A POTENTIAL NEW THREAT TO THE PUBLIC'S ABILITY TO ACCESS MARINE RESOURCES

On January 27, 2021, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order intended to address climate change and related environmental threats.  Included in that order was language that instructed the Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with other agency heads, to prepare a report

“recommending steps that the United States should take, working with State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen, and other key stakeholders, to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”

Taken at face value, the executive order seemed beneficial, as the conservation of the nation’s lands and waters is a worthwhile and necessary goal.  The resultant report, “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” set an appropriate tone, reinforcing the need for conservation action, but also recognizing that conserved lands and waters do not need to be placed out of the reach of affected stakeholders, and acknowledging that stakeholders are an inherent part of the conservation process.  A portion of the report’s introduction reads:

“The President’s national conservation goal also provides an opportunity to better honor and support the people and communities who serve as stewards of our lands and waters.  Rather than simply measuring conservation progress by national parks, wilderness lands, and marine protected areas in the care of the government, the President’s vision recognizes and celebrates the voluntary conservation efforts of farmers, ranchers, and forest owners; the leadership of sovereign Tribal Nations in caring for lands, waters, and wildlife; the contributions and stewardship traditions of America’s hunters, anglers, and fishing communities; and the vital importance of investing in playgrounds, trails, and open space in park-deprived communities.  The President’s challenge is a call to action to support locally led conservation and restoration efforts of all kinds and all over America, wherever communities wish to safeguard the lands and waters they know and love.  Doing so will not only protect our lands and waters but also boost our economy and support jobs nationwide.”

That’s a vision that I, and I believe most saltwater anglers, can readily support.  It is a vision that would benefit our oceans and the living marine resources that reside therein, and by benefiting such resources, would benefit anglers and angling-related businesses as well.

Unfortunately, as I noted in an essay that I published on this site more than one year ago, there are some in the conservation community who are viewing the so-called “30x30” initiative not only as a way to conserve and safeguard the nation’s coastal waters, but as a way to promote no-take marine reserves that would effectively prevent public access to publicly-owned marine resources.

On October 7, 2021, a group of 44 marine scientists sent a letter to the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of the Interior, along with other leading government officials, alleging that

“We must strengthen and expand our U.S. [Marine Protected Area] system to achieve the vision of America the Beautiful.”

Such letter also recommended that the government

“Establish additional highly to fully protected areas in more U.S. regions,”

a recommendation that, if enacted, would assure that anglers on every coast would likely be confronted with closed areas that prevented them from accessing the fish present therein, even if such fish belonged to healthy populations and were being fished at or below target mortality levels, or included highly migratory species that did not linger in the closed areas and were vulnerable to capture elsewhere throughout most of the year.

Despite the burden that such arbitrary prohibitions would place on the recreational fishing communities adjacent to and dependent on the closed areas, far too many conservation groups are also calling for the creation of such “fully protected” marine reserves as part of the 30x30 process. 

Now, a paper recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters proposes a new idea that would support no-take marine protected areas while further burdening public access.  Titled “Self-financed marine protected areas,” its abstract states

“Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an important tool for conservation but can be victims of their own success—higher fish biomass within MPAs create incentives to poach.  This insight underpins the finding that fishing persists in most MPAs worldwide, and it raises questions about MPA monitoring and enforcement.  We propose a novel institution to enhance MPA design—a “Conservation Finance Area (CFA)”—that utilizes leased fishing zones inside of MPAs, fed by spillover, to finance monitoring and enforcement and achieve greater conservation success.  Using a bioeconomic model we show that CFAs can fully finance enforcement, deter illegal fishing, and ultimately maximize fish biomass.  Moreover, we show that unless a large, exogenous, and perpetual enforcement budget is available, implementing a CFA in a no-take MPA would always result in higher biomass than without.  We also explore real-world enabling conditions, providing a plausible funding pathway to improve outcomes for existing and future MPAs.”

As a practical matter, what that means is that the creation of an MPA, with an accompanying Conservation Financing Area, would not only deny anglers access to the marine resources present in the protected area, but also to those resources located outside the protected area itself, but within the region designated as a “finance area,” where access to such resources would be limited to the highest bidders—almost certainly commercial fishing enterprises.

Anglers would almost certainly be unable to compete for access in an environment when

“A CFA would be a designated area around a no-take zone where fishing vessels can lease exclusive fishing rights, with the proceeds of leasing used to finance MPA enforcement.”

The paper’s authors attempt to justify such pay-to-play access by likening the lease fees to the fees paid for toll roads, tuition at public universities, or the entrance fees at national parks, but none of those comparisons are appropriate, as access to toll roads, and at least to the extent that space is available, to public universities and national parks, is not exclusive; anyone may access such facilities at any time.  That would not be the case in a Conservation Financing Area, where exclusive fishing rights are granted.

Even more egregious is the authors’ efforts to liken fishing in a CFA to hunting in “game reserve” which

“collect[s] sizeable access fees in exchange for special hunting opportunities in areas of high diversity and abundance,”

as such game reserves offer their product (given their nature, I hesitate to call such activities “hunts”) on private land, surrounded by high fences, which constrain the movement of animals that are often purchased and artificially stocked and/or raised by the landowner.  Such activity not conceptually different from raising and harvesting cattle or any other sort of farmed livestock.  The CFA, on the other hand, would see a governmental entity selling the right to harvest public resources to the highest bidder, while preventing broad public access to the public waters in which such resources reside.

It is a concept that would be anathema to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which is used by the United States to manage just about all wildlife other than living marine resources, which includes among its principles that

“wildlife resources are a public trust to be managed by governments for the benefit of all citizens…”

and

“opportunity for all, which means that every citizen has the freedom to view, hunt and fish, regardless of social or economic status.”

Thus, one would hope that the Conservation Financing Area concept would never find root in U.S. fisheries management.  Still, when the realities of shrinking agency budgets collide with demands for no-take marine protected areas, it is a concept that some bureaucrats might well find attractive.

But if the paper proposing such CFAs arguably creates a new threat to public access, it also inadvertently creates a case against the use of no-take areas.  For in its discussion of creating financing areas in conjunction with such MPAs, it posits that the relevant agency would

“zone the MPA to allow for different uses in different areas…a zoning scheme that divides the MPA into two areas:  a no-take zone where all extractive activities are prohibited and human use is regulated, and a CFA where fishing effort is strictly controlled and managed for sustainability.”

Yet if such regional distinctions in fishery management are possible to establish and enforce, why not merely adopt management measures that would assure that fishing is held to sustainable levels throughout the region, eliminating the need to enforce the boundaries of a no-take area?

If it is possible to enforce the rules in one area, where no fishing at all is allowed, and in an adjacent area, where fish are theoretically abundant enough that fishermen would be willing to pay for exclusive rights to presumably high harvests, why not just impose regulations across the entire area that would average out the landings (or lack thereof) from both areas, and have the same net effect?

The paper implicitly admits that is possible, when it states

“The complexity of problems affecting the ocean requires a diverse set of solutions.  While MPAs may benefit diversity by spatially managing threats in certain contexts, other strategies, particularly adequate fisheries management and community-based management, can be similarly effective alternatives or compliments.  [emphasis added]”

 Such admission reinforces the fact that, while no-take MPAs may remain in fishery managers’ toolbox to address specific situations, they are not a panacea, and should not be the primary alternative that managers reach for, whether the goal is to achieve 30x30 or to restore and maintain healthy fish stocks.