Washington, DC – In a big victory for commercial and recreational fishermen, the U.S. Congress on April 14 voted to defund the “catch shares” program, a controversial and wasteful fisheries management fiasco.
Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, said the program has been “blocking access to fish for thousands of smaller scale fishermen, destroying their livelihoods and our coastal and fishing communities.”
The widely-contested “catch shares” program on the East and West Coasts, a pet project of Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator and also under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, serves to privatize public trust resources by concentrating ocean fisheries in a few corporate hands.
This amendment, offered by Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, is part of the FY2011 budget that President Barack Obama signed into law on April 15.
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