COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Protecting the Atlantic Sturgeon


The federal government is proposing to give endangered species status to the Atlantic sturgeon – a large, plated, prehistoric fish – in the Chesapeake Bay and along the North Carolina coast.

The decision, announced this week, comes after three years of study and a petition from an environmental group urging that it be declared endangered.

If approved after a public comment period that ends in January, the status would bring a host of new protections and restrictions to Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina waterways – so many limits that some fishing groups worry they might be fined for accidentally snagging even one sturgeon.

Other activities, including dredging and scientific research, would likely be more tightly regulated, too, officials said.

“It cuts both ways, with pros and cons,” said Chuck Frederickson, the riverkeeper for the lower James River, where a resurgent population of sturgeon can be found.

Frederickson said federal protections under the Endangered Species Act, intended to keep the fish from becoming extinct, might also bring more national attention and funds to help revive the ancient sturgeon.

Brownish-orange in color and weighing as much as 600 pounds, Atlantic sturgeon have been around for millions of years. They once were so bountiful that colonists at Jamestown were said to catch and eat them in droves.

But they take an abnormally long time to reach sexual maturity and have suffered mightily in modern times from pressures such as boat strikes, pollution, lost habitat, dredging of navigational channels and dam construction.

A coastwide ban on fishing for Atlantic sturgeon has been in place from Maine to Florida since 1998. But even that measure has not helped much. So finally, the National Marine Fisheries Service decided to intervene.

In its announcement Tuesday, the fisheries service broke the coastal population into five groups. Those sturgeon in the Gulf of Maine are proposed to receive threatened status, while fish in the New York Bight, the Chesapeake Bay, off North and South Carolina, and off the South Atlantic coast would be classified as endangered.

Such a status prohibits the “taking” of any sturgeon, which the government defines as “harassing, harming, pursuing, wounding, killing, trapping or collecting.”

Frederickson said the James River Association has been working under a special state permit for years to research and restore sturgeon in conjunction with fishery experts at Virginia Commonwealth University, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For that work to continue, the scientists will need to get permission from the federal government as well.

“It may add a few more hoops, but we expect to keep our efforts going,” Frederickson said. He noted that a first-ever sturgeon spawning reef was completed earlier this year on the James River in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond.

5 comments:

  1. If those big-city treehuggers would quit dumping their sewage in the oceans, and waterways those fish would have a lot better chance (as would we.)

    The President of the United States goes vacationing at the "toniest" beach community in the country, and his family can't go in the water because of Fecal Matter contamination.

    Liberals (and Conservatives) are idiots.

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  2. As for protecting those big old fish: Yeah, that's a Good thing.

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  3. .
    The decision, announced this week, comes after three years of study and a petition from an environmental group urging that it be declared endangered.

    If approved after a public comment period that ends in January, the status would bring a host of new protections and restrictions to Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina waterways – so many limits that some fishing groups worry they might be fined for accidentally snagging even one sturgeon.


    Not necessarily disputing Rufus' statement,"As for protecting those big old fish: Yeah, that's a Good thing", only observing that this is small potatoes compared to other things the federal government allows including the dumping of ballast water by foreign ships in the Great Lakes which has already introduced predatory creatures like the Zebra Mussel.

    Now they do nothing to stop the Asian Carp from working it's way into the Great Lakes offering the potential for the destruction of the entire fishing industry in contiguous states and Canadian provinces.

    Some commercial interests trumping others, the results determined by who you know, by parochial pork, and by who is sitting in the oval office.

    .

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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