The Pew Environment Group yesterday urged the Obama administration to "go slow" on fishermen’s catch shares, the economic system of fisheries management pushed by the Environmental Defense Fund and Jane Lubchenco, its former vice chairman, now the national administrator for fisheries.
"Do not make catch shares the default management system," said Lee Crockett, director of Pew’s federal fisheries policy. "One size fits all is inappropriate and ignores local variability."
Pew made its pitch for a cautious, bottom-up approach to catch shares in a national teleconference.
In the process, the Pew Environment Group, a unit of a $5 billion philanthropy, was sharply critical of the Environmental Defense Fund, another alpha environmental nonprofit organization that had $131 million in assets in 2008 and has emphasized the power of investors in fueling environmental policies such as any conversion to regulatory catch shares.
During an hour-long press conference from Washington, Zeke Grader, representing an association of West Coast fishing groups, cautioned against allowing "free-market ideologues to run the show." He later acknowledged he was referring to Environmental Defense, which has been leading the charge for catch shares and simultaneously promoting the shares, options in the commodification of common resources, as an investment opportunity for hedge-fund managers.