http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100309/ts_csm/286232 Fishermenâs fear: Public's 'right to fish' shifting under Obama? By Patrik Jonsson Patrik Jonsson Tue Mar 9, 6:17 pm ET Atlanta â The Obama administration has proposed using United Nations-guided principles to expand a type of zoning to coastal and even some inland waters. Thatâs raising concerns among fishermen that their favorite fishing holes may soon be off-limits for bait-casting. In the battle of incremental change that epitomizes the American conservation movement, many weekend anglers fear that the Obama administrationâs promise to âfundamentally changeâ water management in the US will erode what they call the publicâs âright to fish,â in turn creating economic losses for the $82 billion recreational fishing industry and a further deterioration of the American outdoorsmanâs legacy. Proponents say the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force established by President Obama last June will ultimately benefit the fishing public by managing ecosystems in their entirety rather than by individual uses such as fishing, shipping, or oil exploration. âItâs not an environmentalist manifesto,â says Larry Crowder, a marine biologist at Duke University in North Carolina. âItâs multiple-use planning for the environment, and making sure various uses ⦠are sustainable.â (Amateur outdoorsmen have been fighting for their rights for years, as the Monitor reports here.) New way to manage marine resourcesFaced with the prospect of further industrialization along America's coasts and the Great Lakes (wind turbines and natural-gas exploration, for example), the task force is charged with putting in place a new ecosystem management process called marine spatial planning. Marine spatial planning (MSP), according to the United Nations, is âa public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process." That kind of government-speak scares Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs at the reel-and-rod maker Shimano. Mr. Morlock points to references by the ocean task force to âone global seaâ as evidence that whatâs really being proposed are broad changes to America's user-funded conservation strategy, potentially affecting even inland waters. âI suggest that the task force recommend our model to the United Nations rather than us adopting the United Nations model,â he says in a phone interview. âThe American model is the best in the world, so our question is: Why seek the lowest common denominator?â Protections for recreational fishermenMr. Obama has said he will not override protections put in place by Presidents Clinton and Bush that established recreational fishermen as a special class. But critics still worry about the Obama administrationâs ties to environmental groups that espouse âanti-useâ policies that put some habitats out of reach even for rod and reel fishermen, who take only 3 percent of Americaâs landed catch every year. âAngling advocates point out that senior policy officials on the task force seem inclined to ally themselves with preservationists and environmental extremists who want to create âno fishingâ preserves, with no scientific justification,â writes ESPN.comâs Robert Montgomery. On the other hand, nonpartisan experts say the task force has already made strides in better recognizing various stakeholder groups, including recreational fishermen, and that it doesnât intend to undermine the ability of states to manage their natural resources, as many fishermen fear. âThereâs been huge progress by the task force in terms of being more inclusive in thinking about economic, ecological, social, and political concerns,â says Mr. Crowder at Duke. âThe paranoia â and there is paranoia on all sides â is that the process will be captured. My hope is that mutual concern gets people to the table.â The final report of the task force is expected in late March. Congress will decide its fate, unless Obama issues an executive order establishing MSP as the law of the water.
ALL sources of water in the US are the TARGET........small pond within a farmers land to the creek running through your backyard! Welcome to the GLOBALIST directed asymetrical attack I have been talking about for years here in america.......ENJOY! :eek: Welcome the UN lead...... "AGENDA 21" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJp0P6eggXU http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/agenda21rpt.htm
Maybe that's what we really need... for Obama to outlaw fishing... And enraged angler storm the White House... armed with flies, poppers, spinner baits... and kick this bozo to the curb.
When did you go socialist?? If you want to fish, get rich and go out where the 97% of the catch is being made.
What I find frustrating is they want to get into these grand schemes, but they can't even deal with specific problems that most everyone agrees on now. Kind of like health care, Obama wants the government ot tkae it over instead of solving real problems. For example, the global population of bluefin tuna is close to reaching extinction levels. Most of these are caught in the north atlantic. The vast majority goes to japan for sushi. The japanese vociferously oppose any and all international efforts to limit this catch. Adult bluefin tuna are rarely caught now. too few of them. Mainly smaller tuna, which of course creates even more pressure on the breeding stocks. Yu could write the same complaint about whaling, with a few amendments. Second example, the Cheasepeake Bay. It once was a cornucopia of sealife, from crabs to oysters to striped bass. Now it is a polluted, overfished industrial, residential and farm dumping ground that has expanding dead zones, severely declining crab and oyster stocks and a sad future. Everyone knows the problem. It's a combination of runoff from chicken and hog farms and new subdivisions, plus unsustainable commercial fishing. Bay watermen are few in number but great in political power in Maryland and Virginia. They bitterly resent being told to cut back on crabbing and oyster dredging. I can't really blame them, as they work long hours at backbreaking work for low pay, but someone has to take a braoder view. Solve these problems then talk to me about some ridiculous UN-styled management plan, which will be long on expensive conferences, consultant reports, new govenrment departments,etc and low on results.
Being a former commercial fisherman and monitoring the situation for some time all I can say is that's an "own goal" for US leisure fisherman as they have been colluding with the Greens and big buck conservation lobbies for some time for tighter inshore controls and zoning. F*ck em.
They could have stated their own case (they are not without a voice) but the clout of the Green and conservation lobbies seduced them into collusion. Some of the more independent thinkers in the US pro-angling lobby actually cautioned against siding with the conservation movement way back in the 80's as they reckoned they would just be making a rod for their own back.
They didn't weigh their odds, on going it alone, and perhaps decide that getting sustainable access rights from the greens was more probable than it would be getting it from industrial fishing, fish farming, oil and gas exploration, shipping, and any other well-heeled groups and activities I may have missed? Just asking, because that's what they're up against, right? The waters are getting more crowded, the stocks are shrinking for a number of reasons, and more and varied types of uses are being put on them.