Saving Seafood

Fight Over New England Marine Monument Continues

November 27, 2017 — On April 26, President Donald Trump ordered a review of two dozen national monuments created or expanded since 1996, which includes the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts that was created in the last days of the Obama administration. The monument, the first of its kind in the Atlantic Ocean, bans fishing, and oil, gas and mineral exploration within its boundaries.

In September, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended to Trump that the monument, located about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, be opened to commercial fishing. Zinke’s memo stated that instead of prohibiting commercial fishing, the government should allow it in the area under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is the primary law governing the United States’ marine fisheries and meant to prevent overfishing and guarantee a safe source of seafood.

Conservationists opposed Zinke’s recommendation, while fishing groups supported it.

“They act like this area is all pristine and never touched,” said Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association President Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer of the current protections. “Lobstermen have been fishing in those areas for the last 50-plus years with no negative effect on the marine species.”

The association is one of a handful of commercial fishing groups in an ongoing lawsuit that claims the Antiquities Act of 1906 only allows the president to create or expand monuments on land, not in the marine environment as Obama did.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Fight over national monuments intensifies

October 16, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Conservatives have opened a new front in the fight over the future of America’s national monuments.

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill to reform a century-old conservation law, raising the stakes in their ongoing effort to curtail the president’s’ ability to set aside wide swaths of federal land as national monuments and protect them from future development.

The new legislation, from Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), comes as the White House mulls reductions to several previously declared monuments. That’s an effort environmentalists consider an affront to the Antiquities Act, a law signed by conservation champion Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Conservatives, industry groups and Westerners have long pushed for changes to the Antiquities Act, saying presidents of both parties have abused the law, handcuffing local communities who could look to create jobs on public land. President Trump is an ally in that effort.

Environmentalists and most Democrats consider the Antiquities Act a bedrock American conservation law and have vowed to fight any effort to water it down.

The reform effort has its impetus in what conservatives consider an abuse of federal monument designation powers.

Sixteen presidents have used the Antiquities Act to lock up federal land over the last century. But President Obama used it the most often, and protected by far the most acreage — 553.6 million acres of land and sea monuments — inspiring a fresh round of legislative proposals.

Read the full story at The Hill

Bill proposes curtailing president’s power to create national monuments under Antiquities Act

October 11, 2017 — WASHINGTON — A Utah congressman has introduced a bill that he claims will restore the original intent of the Antiquities Act.

Bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop said the “National Monument Creation and Protection Act” aims to rid the 111-year-old law, which gives presidents the ability to set aside areas to protect their natural, cultural or scientific features, of political manipulation. If passed into law, the bill would severely cut back the president’s unilateral ability to create national monuments.

Bishop, a Republican, also serves as chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which is scheduled to review the bill Wednesday afternoon.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Gov. Baker team swims around marine monument controversy

Trump administration may reverse Obama decision creating monument

October 5, 2017 — BOSTON — In the course of the past year, a Connecticut-sized marine area off the coast of Cape Cod has been officially designated a national monument by one president and targeted for potential changes by the next.

It became subject to a new ban on commercial fishing, and now might have that ban removed.

Throughout the ping-ponging presidential decisions that have left the future of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument somewhat murky, the same concerns Gov. Charlie Baker first raised almost two years ago remain on the mind of his top environmental official.

“I think we’ve always pointed to the process, and making sure there was enough of a process that we know the right decisions have been made,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton said. “We weren’t definitely saying the right or wrong decision was made. We definitely think there is value in conservation of those resources, but it’s just is the management plan that’s put out as part of it the right one, and I think we would know that answer through a more robust process, and that’s what we’ve always pointed to as having not occurred.”

In September 2016, President Barack Obama declared the canyons and seamounts area, about 130 miles southeast of Massachusetts, the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument. When the White House changed hands this year, it was one of 27 monuments the President Donald Trump charged his interior secretary with reviewing.

Trump’s executive order called on Secretary Ryan Zinke to study certain monuments designated under the Antiquities Act, including those where the Interior Department determined the decision “was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders.”

Read the full story from State House News Service at WWLP

NCFC Member Grant Moore Joins Sen. Lee, Chairman Bishop on Antiquities Act Panel in Washington

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – October 4, 2017 – Grant Moore, president of NCFC member the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, joined Utah Senator Mike Lee and House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop in a Heritage Foundation panel today on Capitol Hill to discuss national monuments and the Antiquities Act.

At the panel, “National Monuments and the Communities They Impact: Views Beyond the Beltway,” Mr. Moore criticized last year’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument by President Barack Obama, which he said lacked sufficient industry input and public deliberation. The monument designation affects fisheries worth more than $100 million, he said.

“We’re not opposed to monuments,” Mr. Moore said. “We’re opposed to the process in which it was done. It was not transparent. It was not open. If we hadn’t stumbled upon what was happening, we would have had a signature and we wouldn’t have had a say at all.”

Mr. Moore complimented Chairman Bishop for meeting with fishermen and listening to their story in a visit to New Bedford, Mass., last year arranged by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities. He also praised another meeting organized by the NCFC earlier this year in which Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke met with fishermen in Boston as part of his review of national monuments.

Secretary Zinke has reportedly recommended to President Donald Trump that commercial fishing be allowed in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument. The Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, based in Newport, R.I., was one of eleven NCFC member organizations that publicly voiced its support for the Secretary’s reported recommendations. At today’s panel, Mr. Moore praised these recommendations, but called them a “Band Aid” that would not prevent the Antiquities Act from being misused to create large national monuments in the future.

“We need to reform the Antiquities Act so it’s not abused,” Mr. Moore said. “Nobody should have the power with the stroke of a pen to put people out of business. Nobody. It has to go through a public process.”

In his remarks, Senator Lee also called for changes to the Antiquities Act. “What’s needed is a wholesale reform of the Antiquities Act to return its monumental power back to where it belongs – to the people who reside closest to the proposed monuments,” he said. “Local residents must have ultimate say over whether their communities can be upended in this way.”

Chairman Bishop discussed the original intent of the Antiquities Act to save endangered antiquities while leaving the smallest footprint possible. But with national monuments now frequently encompassing hundreds of millions of acres, he argued that they are no longer leaving the smallest footprint possible.

“What started as something noble and grand turned into something far different, far less, and it is time now to reform it and make it useful again,” Chairman Bishop said. “The Antiquities Act desperately needs some kind of reform because it is being abused today.”

Watch the full panel here

The Threats Facing Deep-Sea Corals Off New England’s Coast

September 26, 2017 — About one hundred miles off the coast of Massachusetts, there are dramatic mountains and canyons, some larger than the Grand Canyon. Of course, they’re hidden under hundreds to thousands of feet of water. And they’re home to fragile and slow-growing deep-sea corals, and entire ecosystems that live on and around them.

Last September, President Obama declared nearly 5,000 square miles, encompassing three canyons and four seamounts, a marine national monument – the first on the Atlantic seaboard. The designation prohibited all commercial activity, including fishing and oil exploration.

Now, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that President Trump amend the designation to lift the ban on commercial fishing. If the president takes the advice, it doesn’t mean anything goes in that area. Instead, it returns oversight and regulation of fishing to the New England Fishery Management Council and federal officials.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

Debate Over Opening U.S. Atlantic Marine Monument To Fishing

September 22, 2017 — A leaked memo draft indicates that current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is considering allowing fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

The monument covers about 5,000 square miles off Cape Cod and it’s the first national monument in the U.S.’s Atlantic waters, designated last year by the Obama Administration.

When President Obama first created the monument, he said he was doing it in a way that “respects the fishing industry’s unique role in New England’s economy.” However many commercial fishing groups disagreed, as the monument designation banned most commercial fishing in the area, with red crab and lobster fishermen given seven additional years to fish there.

Read and listen to the full story at WBUR

Trump Plan to Open Up Monuments Draws Industry Praise, Environmentalists’ Ire

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is also moving to expand fishing, hunting at national monuments

September 21, 2017 — More than 100 miles off Cape Cod, a patch of the Atlantic Ocean conceals four undersea mountains, three canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and serves as a refuge for the world’s most endangered sea turtle.

It also supports a buffet of tuna and swordfish vital to the livelihood of New Jersey fisherman Dan Mears, whose lines have been banned from the zone since former President Barack Obama designated the area as the Atlantic’s first federal marine preserve last year.

But the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts could reopen to commercial fishing if President Donald Trump enacts the recent recommendations of his Interior Secretary to reduce protections of land and sea preserves known as national monuments.

“I couldn’t believe it when they cut that off,” said Mr. Mears, 58, of Barnegat Light, N.J., who owns the 70-foot fishing vessel Monica, and estimates he lost about one third of his catch after the area was closed to him and other types of commercial fishing last year. “It’s going to be huge if we can get that back.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose department manages federal lands, is making major moves to open up protected swaths of land and ocean to industry, recreational hunting, shooting and fishing.

In Hawaii, Mr. Zinke’s recommendation to allow fishing in the Remote Pacific islands about 300 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands could increase the catch there by about 4%, said Sean Martin, president of the Hawaii Longline Association.

“That may not sound like much, but if you cut your salary by 3% or 4% it’s a big deal to you,” Mr. Martin said. “Certainly this will have economic importance to us.”

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

Marine monument may be opened to fishing under Trump

September 19, 2017 — US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that President Trump make significant changes to 10 national monuments, including proposals to allow commercial fishing in a protected expanse off Cape Cod and to open woodlands in Northern Maine to “active timber management.”

Zinke’s recommendations, first reported by the Washington Post, could have significant consequences for New England. Allowing commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which encompasses nearly 5,000 square miles, would undermine the main goals of the controversial preserve, environmental advocates said.

Opponents of the marine monument, which includes most of the commercial fishing industry, hailed the recommendations. They have argued the area was protected with insufficient input from their industry.

“The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated after behind-closed-door campaigns led by large, multinational, environmental lobbying firms, despite vocal opposition from local and federal officials, fisheries managers, and the fishing industry,” said Eric Reid, general manager of Seafreeze Shoreside in Narragansett, R.I. “But the reported recommendations from the Interior Department make us hopeful that we can recover the areas we have fished sustainably for decades.”

Grant Moore, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, added: “There seems to be a huge misconception that there are limitless areas where displaced fishermen can go. Basically, with the stroke of a pen, President Obama put fishermen and their crews out of work and harmed all the shore-side businesses that support the fishing industry.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Interior Report Recommends Cuts or Changes to Seven National Land Monuments

September 19, 2017 — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended cutbacks or other changes to nearly half the geographic national monuments he recently reviewed at the request of President Donald Trump, according to a report sent to the White House and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The report recommends reducing the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante preserves in Utah, and reopening hundreds of thousands of square miles of protected oceans in both the Pacific and Atlantic to commercial fishing—in actions numerous environmental groups would likely fight to block.

Mr. Zinke recommended no changes to 17 other national monuments that the president included in the review, which he ordered after complaining some of his predecessors had locked up too much land and water in the preserves that can be created by presidents or Congress under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Most of the monuments that Mr. Zinke reviewed were created by two of Mr. Trump’s Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

If the president acts on the recommendations, they could have enormous economic implications in areas around the monuments.

For example, huge fisheries could reopen in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Prior to a nearly 600,000-square-mile area being created as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the region was a major fishery for Hawaii and Samoa, Mr. Zinke said in his report. Along with the two other marine monuments he singled out for change, he asked the president to take actions including through boundary reductions to allow most commercial fishing to resume.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal