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Environmentalists weigh buying ocean land
By Jim Wasserman
Associated Press — April 6, 2004
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Environmentalists who successfully tapped taxpayer money to buy thousands of acres of California coastline to stop development are now targeting the Pacific Ocean, with a plan to curb human activity by buying boats, fishing permits and possibly underwater land.
The idea is provoking a renewed struggle between some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful environmental groups and California fishermen who fear they gradually will be booted off the ocean they prowl for recreation and profit.
California voters could be pulled into the fight this November.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken no position on proposals that ask voters to steer state bond money to environmentalists' ocean wish lists — and also create a Cabinet-level Ocean Protection Council within state government.
The proposals, sponsored by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and Washington, D.C.-based Oceans Conservancy, would represent the state's first major response to a Pew Oceans Commission report released last summer detailing the growing threat to the world's oceans from population growth and overfishing. They also represent a possible funding hike for ocean projects in a coastal state beset by cutbacks.
"The oceans are a public trust that bring billions for economic benefits, yet we keep the Department of Fish and Game on a starvation diet," said Karen Garrison, co-director of the NRDC's Ocean Initiative.
The 18-member Pew commission, a $5.5 million project of Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, recommends both a Cabinet-level ocean council and placing more areas of the ocean off limits to human and commercial activity.
"If we're going to reverse the trends that are happening right now with coastal development, water pollution, overexploitation of fishing and climate change, we need a lot more tools than we have now," said Chuck Cook, director of the California Coastal Marine Program for the Arlington, Va.-based Nature Conservancy.
Cook and others are seeking bond money to buy fishing boats and licenses that range from $150 to $150,000 each, and more for ocean mapping, remote vehicles with video cameras and scuba diving research time.
Other possibilities include leasing underwater land containing prime fish habitat and pilot projects to put more large ocean areas off limits to fishing and other human activity. In theory, the money could even buy oil leases within the state's three-mile offshore waters.
The target is money available under Proposition 50, the $3.44 billion bond measure that California voters passed in November 2002 to protect the state's coastlines and wetlands and restore its estuaries, bays and coastal waters. Supporters, including groups that financed and put Proposition 50 on the ballot two years ago, want now to expand the bond measure's mission.
To enact the proposals, the Senate and Assembly would have to approve a new use for the bond money by June 25, a legislative deadline that is flexible. California voters then would have to do the same in November.
If approved, a new Ocean Protection Council of legislators and key agency directors would help decide where to spend an amount of money that is so far unspecified.
Authored by one of the Legislature's most powerful members, Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, the bills cleared the Senate's key Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee on March 23, and are scheduled before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 19.
Opponents, including a wide variety of fishing groups and oil companies, still hope tight legislative deadlines will sink the bills, at least this year.
Recreational fishermen are especially hostile, believing the environmental agenda is to "lock up" more of the ocean and push them out of the state's regulatory process.
"It's like we don't have any representation," said Ron Aliotti, a Monterey fisherman and owner of the 34-foot fishing boat, the Silver Streak. "They want to keep it all pristine, just like God made it."
Randy Fry, government affairs director for the 6,000-member Pacifica-based Coastside Fishing Club, said fishermen believe "corporate environmental groups" are maneuvering around California's Department of Fish and Game and the fishing industry to impose restrictive "ocean zoning" and new no-fishing zones in state-controlled waters.
"Their No. 1 agenda is a network of marine reserves along the coast," said Fry, a contention Cook denies.
Fry was also critical of plans to buy fishing boats with Proposition 50 money, describing similar federal buyouts in recent years as "a welfare system for the commercial fishermen." He said several who took buyouts are back in business.
But Aliotti's cousin Rob in Monterey, who owns the 46-foot Alecia Dawn, expressed frustration with dwindling catches and increased regulations, saying, "Total it all up, write me a check and I'm through. I'll go buy me something on shore."
http://espn.go.com/outdoors/conservation/news/2004/0406/1776833.html
By Jim Wasserman
Associated Press — April 6, 2004
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Environmentalists who successfully tapped taxpayer money to buy thousands of acres of California coastline to stop development are now targeting the Pacific Ocean, with a plan to curb human activity by buying boats, fishing permits and possibly underwater land.
The idea is provoking a renewed struggle between some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful environmental groups and California fishermen who fear they gradually will be booted off the ocean they prowl for recreation and profit.
California voters could be pulled into the fight this November.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken no position on proposals that ask voters to steer state bond money to environmentalists' ocean wish lists — and also create a Cabinet-level Ocean Protection Council within state government.
The proposals, sponsored by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and Washington, D.C.-based Oceans Conservancy, would represent the state's first major response to a Pew Oceans Commission report released last summer detailing the growing threat to the world's oceans from population growth and overfishing. They also represent a possible funding hike for ocean projects in a coastal state beset by cutbacks.
"The oceans are a public trust that bring billions for economic benefits, yet we keep the Department of Fish and Game on a starvation diet," said Karen Garrison, co-director of the NRDC's Ocean Initiative.
The 18-member Pew commission, a $5.5 million project of Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, recommends both a Cabinet-level ocean council and placing more areas of the ocean off limits to human and commercial activity.
"If we're going to reverse the trends that are happening right now with coastal development, water pollution, overexploitation of fishing and climate change, we need a lot more tools than we have now," said Chuck Cook, director of the California Coastal Marine Program for the Arlington, Va.-based Nature Conservancy.
Cook and others are seeking bond money to buy fishing boats and licenses that range from $150 to $150,000 each, and more for ocean mapping, remote vehicles with video cameras and scuba diving research time.
Other possibilities include leasing underwater land containing prime fish habitat and pilot projects to put more large ocean areas off limits to fishing and other human activity. In theory, the money could even buy oil leases within the state's three-mile offshore waters.
The target is money available under Proposition 50, the $3.44 billion bond measure that California voters passed in November 2002 to protect the state's coastlines and wetlands and restore its estuaries, bays and coastal waters. Supporters, including groups that financed and put Proposition 50 on the ballot two years ago, want now to expand the bond measure's mission.
To enact the proposals, the Senate and Assembly would have to approve a new use for the bond money by June 25, a legislative deadline that is flexible. California voters then would have to do the same in November.
If approved, a new Ocean Protection Council of legislators and key agency directors would help decide where to spend an amount of money that is so far unspecified.
Authored by one of the Legislature's most powerful members, Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, the bills cleared the Senate's key Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee on March 23, and are scheduled before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 19.
Opponents, including a wide variety of fishing groups and oil companies, still hope tight legislative deadlines will sink the bills, at least this year.
Recreational fishermen are especially hostile, believing the environmental agenda is to "lock up" more of the ocean and push them out of the state's regulatory process.
"It's like we don't have any representation," said Ron Aliotti, a Monterey fisherman and owner of the 34-foot fishing boat, the Silver Streak. "They want to keep it all pristine, just like God made it."
Randy Fry, government affairs director for the 6,000-member Pacifica-based Coastside Fishing Club, said fishermen believe "corporate environmental groups" are maneuvering around California's Department of Fish and Game and the fishing industry to impose restrictive "ocean zoning" and new no-fishing zones in state-controlled waters.
"Their No. 1 agenda is a network of marine reserves along the coast," said Fry, a contention Cook denies.
Fry was also critical of plans to buy fishing boats with Proposition 50 money, describing similar federal buyouts in recent years as "a welfare system for the commercial fishermen." He said several who took buyouts are back in business.
But Aliotti's cousin Rob in Monterey, who owns the 46-foot Alecia Dawn, expressed frustration with dwindling catches and increased regulations, saying, "Total it all up, write me a check and I'm through. I'll go buy me something on shore."
http://espn.go.com/outdoors/conservation/news/2004/0406/1776833.html
