fishing industry. Overfishing has hit an all-time low, and many stocks are returning to sustainable levels. The U.S. fishing industry contributed nearly $200 billion annually to the American economy in 2014 and supports 1.7 million jobs.“This shift did not come easy. It took hard work, collaboration, and sacrifice by many across the country. Although there’s still more to do, America’s fisherman have led the way to the United States becoming a global leader in sustainable seafood management.“This turnaround is a story about innovative ways to catch fish and other seafood sustainably, and connect fishers with their customers. It is a story about the value of science and management working together, and a willingness to make sacrifices today for a better tomorrow. And it is a story about sustaining a proud livelihood that is the backbone of so many coastal communities nationwide.“President Obama and his Administration want to honor America’s fishers and our coastal communities for their efforts.”We agree with everything Secretary Pritzker and Director Golfuss said.Yet on Friday, August 26, President Obama announced he was expanding the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii, creating the world’s largest marine protected area. The fact sheet stated: “Building on the United States’ global leadership in marine conservation, today’s designation will more than quadruple the size of the existing marine monument, permanently protecting pristine coral reefs, deep sea marine habitats, and important ecological resources in the waters of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.”But President Obama’s executive order, authorized under the Antiquities Act, also prohibited commercial fishing in an area increased by 442,781 square miles, bringing the total protected area of the expanded monument to 582,578 square miles. This unilateral action happened without the transparency, science-based decision-making and robust public process trumpeted in the President’s own National Ocean Policy, nor the bipartisan Congressionally mandated Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), which requires fisheries to be managed under a transparent, science-based process administered by regional fishery management councils.The announcement precipitated extreme disappointment from commercial fishermen and Council members alike, who decried the lack of science and economic pain inflicted on sustainable fisheries and fishing communities. "Closing 60 percent of Hawaii's waters to commercial fishing, when science is telling us that it will not lead to more productive local fisheries, makes no sense," said Edwin Ebiusi Jr., chair of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council. "Today is a sad day in the history of Hawaii's fisheries and a negative blow to our local food security.""It serves a political legacy rather than any conservation benefits …” said Council Executive Director Kitty Simonds. “The campaign to expand the monument was organized by a multibillion dollar, agenda-driven environmental organization… The President obviously chose not to balance the interests of Hawaii's community, which has been divided on this issue," she added. Fisheries are the state's top food producer, according the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.“Our party’s over,” wrote Sean Martin, president of the Hawaii Longline Association, but the monument lobbying effort continues on the east coast and off California, where well-heeled environmental advocates are lobbying to close productive sea mounts in New England, as well as most of the offshore seamounts, banks and ridges off the California coast, all of which are critically important to the long-term sustainability of commercial fisheries in those regions.On both the east and west coast, fishermen, allied seafood companies and business interests as well as the regional fishery management councils have mounted vigorous opposition to the use of unilateral executive order under the Antiquities Act to manage fisheries. They point to existing National Ocean Policy promises and the Magnuson Act, which require science-based decision-making and robust stakeholder involvement. A transparent process that includes scientific and economic analysis and public involvement already exists through the MSA and fishery management councils. Why not use it?This Administration’s disrespect for Congressional mandate and its own ocean policies begs the question: Why does this President want to curtail sustainable fisheries?D.B. PleschnerExecutive DirectorCalifornia Wetfish Producers Association
Michael RamsinghSeafoodNews.com 1-732-240-5330Editorial Email: Editor@seafood.comReporter's Email: michaelramsingh@seafood.comCopyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.comD.B. Pleschner is executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, a nonprofit dedicated to research and to promote sustainable Wetfish resources. More info at www.californiawetfish.org
Our View: Stakeholders deserve open process in monument designation
Posted Aug. 26, 2016 at 2:01 AM
Editor's Note: The letters by the mayors of New Bedford and Monterey, California, referred to in this editorial are printed elsewhere on this page. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell wrote to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Monterey Mayor Clyde Roberson wrote to President Obama.
The National Park Service was established 100 years ago when President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act.
“The service thus established,” the act reads, “shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
This brilliant action — called America’s Best Idea by the Park Service — has enriched our nation, even the world, in ways perhaps never imagined by President Wilson or Congress, for the population is 3½ times today what it was in 1916, and the environmental impact of that growth could scarcely have been predicted.
The 84 million acres under the NPS is a treasure that belongs to all of us, and we applaud efforts to expand the protection of our natural resources, but we also recognize some such efforts go too far, including in the push to establish a national monument off the New England coast.
The Canyons and Seamounts are indeed precious resources, but the scope and the current process being advanced by environmental organizations lack checks and balances that would deliver a better policy.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell last week sent a letter to the acting director of the Council for Environmental Quality, a White House agency that advises the president on such issues, noting the push for the seamounts monument has kept stakeholders from participating in the process.
Indeed, we have previously reported on efforts by environmentalists to keep their advocacy for the monument designation a secret in order to gain an advantage over industry and other stakeholders.
Mayor Mitchell’s argument in last Friday’s letter to CEQ is that the public processes ensconced in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act provide a robust framework with both the scientific rigor and stakeholder access needed to create good public policy. He also noted that a virtuous alternative to the proposed designation and the potentially devastating impact this opaque process would have on commercial fisheries has been advanced by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Both economic and conservation goals are achieved by the plan proposed by ASMFC, a congressionally authorized coalition comprising “the director of the state’s marine fisheries management agency, a state legislator, and an individual appointed by the state’s governor to represent stakeholder interests” in each of the 15 coastal states from Maine to Florida. The species sought and the methods used show sensitivity to the preservation of the resources, and the ASMFC proposal is "acceptable to the industry," the mayor wrote.
Also last Friday, the mayor of Monterey, California, Clyde Roberson, sent a letter to President Obama, because he is fighting off a monument designation off of his coast that similarly threatens the commercial fishing industry there.
He argues that laws such as Magnuson-Stevens, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act are more than adequate to ensure protection of the natural resources with full transparency and access to stakeholders. He says the closed process being urged by environmentalist under the Antiquities Act is inadequate to the task.
The president did not go along with the environmentalists last fall, and it is our fervent hope that if he isn’t advised by CEQ to pursue the more open process, the duty to represent and hear all stakeholders will prevail.
Read the full editorial at the New Bedford Standard-TimesRead Mayor Jon Mitchell's full letter hereRead Mayor Clyde Roberson's full letter here
Originally posted by Saving Seafood