FISHERIES CONSERVATION: WALKING THE WALK

 

While I usually focus on saltwater fisheries issues, I'm also generally aware of what's going on in the lakes and streams.  In that regard, I’m particularly concerned with heritage strains of our native brook trout, which have been adapting themselves to the conditions in local watersheds since the retreat of the last glaciers.

Thus, I joined a group called the Native Fish Coalition when it was formed a few years ago.  While the Coalition is concerned with preserving all native fish in their native waters, brook trout are high on its agenda.  This morning, I read something on the Coalition’s website caught my attention. 

Bob Mallard, the Coalition's executive director, had written a blog describing how some anglers were asking a state to stock non-native trout—primarily brown trout—into warm-water bass streams, in order to provide some trout fishing in the cooler months, even though the streams weren’t really suitable trout waters.  He asked why some anglers felt it was necessary to plant non-native trout everywhere, without thought to the consequences or even whether such stocking was biologically appropriate, and why organizations that emphasize trout conservation would support it.

He ended his essay by observing

“This is not meant as a declaration of war against brown trout, stocking, fishing, or anything else.  It’s simply meant to challenge the selling of recreation as conservation, while pointing out the mixed messages and bad science coming out of the trout fishing and advocacy community these days.

“If folks want to promote and improve ‘fishing,’ do it through the fishing clubs, not conservation organizations.  Mixing recreation and conservation confuses the masses, and makes the latter that much harder to sell...  [emphasis added]”

That advice doesn’t just apply to trout; it has broad application in many fisheries, including those that take place in salt water. 

Far too often, organizations that have a primarily recreational, or even a recreational industry, focus try gain greater credibility by cloaking their efforts in the mantle of conservation, even when the policies that they promote have no, or even negative, conservation implications.

I was thinking about that a few days ago after perusing the magazine of one of the nation’s bigger anglers’ rights groups.  I used to be an active member of the orgainization in question, serving as a member of its national Executive Board and as Vice Chair of its Government Relations Committee.  I resigned from those positions when they decided to change their focus from conservation to a “more fish for us” anglers’ rights agenda, but as I had already become a Life Member, I still get the magazine.

Usually, when the magazine comes in the mail, the first thing that I do is turn to its back pages, where there are brief reports on some of the efforts and objectives of both the national organization and its state chapters.  At one time, I would have described them as “conservation efforts,” and the group still has “Conservation” as a part of its name, but conservation isn’t a big part of what they're pushing these days.

The current issue describes the organization’s affiliation with other outdoor recreation and industry groups, which have staked out a position on the so-called “30x30” initiative, which is an ambitious goal, set by some conservation advocates and endorsed by some legislators, to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s lands and waters by the year 2030.

On the ocean, that means marine protected areas, a topic which has always raised some concerns in my mind, and which I wrote about a few weeks ago.  The magazine makes the usual claims that

“Marine conservation began with recreational anglers,”

and that

“Sportsmen and women continue to lead on conservation in the United States,”

But when one looks at some of the principles espoused by the coalition of recreation and industry groups that have banded together on 30x30, you find statements like

“Recognizing the positive roles that hunting and fishing play in conservation,”

and

“Protected area definitions that allow for well-managed and sustainable wildlife-dependent activities.”

Although I don't disagree with either of those basic principles, they go to the core of the recent Native Fish Coalition blog, as they are primarily concerned with promoting and maintaining recreational opportunity, with conservation being, at best, a secondary consideration.

However, the magazine does describe a legitimate conservation effort, to manage Atlantic menhaden as a forage fish rather than merely as an industrial feedstock, in a smaller article on a subsequent page.

State chapter activities saw the same kind of mixed-message split, with descriptions of three real conservation efforts—tagging Gulf tarpon in Alabama, trying to protect Gulf menhaden in Louisiana, and a suing North Carolina in an effort to improve its fisheries management policies—sandwiched between four articles promoting fish hatcheries for various speces, and two others heralding kill tournaments, including one that targeted badly overfished Pacific bluefin tuna.

Again, in promoting hatcheries and tournaments, promoting recreation is confused with conservation, even though the activities described are not at all consistent with legitimate conservation effports.  

Hatcheries, as a general rule, evidence conservation failures; if fish were properly managed, and harvest levels maintained at sustainable levels, natural reproduction would be sufficient to maintain stock health.  The very purpose of hatcheries is to maintain excessive and otherwise unsustainable harvest levels, to support recreational and, in some instances, commercial fisheries. 

If conservation was the primary concern, the first step would be to reduce fishing mortality—to zero if necessary—not to pump a legion of man-made fish into various rivers, bays, and the sea.

And the notion of an organization that professes to support conservation promoting a kill tournament for Pacific bluefin tuna, an overfished stock, pretty well speaks for itself.

Having said that, I’m not attempting to single out this particular organization for criticism.  It just happens to be large enough, and spans enough of the coast, to provide a good range of examples showing how efforts to promote recreational fishing activity are wrongly conflated with conservation, and how organizations often mislead the public into believing that they're looking out for the best interests of the fish, when they’re really looking out for fishermen and the fishing industry's bottom line.

Thus, Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a coalition of industry and anglers’ rights organizations, was clearly promoting recreation, and the recreational fishing and boating industries' interests, when he attacked the federal fishery management system 

“eliminates opportunities for Americans to share in share in America’s public resources,”

by imposing restrictive—but scientifically necessary—seasons and bag limits, and complained that

“Thousands of businesses—from bait and tackle shops along the coast to retailers and manufacturers across the nation—suffer the consequences of the government’s folly.  With their time on the water choked by regulation, boaters and anglers are far less likely to purchase goods and services related to fishing.  This has an impact on business.”

Yet he also couched his attack on Magnuson-Stevens, and his effort to weaken federal fisheries management, as a pro-conservation measure, because

“A considerable portion of the overall funding for the nation’s conservation efforts is in fact generated by recreational fishing licenses and excise taxes.”

In other words, the government ought to allow anglers to overfish, because by doing so, they will generate the revenues that they need to combat overfishing.

It’s a clearly nonsensical argument, but just another example of what can happen when people attempt to appear virtuous by talking about conservation, when they’re actually promoting a recreational, and not a conservation, agenda.

Contrast that language with the language used by Stripers Forever, an organization dedicated to striped bass conservation on the East Coast.  

While I’ve criticized the group in the past for exactly what I’m writing about today, promoting recreational fishing in the guise of conservation, that criticism is no longer valid.  Today, Stripers Forever advocates that, in addition to ending the commercial fishery,

“To further reduce striper mortality, the coastal recreational harvest would be carefully regulated to protect the population of large breeder fish and to promote and enforce the use of angling gear and techniques that do not unnecessarily damage stripers that are caught and then released.

“The allowable catch of wild striped bass should always be subordinated to conservation measures necessary to maintain a healthy population.  [emphasis added]”

And that is what real conservation advocacy sounds like:  Putting the needs of the fish ahead of wants of the fishermen, because in the end, if we want healthy fisheries—recreational or commercial—the fish must always come first.

No weasel words about killing more fish to provide more money for management.  No injections of factory-spawned hatchery fish to maintain unsustainable harvest.  No effort to remove the conservation burden from their own shoulders, and leave it for others to bear.

Cynics might say that, by advocating for a commercial closure, Stripers Forever is still promoting recreational fishing.  While there might be a grain of truth in such an assertion, it still amounts to little more than a squabble over allocation and the appropriate management measures, rather than an impeachment of Stripers’ Forever’s goals.

Because the core truth of its argument, that “The allowable catch of wild striped bass should always be subordinated to conservation measures necessary to maintain a healthy population” holds true whether or not there is a commercial fishery.

A commercial fishery might lead to slightly more restrictive recreational measures, but whether both fisheries were governed by regulations that constrained harvest to sustainable levels, or whether the commercial fishery is ended—something that’s been done with billfish offshore and a number of species inside state waters, and most fish in fresh waters, and so can’t really be viewed as extreme—leaving only anglers to fish at sustainable levels, the impact on striped bass would be the same.

They would thrive.

That's what fisheries conservation is about--keeping fish stocks healthy and abundant.  It’s not, in the first instance, about maintaining recreational (or commercial) landings, or promoting the fishing industry, or touting economic gains.

It’s about stewardship.  Putting the fish first.

Because if our stocks of fish thrive, our fisheries will do the same.