People
much like us have been on Earth for more than a quarter-million years, which
might be just an eyeblink in geological time, but is more than long enough to
establish patterns of behavior, and to explore all of the pathways to both
enlightenment an error.
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which has been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing
under the sun.”
I started thinking about that, and its connection to
fisheries management, while reading Ed
Van Put’s excellent book, The Beaverkill,
a while ago.
Anyone at all familiar with the history of angling in
America will recognize the Beaverkill as one of the nation’s legendary trout
streams, the home waters of some of the best-known fly fishermen in the
country, and one of the places most associated with the forms and traditions of
fly fishing in the Northeast. However,
while The Beaverkill is generally focused on the river, its trout and its
anglers, it includes a far broader narrative that also encompasses the region and the
people that have lived and moved through since pre-Columbian times.
Passenger pigeons are a part of that story.
At one time, they were a very significant part. As Van Put tells us,
“Passenger pigeons nested in immense numbers, covering
thousands of acres; they chose areas of dense forest, with plenty of forest and
mast…
“Pigeons flying through the sky, wave after wave, in
countless numbers, presented an image of ‘fearful power that frightened beasts
as well as man…
“Trees were filled with nests, often fifty or more in a
single treetop…so many pigeons would collect in the trees that their
accumulated weight would break the branches, leaving the nesting site desolate,
as if a great hurricane or tornado had swept through the forest.
“Noise and chaos were companions of the nesting ground, and
the screaming and squealing pigeons made when roosting could be heard for
miles: 'From an hour before sunset until nine or ten o’clock at night there is
one continued roar, resembling that of a distant waterfall.’
“Even when feeding on the forest floor, pigeons were a sight
long remembered. They were so numerous
and close to one another that the ground could scarcely be seen, and those who witnessed
these events marveled at how they left not a leaf unturned in their search for
beechnuts.”
In other words, there were a lot of them. Or, to borrow a term from fisheries
management, the biomass was extremely high.
It was so high that, when the pigeons migrated into the Beaverkill
country to nest, the migration triggered a great hunt that, in those days
before regulations, saw people turn out to kill birds in numbers that are unimaginable
today.
“When they were in season, nothing was talked of, or eaten,
but passenger pigeon. To those settlers
trying to survive the rugged existence of Catskill mountain life, they were a
welcome source of food…They were salted down in barrels for winter use and
shared with less fortunate neighbors whose food supply was not as plentiful.
“While some were killed for home use, the greatest number
found their way to markets in major
cities. Commercially minded men were attracted to this great natural resource
and killed or captured pigeons primarily for sale to restaurants and hotels…
“Once a roost was located, roads were cut into mountainsides
to enable wagons to haul pigeons to market.
Buyers would erect coops or cages for holding live birds and haul in
barrels and ice for shipping dead birds.
Day after day, two-horse wagons loaded with pigeons would their way out
of the forest…If a rafting freshet coincided with nesting pigeons, most every raft
leaving the upper Delaware carried a load of the birds…”
Billions of pigeons filled the forest, but billions of pigeons
were also killed, and the pigeon hunters found themselves running up against a
harsh but unavoidable reality: High biomass,
by itself, doesn’t guarantee the health of a population, whether we’re talking
about passenger pigeons in the early 19th Century or fish such as black sea bass
today.
Even with biomass at extremely high levels, removals—the number
of individuals taken out of a population—matter. High levels of abundance may allow higher harvests,
but there is still an upper limit on the amount of mortality a population can
sustain in the long term. Today, we have
science-based harvest limits, for both birds and fish, that seek to balance
biomass and removals.
Such limits are a critical part of the management
process, Even so, they’re often not
popular when people see an abundance of game or fish and, concentrating on only
one side of the picture, want to kill more.
Back in the early 1800s, there were no such constraining rules,
so we shouldn’t be shocked by what happened next—although we probably should be
discomfited when we see some people trying to lead us down a similar road
today.
The passenger pigeon population, unable to sustain the pressure
that people were putting upon it, began to decline.
As Van Put notes,
“Reports by sportsmen repeatedly indicated that the passenger
pigeon was in trouble. The size of the
stocks kept diminishing, while the destructive forces exploiting them
multiplied.”
While he wrote about passenger pigeons, and what they
were going through a century and a half ago, a lot of East Coast anglers would
certainly nod their heads in agreement, and make no exception, if someone used
similar language with respect to striped bass today.
What happened next seems to be part of the striped bass
story, too. Just change the dates, the species,
and some of the places, and the story sounds much the same.
“By 1890, pigeons were scarce everywhere in the East. Traditional hunting grounds were now being
abandoned, and the birds were being drawn westward into the forests of Michigan,
Wisconsin and Canada. Even though
everyone was aware of the wholesale slaughter of pigeons for commercial purposes,
there
were those who refused to believe the birds were in danger of becoming
extinct. They believed that, owing to
the birds’ persecution, the pigeons simply disappeared to a distant
an unexplored part of the country and hid themselves. [emphasis added]”
It’s impossible not to draw parallels between that overly-optimistic
view of the pigeon stock and today's unsupported claims that the striped bass
population is not overfished, as the
most recent stock assessment reveals, but instead
is still thriving somewhere offshore.
It’s a claim that’s not limited to striped bass. Over the years, I’ve heard the same things
said about bluefish, about bluefin tuna, and about cod and other species that
were not doing well, advanced by people who earned their livings catching fish, and might be temporarily
inconvenienced if landings were cut back.
It's as if we haven't learned anything in
the past 150 years, and so still make claims about fish doing fine in some distant and undiscovered locale. It seems that some are determined to reprise the passenger pigeon’s song.
I’m not suggesting, as I write this, that the striped bass population is in
any way imperiled. As of the end of
2017, the female spawning stock biomass was still three or four times as large
as it was in 1982, in the depths of the last collapse. And even in ‘82, the stock remained a long,
long way from extinction. On the other
hand, if fishery managers don’t take prompt and effective action to rebuild
abundance, things could get quite a bit worse than they are right now.
In the case of the passenger pigeon,
“The cry for their protection was a long time coming, and
once the birds began their downward spiral, it was too late.”
The bass stock seems much more resilient; it recovered from
collapse once, and there is good reason to believe that, should it become
further troubled, it could recover again.
But belief is a long way from certainty, and there’s no
doubt that some things have changed.
There’s no guarantee that the bass population could recover so quickly
again.
No one born in the last hundred years has seen a live
passenger pigeon. Even their parents
probably never heard a flock in the woods scream and squeal. Yet, even today, the passenger pigeon’s song
reprises itself at fishery management meetings.
We hear it when fishermen try to justify bigger kills based on the size of fish stocks, but ignore the size of the kill.
We hear it when people deny stock declines by claiming that
the fish “have just moved,” although data denies their contentions.
We hear it when people only think of themselves, today, and
not of the world that their children live in tomorrow.
No one should be singing that sort of song anymore.
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
I never thought that old Red got much of anything right, and in his quote, he's wrong on more time.
While the passenger pigeon’s demise was certainly a tragedy,
should history repeat itself, whether with striped bass, winter flounder or any
other species of bird, beast or fish, it would not be a farce.
It would just be a greater tragedy, proving that there truly
is nothing new under the sun, that what we have done once, we will do again,
and that we truly can never learn from our mistakes.
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