One Law, One Town, One Voice...NOT!

Additional comments from November 4th 2009 Fort Bragg North Coast External MPA Work Group. One of the more interesting conversations last night revolved around the NRDC gift to this community, a nice contract (stipend) to Bill Lemos to help this process along. "As fortune would have it... "

My favorite part is where Bill says to another early Mendocino County MLPA response team iniator/organizer present, "It's not for the weak of heart. I admire your willingness if you're up for it. You're going to be spending a lot of time on the road. And a lot of time filing through things."

Like only Bill can....

Oh and a moment later it was reiterated that we need to have as many viewpoints represented as possible. So Tuesday, Bill is going before the Board of Supervisors to tell them, "what this group and the group he is affiliated with are thinking about the community voice that is emerging through this process."

In the NCC, the NRDC had 3 stakeholders in place including Karen Garrison. When the self described architect of the Big Green Machine board game, and the company offer a paid stipend to promote their agenda, it is hardly necessary to belabour the need for that voice to be heard.

And what is it saying, Well here's a bit of history:

Karen Garrison holds an M.S. degree from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley (body, education) University of California at Berkeley - (UCB)

See also Berzerkley, BSD.

http://berkeley.edu/.

Note to British and Commonwealth readers: that's /berk'lee/, not /bark'lee/ as in British Received Pronunciation. . She is a senior policy analyst in the San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where she co-directs NRDC's Ocean Initiative and works to protect marine life and ecosystems of the Pacific Coast. She is a founding member of Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of Pacific Northwest fishing, business and conservation groups, and of the Ocean Wilderness Network, a coalition working to create marine protected areas on the west coast. Ms. Garrison is the architect of California's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), a 1999 law aimed at creating a network of protected areas in the state's ocean waters. She also helped launch a multi-party process to create a marine reserves network around the Channel Islands. She has testified before Congress and the California legislature. She is a co-author of Hook, Line and Sinking, a 1997 report on global marine fish declines.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Extinction+of+ocean+fish:+a+growing+threat.+(Marine+Matters).-a096268230

Locally, in Mendocino County, Just 3 months earlier on 080509:
The Point Arena MPA CLOSURES, which TAKE EFFECT APRIL 1st 2010 and continue to be disputed, will cause an effort shift to be accounted for to the north, and served to galvanize local ocean food providers. This is where Edible Algae got special attention for the first time in the MLPAi process. They couldn't close Sea Lion Cove just for Abalone, 2 species were needed.
Abalone and Seaweed At Sea Lion Cove

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqPhwWK8FAU

As for the lack of Seaweed Harvesters and Tribal input - It was the Seaweed Rebellion, made up of the Kashia Tribe and the (Mendocino) Seaweed Stewardship Alliance that halted the process for 4-6 months back on Oct 2nd, 2008. View the C-SPAN footage for details.

In a taped interview Karen, the NRDC Senior Policy Analyst and MLPA architect, stated that "she did a 'search' for seaweed Mendocino, and didn't find anything or anyone. She excused this all by stating immediately, "what does that tell you about my web skills".

Yeah, I'm real glad to have the NRDC onboard.

Can't wait to hear what the "group Bill is affiliated with are thinking about for the community voice that is emerging through this process."

Tomas DiFiore
Seaweed Rebellion
Astral Arts Mendocino
http://www.astral-arts.com/mlpa_resources.html


Exactly 2 months later on January 4th 2010 I wrote:
At last night's Mendocino Ocean Community Alliance meeting in Fort Bragg, Bill Lemos, the NRDC consultant who wears a hat by a different constituent user group each time he appears anywhere to speak about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), and who has been instrumental in both slowing the MOCA group's ability to accomplish anything from the onset, continues now to rush to submit a MPA external array proposal of 'their' own and rejects community discussion!

Each group within MOCA that is preparing an external array for the Tri-County workgroup, has brought their array up for discussion at MOCA meetings. The last MOCA meeting was held in Albion. Maps were drawn by ocean seafood providers. At the nearly 4 hour meeting, almost 30 people were present and conversed with each other. As usual, the NRDC consultant left before the meeting was half over.

At last night's meeting Bill Lemos cut short any discussion by saying "discussion is not an agenda item" while pressing everyone to move forward, and rejected the group's offer to come to Albion on the following Saturday with most MOCA members to hammer out agreements on external MPA arrays.

Albion Harbor Regional Alliance has been hosting the digital Marine Map efforts to complement efforts by Local Ocean Food Providers to find acceptable common ground with Underwater Park Advocates who have their own agenda, not necessarily marine life protection in it's orientation.


Update January 31 2010
AHRA continues to host the Community Digital Democracy Portal on the Albion River each week, and has facilitated the Marine Map efforts both in Fort Bragg and Albion. Just yesterday we hosted a 7 hour meeting and as always Chef Mike was in there cookin away, fresh Uni was served, Sea Palm, Albacore, Hot Dogs, Salads, it was another Albion feast. Thanks to Bruce who runs the campground for the location and broadband. 30 folks were present throughout the day. That's almost as many RSG members: and the RSG doesn't include ANY OCEAN FOOD GATHERERS South of Fort Bragg.

Just the 2 teachers from Mendocino, and why do we need 2 teachers? There's NOT EVEN COMMERCIAL CRAB OUT OF FORT BRAGG represented on the RSG.

40 miles of the populated Mendocino Coast (as the pelican flies) from Fort Bragg to Point Arena has no real representation by commercial and sport fisheries, nor subsistence food gatherers. Thankfully the Urchin fishery is in.

"From Beyond The Pale" or How Do You Spell Stakeholder?
Tomas DiFiore