July 11, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the Associated Press. In it, representatives of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) call for President Obama to use executive authority under the Antiquities Act to designate multiple national marine monuments off the coast of New England.
Last month, eight members of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) and the valuable fishing port of New Bedford, Mass., united in opposition to proposed Atlantic monuments. The groups agreed that fishing areas and resources should continue to be managed in the open and transparent manner stipulated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).
Previously, many of the environmental groups calling for Atlantic monuments expressed support for fisheries management under the MSA. In December, Pew called the MSA “the bedrock of one of the world’s best fishery management systems.” In April, the CLF wrote that the MSA is “the primary reason why the United States can say that it has the most sustainable fisheries in the world.” In February, the Environmental Defense Fund said that the MSA “has made the United States a global model for sustainable fisheries management.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Environmental conservationists aren’t giving up on trying to persuade the White House to designate an area in the Gulf of Maine as a national monument.
In the final months of President Barack Obama’s term, they’re hoping he’ll protect an underwater mountain and offshore ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine known as Cashes Ledge. They also want him to protect a chain of undersea formations about 150 miles off the coast of Massachusetts known as the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality said in March, and reiterated last week, that while the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts area is under consideration, Cashes Ledge currently is not. There are no marine national monuments in the Atlantic Ocean.
Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, said environmental groups seemed to be “in denial and shock” after the White House first said it wasn’t considering Cashes Ledge in March.
“I think they overplayed their hand. They arrogantly seemed to think that they could dictate to the White House,” he said on Wednesday.
Vanasse said fishing interests are now taking the White House at its word that Cashes Ledge is off the table. The industry is already struggling with quota cuts and climate change.
Commercial fishing groups oppose creating any marine monument in the Atlantic under the American Antiquities Act because the decision is left entirely to the president, Vanasse said. There are existing procedures to protect areas where the public participates in the process under the top law regulating fishing in U.S. oceans, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, he added.
“We’re not the fringe nutcases here,” Vanasse said. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald