Bush May Create Largest Marine Reserves in World

Conservationists in the US are trying to push through a broad, sweeping conversion of much of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coastline to a National Monument status under the 1906 Antiquities Act. This obscure act gives the President and him alone, the power to sign into being these huge areas that will be closed to, among many other things, fishing – yes, that means exactly that – no fishing.

The areas under consideration are vast, although because all the meetings have been admittedly secret – that is behind closed doors and by invitation only – the documentation on where these areas will lie has been difficult if not impossible to obtain.

Fundamentalist environmental extremist groups like Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, Pew Environmental Group, and Marine Conservation Biology Institute are pushing this issue, and it could very possibly be done without any public discussion on where the facts, figures and science point.

As I have stated in many other posts, the radical environmentalists and anti-fishing folks seem to have quietly gone away. In fact, they are working harder than ever to take our fishing heritage away, one protected area at a time.

You hear very little public outcry from these people any more. That’s because all their efforts are behind the scenes. Had NPR, a staunch supporter of many of these groups, not aired the story, most of us would still be in the dark.

Listen to and read about these stories and take action for your future fishing rights. It’s not too late to write the US Secretaries of Commerce and Interior, and even the President. If you oppose governing without fair representation, you need to write.

I am all for conserving our fishing resource. We need to take action to preserve and protect that resource. But, simply marking off huge areas of water at random – which is apparently what is being done - simply does not make sense.

Need addresses?

Carlos Gutierrez (cgutierrez@doc.gov)
Secretary of Commerce
U.S. Department of Commerce
1401 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20230

James Connaughton (chairman@ceq.eop.gov)
Council on Environmental Quality
722 Jackson Place, NW
Washington, DC 20503