Just last
Sunday, I posted a piece speculating on this year’s election, and how it
might affect fisheries conservation efforts.
Now, with the big day behind us, the future is clearer, and it looks
very bad.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine it being much worse.
This nation has chosen an aging, tower-dwelling Manhattanite
with a strange, orange-hued tan that comes from inside a bottle, and not from
the rays of the sun. Unlike so many presidents
of the past century, from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush, Donald Trump
is neither an angler nor any other kind of outdoorsman, and seems to feel no
kinship with either the earth or the sea.
He is, however, the President-elect of the United States.
CNN
has reported that Mr. Trump’s transition teams were
“set to parachute into government agencies, get the lay of
the land, begin the transition process and get Trump’s 100-day plan rolling.
“The transition plan was delivered to Trump Tower Tuesday. In
particular, aides have focused on what Trump can do unilaterally, such as
rolling back regulations.”
Anyone who has followed Mr. Trump’s campaign will know that
he holds regulations intended to protect America’s air, water and natural
resources in particular contempt, a fact demonstrated by his
choice of Myron Ebell, one of the most infamous “climate change skeptics,” to
head the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.
There is no reason to believe that regulations affecting the
health of marine fisheries will receive any more sympathetic treatment.
Mr. Trump’s anti-conservation, pro-exploitation message
echoes the 2016
Republican platform, which includes a plank stating
“We are the party of America’s growers, producers, farmers,
ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those who bring from
the earth the crops, minerals, energy and the bounties of our seas that are the
lifeblood of our economy. Their labor
and ingenuity, their determination in bad times and love of the land at all
times, powers our economy, creates millions of jobs, and feeds billions of
people around the world. Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus
in government valued the role of extractive industries and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its interference with their
work. That has radically
changed. We look in vain within the
Democratic Party for leaders who will speak for the people of agriculture,
energy and mineral production. [emphasis added]“
It will also play well with the slash-and-burn majority on
the House Natural Resources Committee, which approved H.R.
1335, the so-called “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing
Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act,” which is intended to gut key
stock rebuilding and conservation provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens
Fisheries Conservation and Management Act.
H.R. 1335 was ultimately passed by the House, and there is
little doubt that the next Congress, where such majority members continue to
hold sway, will quickly consider and pass a similar piece of legislation next
year. There is also little doubt that,
should such bill make it through the Senate, it will be quickly and cheerfully
signed by Mr. Trump, an event that would set American marine fish stocks back
twenty years, to the days before the Sustainable
Fisheries Act was signed into law.
It’s not hard to imagine the upcoming Congress cutting the
National Marine Fisheries Service’s funding, although that is merely
speculation at this time.
Efforts to emasculate Magnuson-Stevens, if successful, would
strike a dire enough blow to America’s fisheries, but in the upcoming few
years, we’ll doubtless see worse.
Fish obviously live in the water, and many important
recreational species, including striped bass, steelhead and the various salmon,
ascend rivers to spawn and spend the earliest part of their lives. In the case of salmon and steelhead, critical
spawning areas often extend to the uppermost headwaters of rivers. Under the new administration, clean water
regulations will most assuredly be repealed, leaving already stressed runs of
fish vulnerable to further depletion and, in the case of a number of salmon and
steelhead runs, even extinction.
To again quote the Republican platform,
“The [Environmental Protection Agency’s] Waters of the United
States (WOTUS) rule…is a travesty. It
extends the government’s jurisdiction over navigable waters into the
micro-management of puddles and ditches on farms, ranches, and other
privately-held property. Ditches, dry
creek beds, stock ponds, prairie potholes, and non-navigable wet areas are
already regulated by the states…We must never allow federal agencies to seize control
of state waters, watersheds, or groundwater.
State waters, watersheds, and groundwater must be the purview of the
sovereign states.”
Such language bodes ill for anadromous fish dependent on
tributary brooks for their spawning and ultimate survival (and, although this
is not a hunting blog, for ducks who depend on the prairie potholes of the
Midwestern “duck factory” for most of their nesting). It suggests that other rules, such as that which set
the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load of nitrates, phosphates and
other pollutants that threaten striped bass spawning and nursery grounds, could
be repealed.
And yet, again, that is not all of the damage that we could
see done over the next few years, as the platform goes on to say
“The government at every level must always pay just
compensation whenever it takes private property to achieve a compelling public
use, with the money coming from the budget of the agency performing the
taking. This includes the taking of
water rights and the taking of property by environmental regulations that
destroy or diminish the property’s value.”
Since its unlikely that Congress is going to give lavish
funding to either the Environmental Protection Agency or the Fish &
Wildlife Service, if the platform’s goals are enacted, a plethora of
environmental and conservation regulations would become effectively
unenforceable. That would hit steelhead
and salmon particularly hard, because in the west, they compete with ranchers
and farmers for water that has grown ever more scarce due to climate change.
Consider the case of the San Joaquin/Sacramento River
drainage, where one run of Chinook salmon is endangered, and one run of Chinook
and one run of steelhead trout (along with a distinct population of green
sturgeon) are deemed to be threatened .
At the request of the Department of the Interior, the
National Marine Fisheries Service reviewed the operations of two huge water
projects that pump enough water out of the rivers to serve 25 million
customers, to determine how such pumping effects the runs of threatened and
endangered fish. NMFS found that such
pumping jeopardized such species, and ordered that the projects adjust their
operations in order to protect the salmon and steelhead.
In response, ten water districts and similar entities sued,
leading to a
federal appellate court decision that upheld NMFS action and included the
memorable words
“People need water, but so do fish.”
Thus, some critically depleted runs of salmon and steelhead
were given a chance to survive.
But if the Republican platform is fully implemented, the
fish would only become more endangered, for NMFS would never be able to afford to pay “just
compensation” for leaving water in the streambeds where it flowed for millennia,
and supported lush salmon runs, before the projects were built.
And that platform would extend little hope to such endangered
salmon runs, for it provides that
“the Endangered Species Act (ESA) not include species…if
these species exist elsewhere in healthy numbers in another state or country.”
Which means that a good run of Chinook or steelhead up in
Alaska, or maybe in Canada, would justify allowing the fish to disappear completely
from the waters of Washington, Oregon and California.
On the east coast, the last Atlantic salmon could be extirpated from
Maine because fish still ran up rivers in Norway and Iceland.
Even in cases where the Act clearly applied, according to
the platform
“The ESA should assure that the listing of endangered species
and the designation of critical habitats…balance the protection of endangered
species with the costs of compliance and the rights of property owners. Instead, over the last few decades, the ESA
has stunted economic development, halted the construction of projects, [and] burdened
landowners…”
It’s pretty clear where steelhead or salmon would stand in
the order of things, when dollars are on the line…
And if folks on most of the east coast figure they’d be
largely safe since, other than Maine, they don’t host any salmon, they ought to
start thinking about the effects of drilling for gas and oil right off their
shores.
Last spring, President
Obama banned drilling off the Atlantic coast, but the Republican majority’s
platform provides that
“Planning for our energy future requires us to first
determine what resources we have in reserve…That is why we support the opening
of public lands and the outer continental shelf to exploration and responsible
production.”
Should those plans be realized, East Coast anglers can look
forward to seismic testing taking place on the tilefish grounds of the
northeast canyons, and in the deep waters where swordfish hunt in the daytime,
before they rise to the glow of our lightsticks at night.
No matter how “responsible” production
efforts may be, accidents happen, and experience tells us that surfcasters at
places like Hatteras, Long Beach Island and Montauk may one day find beaches
fouled, as wells fail and gush oil into the sea.
It’s impossible to say how much of the majority party’s
platform will be enacted. Although the
House has demonstrated its eagerness to exploit natural resources regardless of
the ultimate cost, the Senate has been more moderate. That has certainly been the case with
fisheries issues, where the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere,
Fisheries and Coast Guard, chaired
by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), steered a responsible course in the
current session and, unlike the House, did not seek to weaken
Magnuson-Stevens.
The Senate also offers the possibility of filibustering particularly
heinous efforts to weaken federal conservation laws. Under current rules, 60 votes are necessary
to assure passage of any Senate legislation, and with the number of Democratic
seats increasing to at least 48, there is hope that a filibuster
will prevent the worst bills from being signed into law.
Even so, things look pretty bleak. Angling organizations such as the
Coastal Conservation Association and American Sportfishing Association, which
were effective stewards of the resource just a decade ago, are now seeking to
weaken federal fisheries laws.
Perhaps William Butler Yeats put it best, in The
Second Coming.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot
hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are filled with a passionate intensity.
“…And what rough beast, its hour come
round at last,
Slouches toward [Washington] to be
born?”
Interesting take. Why are hunters so excited about Trump and fisherman so worried? Knowing some people close to Trump, I am honestly not worried at all. He wants outdoorsmen, like his children, to be able to enjoy their sport. Mass media does a great job making people thinking its all hellfire and damnation, but we will be just fine.
ReplyDeleteHunters are mainly concerned with Second Amendment issues, and Trump had the better position on those. But even then, generalizing that hunters are 100% behind Trump is a vast overstatement. I’ve hunted over a good portion of the United States, in Canada and in Africa, and I’m concerned about how his administration will treat public lands. He claims that he won’t support divesting them, but his party’s platform says otherwise, so it’s a matter of wait and see. The platform also supports large-scale exploitation of public land by frackers, drillers, miners, loggers, ranchers, etc., without mention of the need for wilderness areas. I know that a lot of western hunters are deeply concerned over the fate of their public hunting lands. As far as his impact on fish stocks go, I can only take the man and his party at their word. When they say that commercial fishermen should be allowed to operate free of government interference, that can only mean bad things for the health of fish stocks. When you put one of the most notorious climate change deniers in charge of your EPA transition team, that doesn’t bode well for fish such as striped bass, which require cold winters and wet springs for successful spawns. When you support offshore drilling on the US east coast, that’s going to impact the health of bottom habitat on the outer continental shelf and continental slope, and could lead to oil fouling inshore beaches and structure as well. When you talk about limiting the federal government’s ability to regulate water use, and favor water use by farmers, ranchers, etc., you put salmon, steelhead and other anadromous fish at risk, encourage the growth of the so-called “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, and put places such as Chesapeake Bay, Florida Bay and Long Island Sound at risk. What I wrote wasn’t really my “take” on the election, it was taking the Republican party at its word, and considering what its proposed actions would do to fish stocks. Trump’s sons are active outdoorsmen, but they live in a different world from the rest of us. They don’t have to worry about how to pay for a $20,000 elk hunt on an exclusive ranch in New Mexico, or paying $1,000/day for a chance to fly fish a private spring creek in Montana. I have no doubt that Trump will protect that lifestyle. I do doubt that he’s going to look after the guy who saves his money and vacation days throughout the year, in order to spend a couple weeks hunting elk out of a pup tent on BLM land in Wyoming, or who spends his spare time fishing the Willamette River, waiting for salmon to show.
DeleteHe wants his children (and friends) to enjoy hunting and fishing on a ginourmous 750,000 acre ranch in the west that he will BUY, put a fence around and keep you out.
ReplyDeleteObviously we dont know this will happen yet, but lots of us in the west ARE worried about public land (and high water mark RIVER) access...
Trump won the GOP nomination by taking on the party elite and their love for endless foreign wars and cheap labor to increase corporate and Wall Street profits (funny, same things Hilary stood for....).
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm not too concerned about Trump following the platform of the very special same special interests he has spent the last year defeating.