spectr17
06-07-2003, 02:16 PM
Sports fishing groups looking to land support
6/05/2003
BY TOM MEADE, Providence Journal Sports Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It's National Fishing and Boating Week, and the sport fishing community is anchored on Capitol Hill, angling for Congressional support on four issues:
Recreational fishing access to all federal waters.
An amendment to the Clean Water Act, providing for more fishable waters.
A voice in how hydroeletric dams are licensed.
Continuing a federal excise tax on fishing tackle and motorboat fuel.
The American Sportfishing Association (ASA), based in Alexandria, Va., this week organized a series of meetings on key issues facing the recreational fishing community. Tuesday, the association's professional lobbyists began briefing tackle manufacturers, retailers and individual anglers on how to approach members of Congress on the four issues of focus.
"We're being outdone by our enemies and we're no longer a priority of our friends," lobbyist Jim Range told a group of tackle manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and anglers Monday. With a divided Congress focused on the economy, national security, Social Security, and other big issues, fishing and the health of the nation's waters have slipped off the priority list on Capitol Hill.
"We haven't won much in a long time," Range said. "We may have kept a couple of things from happening, but we haven't won much."
The fishing community has scores of conservation issues on its agenda, but officials of the sport fishing group believe they can be more effective on Capitol Hill this week by concentrating on only four priorities:
Recreational-fishing access: Two other national groups, including the Pew Oceans Commissions, this week recommended new restrictions on fishing, including total closures of some marine areas. In California, 175 square miles of the ocean, near the Channel Islands, have been closed to all fishing. The ban has devasted the sport-fishing business there, according to Bill Shedd, chairman of the ASA's political affairs committee.
"We're not opposed to closed areas," said Bob Hayes, a lobbyist who represents the Coastal Conservation Association. "We're not opposed to the management of the resource. . . . We are, in fact, in favor of using all the traditional management tools available to fisheries managers to go ahead and recover stocks. What we are opposed to is being arbitraily excluded from areas where we ought to be able to fish because we aren't doing any damage."
The Freedom To Fish Act, would require fishery managers to produce scientific evidence that anglers are the cause of a problem before closing an area to them. And if sport fishing is banned in an area, regulators would have to provide a schedule for solving the problem, allowing anglers to return.
More fishable waters: Twenty-five years since Congress approved the Clean Water Act, 38 percent of the nation's waterways are not fishable, swimmable and do not support a healthy aquatic community of plants and animals, according to Jeff Fleming of the Isaak Walton League of America. About 50 percent of the country's water-quality problems are the result of run-off from roads, lawns and similar sources of "non-point" pollution.
Fish are like canaries in coal mines, according to the ASA. "If a water body cannot support healthy populations of fish, there is something wrong with the water," an ASA policy statement said. "Simply put, the Fishable Waters Act would encourage the development of local watershed councils that would . . . develop and implement plans to revive their fisheries habitat. Communities know their local waters the best; the Fishable Waters Act provides them the opportunity and the means (over $250 million in new funding) to take action and restore their neighborhood waters."
Influence on dams: More than 1,500 dams throughout the country are due to have their licenses reviewed. Once granted, a license can be in effect for between 30 and 50 years, two generations.
Under current federal law, the government issues unconditional requirements, protecting fish and wildlife, that dam owners must meet before receiving a license. Last year, Congressional negotiators agreed to a measure that would allow anyone to suggest less expensive and more effective ways to protect fish and animals, during the re-licensing proces, said Bruce G. Wallace, minority staff member for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. "It was common sense," he said.
Now, however, the Senate is considering a bill that would allow only the hydroelectric industry to propose alternatives. "Nobody else can, Harris said. "So [fishermen], environmental groups, states or tribes have no say in the process."
The industry argues that the change would streamline an inefficient process.
The fishing association worries that changes in the law might lead to the destruction of fish -- such as salmon in the West and shad in the East -- that must swim up dammed rivers to reproduce on their ancestral spawning grounds.
Federal tax on tackle and boat fuel: Fishing tackle manufacturers actually want to continue paying a 10-percent excise tax on goods they produce. The money, along with a similar levy on motorboat fuel, is returned to the states to fund sportfishing and boating projects,including state fish hatcheries and research, boat ramps, pump-out stations, etc.
If Congress reauthorizes the tax, sport fish restoration programs next year would receive $219 million; boating safety, $83.7 million; coastal wetlands, $83.7 million; boating access, $38.6 million. The rest of next year's $465 million would go to pump-out programs, boating and fishing promotion, administration and other costs.
By 2009, the fund could distribute up to $554 million, according to the sport fishing association's estimates.
6/05/2003
BY TOM MEADE, Providence Journal Sports Writer
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It's National Fishing and Boating Week, and the sport fishing community is anchored on Capitol Hill, angling for Congressional support on four issues:
Recreational fishing access to all federal waters.
An amendment to the Clean Water Act, providing for more fishable waters.
A voice in how hydroeletric dams are licensed.
Continuing a federal excise tax on fishing tackle and motorboat fuel.
The American Sportfishing Association (ASA), based in Alexandria, Va., this week organized a series of meetings on key issues facing the recreational fishing community. Tuesday, the association's professional lobbyists began briefing tackle manufacturers, retailers and individual anglers on how to approach members of Congress on the four issues of focus.
"We're being outdone by our enemies and we're no longer a priority of our friends," lobbyist Jim Range told a group of tackle manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and anglers Monday. With a divided Congress focused on the economy, national security, Social Security, and other big issues, fishing and the health of the nation's waters have slipped off the priority list on Capitol Hill.
"We haven't won much in a long time," Range said. "We may have kept a couple of things from happening, but we haven't won much."
The fishing community has scores of conservation issues on its agenda, but officials of the sport fishing group believe they can be more effective on Capitol Hill this week by concentrating on only four priorities:
Recreational-fishing access: Two other national groups, including the Pew Oceans Commissions, this week recommended new restrictions on fishing, including total closures of some marine areas. In California, 175 square miles of the ocean, near the Channel Islands, have been closed to all fishing. The ban has devasted the sport-fishing business there, according to Bill Shedd, chairman of the ASA's political affairs committee.
"We're not opposed to closed areas," said Bob Hayes, a lobbyist who represents the Coastal Conservation Association. "We're not opposed to the management of the resource. . . . We are, in fact, in favor of using all the traditional management tools available to fisheries managers to go ahead and recover stocks. What we are opposed to is being arbitraily excluded from areas where we ought to be able to fish because we aren't doing any damage."
The Freedom To Fish Act, would require fishery managers to produce scientific evidence that anglers are the cause of a problem before closing an area to them. And if sport fishing is banned in an area, regulators would have to provide a schedule for solving the problem, allowing anglers to return.
More fishable waters: Twenty-five years since Congress approved the Clean Water Act, 38 percent of the nation's waterways are not fishable, swimmable and do not support a healthy aquatic community of plants and animals, according to Jeff Fleming of the Isaak Walton League of America. About 50 percent of the country's water-quality problems are the result of run-off from roads, lawns and similar sources of "non-point" pollution.
Fish are like canaries in coal mines, according to the ASA. "If a water body cannot support healthy populations of fish, there is something wrong with the water," an ASA policy statement said. "Simply put, the Fishable Waters Act would encourage the development of local watershed councils that would . . . develop and implement plans to revive their fisheries habitat. Communities know their local waters the best; the Fishable Waters Act provides them the opportunity and the means (over $250 million in new funding) to take action and restore their neighborhood waters."
Influence on dams: More than 1,500 dams throughout the country are due to have their licenses reviewed. Once granted, a license can be in effect for between 30 and 50 years, two generations.
Under current federal law, the government issues unconditional requirements, protecting fish and wildlife, that dam owners must meet before receiving a license. Last year, Congressional negotiators agreed to a measure that would allow anyone to suggest less expensive and more effective ways to protect fish and animals, during the re-licensing proces, said Bruce G. Wallace, minority staff member for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. "It was common sense," he said.
Now, however, the Senate is considering a bill that would allow only the hydroelectric industry to propose alternatives. "Nobody else can, Harris said. "So [fishermen], environmental groups, states or tribes have no say in the process."
The industry argues that the change would streamline an inefficient process.
The fishing association worries that changes in the law might lead to the destruction of fish -- such as salmon in the West and shad in the East -- that must swim up dammed rivers to reproduce on their ancestral spawning grounds.
Federal tax on tackle and boat fuel: Fishing tackle manufacturers actually want to continue paying a 10-percent excise tax on goods they produce. The money, along with a similar levy on motorboat fuel, is returned to the states to fund sportfishing and boating projects,including state fish hatcheries and research, boat ramps, pump-out stations, etc.
If Congress reauthorizes the tax, sport fish restoration programs next year would receive $219 million; boating safety, $83.7 million; coastal wetlands, $83.7 million; boating access, $38.6 million. The rest of next year's $465 million would go to pump-out programs, boating and fishing promotion, administration and other costs.
By 2009, the fund could distribute up to $554 million, according to the sport fishing association's estimates.