Good News - For a Change

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Good News - For a change
By MIKE NUSSMAN, American Sportfishing Association

Had enough bad news? Yes, me too. So, please allow me to share some very good news that has a significant impact on our industry. In an unprecedented move, on September 26, President George W. Bush amended a 1995 Executive Order ensuring that federal agencies must have a very good reason, and the scientific data to support it, for closing federal waters - fresh and saltwater - to recreational fishing now and in the future. This includes national wildlife refuges, national parks, national monuments, national marine sanctuaries, marine protected areas, or any other relevant conservation or management areas or activities under any federal authority.

I don't think I can stress enough the importance of the President's action and what a crucial win this is for our industry. This is a major statement about how the administration views the legitimacy of recreational fishing as a conservation and economic force in this country. But it didn't happen overnight. Over the past two years ASA along with its members and a number of other organizations worked together to secure recreational fishing and boating access.

In June 2006 President Bush created the world's largest marine protected area located in the Northern Hawaiian Islands which banned all recreational fishing. Since then during many, many meetings with the White House staff we have consistently delivered the message that it is wrong to summarily ban recreational fishing in all federal waters - fresh and saltwater - without compelling data, based on sound science, to back such a decision. That same message was delivered to the Council on Environmental Quality and the Departments of Commerce and the Interior as they were seeking to establish large swaths of marine protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic Ocean.

First, we were able to convince the President to not move forward with marine protected area designations in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic. That was assured in an August 25 Presidential Memo which directed the Secretaries of Defense, Interior and Commerce and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality to sustain access to recreational fishing as part of their study of potential marine protected areas (MPA) in the central Pacific Ocean. That study excludes the Gulf and the South Atlantic.

Our next request to the President was to revise the 1995 Executive Order on Recreational Fishing to include language that would sustain recreational fishing in federal waters from this point forward.With the September 26 Executive Order, we were successful in doing that.

On behalf of ASA's members and the entire sportfishing community, I want to thank the President for taking this historic action in securing the future of fishing and our industry. But taking it one step forward, as an angler and boater himself, the President also recognized that anglers and boaters are the lifeblood of our nation's fisheries conservation and management efforts. Every time an angler buys a fishing license or a piece of sportfishing equipment or puts fuel in his or her boat, an investment is made in fishing's future. This highly successful user-pay system for fishery management depends on access to the resource.

My thanks go to everyone who worked with us in this process including the Center for Coastal Conservation and its members, the Coastal Conservation Association, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, Shimano American Corporation and to all ASA's members for their support.

So, please, take the opportunity to celebrate this win for our industry and share the good news with everyone you know! I know they'll appreciate it.

--Mike Nussman -- Nussman is President and CEO of the American Sportfishing Association