June 17, 2020 – The following was written by Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities, in response to CLF’s announcement that it is filing suit over a presidential proclamation restoring commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument:

The creation of an Atlantic Marine monument without appropriate stakeholder consultation has been a centerpiece of the Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF) political agenda for over five years.

In 2015, a public records request filed by Saving Seafood revealed emails showing that the CLF was working with the Center For American Progress, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Earth Justice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the National Geographic Society in an attempt to convince President Obama to announce the monument plan at the Our Ocean Conference in Chile in October 2015. In the emails, CLF’s Peter Shelley wrote, “I hope no one is talking about Chile to the outside world. It’s one of the few advantages we may have to know that it could happen sooner rather than later.” The email discussion included Monica Medina, who had served as Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere during President Obama’s first term.

In a subsequent interview with E&E News, Mr. Shelley made clear that the effort was aimed at getting the monument proclaimed before the fishing industry could fully engage in the public process. “The time was pretty short to pull it off. We thought there might be an opportunity we could get them to think about these areas for an announcement in conjunction with the Our Ocean Conference,” Mr. Shelley said. “We were trying to keep that quiet because we didn’t want to give the opposition more of an advantage. The more time they had, the more opportunity they would have to lobby, to fight it, to organize against it.”

The inclusion of prohibitions against commercial fishing was controversial throughout the process of creating the monument. A NOAA internal document in 2015 noted that the Atlantic deep-sea red crab and commercial and recreational pelagic fisheries for highly migratory species “have a substantial portion of their landings from within the proposed area.” The same document noted that “any designation within the jurisdiction of the New England or Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, as well as the Secretary of Commerce as delegated to NMFS/HMS Management Division, that restricts fishing activities will be seen as usurping their authorities. These processes are rigorous and provide for significant public input which this process does not.”

Managing commercial fishing sustainably under the Magnuson-Stevens Act is not controversial. CLF falsely states that President Trump “eliminated critical natural resource protections” in the monument. In fact, the Presidential proclamation explicitly states that commercial fishing inside the monument will be managed under Magnuson-Stevens. The proclamation “does not modify the monument in any other respect.”

On the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Magnuson-Stevens in 2016, CLF praised fisheries management under the Act, stating that Magnuson-Stevens is “the primary reason why the United States can say that it has the most sustainable fisheries in the world,” and “it has traditionally represented a bipartisan effort toward responsible management of our fishery resources, economically and environmentally.”

CLF was correct in noting that fisheries management has traditionally been bipartisan, and opposition to the prohibition of commercial fishing inside the monument was not a partisan issue. The commercial fishing industry is deeply grateful to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey for the work he did with the Obama White House to ensure that the offshore lobster industry and the red crab industry – the first Atlantic fishery to be certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council – received a seven-year moratorium before fishing for those species inside the monument would have been prohibited. It is because of Senator Markey’s efforts that those sustainable fisheries have been preserved. Senator Elizabeth Warren has also been a longtime champion of fisheries management under the successful Magnuson-Stevens Act.

CLF argues that President Trump’s modification of the monument created by President Obama is illegal. But President Obama exercised the power to modify monuments created by his predecessors to expand Pacific marine monuments created by President Bush. It would seem that CLF’s position is that it is legal for a president to modify monuments created by a predecessor when CLF agrees with the modification, but illegal when CLF disagrees with the modification.

CLF President Brad Campbell states that President Trump’s action puts “national monuments on the block for the highest political bidder.” The record is clear that the highest political bidder during the Obama years was the environmental community. That is why environmentalists succeeded in including a prohibition against commercial fisheries in President Obama’s monument proclamation, but not against their friends in recreational fishing. If Mr. Campbell is interested in finding the historical “highest political bidder” on the designation of marine monuments, he should look in his own office.

The environmental community had ample opportunity to create a protected area using the Marine Sanctuaries Act, and they have actively worked with both the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the New England Fishery Management Council on actions to protect those areas under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.  But, as NOAA noted, those “processes are rigorous and provide for significant public input.” Instead, they chose the politically expedient route, and used their contacts and clout in the Obama administration to circumvent the scientific and public process. What they are now discovering is that what one president might create with the stroke of a pen, another president might take away.