Decision Day on Schwarzenegger's Corrupt MLPA Process

Decision Day on Schwarzenegger's Corrupt MLPA Process

by Dan Bacher

Grass roots environmentalists, fishermen and seaweed harvesters from Mendocino County and other northern California counties will be attending the Fish and Game Commission meeting to speak out against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process on Wednesday, August 6 at 10 a.m. in Woodland. The public hearing will be held at the Yolo Fliers Club, 17980 Road 94B.

Jim Martin, West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, is urging the Commission to support Alternative 2XA for the North Central Coast (from Pigeon Point to Point Arena) and to suspend the implementation of any MLPA regulations until long-term funding is secured.

"2XA is the only alternative that meets all the science guidelines and is supported by local fishermen, the county of Mendocino, the cities of Point Arena and Fort Bragg," said Martin. "The 'preferred alternative' will destroy sustainable fisheries like abalone and seaweed harvest, and severely impact the harbor of Point Arena."

Members of the Ocean Protection Coalition and Mendocino County seaweed harvesters, who will attend the meeting, are highly critical of the many conflicts of interests and intense campaign of corporate greenwashing involved in the MLPA process. Many believe that the fast-track MLPA process instituted by Schwarzenegger and Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman is trying to kick fishermen and seaweed harvesters off the water to clear the path for the installation of offshore oil rigs, wave energy projects and corporate aquaculture facilities off the northern California coast.

"The MLPA is the back door to Offshore Oil," said Tomas DiFiore, Mendocino County seaweed harvester and environmentalist. In his article published today at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/08/04/18613916.php, he exposes the dark links between the MLPA and some of the worst corporate greenwashers in the world.

"Conceived as law in 1999 in response to mismanaged fisheries/politics, the science was there all along, but the MLPA was hijacked by the Betty Moore Foundation," said DiFiore. "Dr. John M. 'Mick' Seidl, the President of Maxxam, Inc, Enron, Kaisertech and many other oil related firms, by June 5th, 2001 was the Environmental Grant Program Director for the Foundation's first 4 years. Almost every company Dr. John was president of since the 70's has gone bankrupt. The MLPA Initiative could bankrupt our Ocean (EEZ) and our Coastal Communities."

While promoting the privately-funded MLPA as the way to "save" the marine ecosystem, Schwarzenegger and Chrisman have presided over the collapse of Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish populations. They have declared war on these anadromous and estuary fish species, now on the verge of extinction, by increasing water exports from the California Delta to corporate agribusiness in the San Joaquin Valley in recent years while allowing agribusiness to keep polluting Central Valley waterways with dangerous pesticides and herbicides, selenium and other toxic materials.

The meeting will take place just five days after a new groundbreaking study, published in the July 31 issue of Science magazine, revealed that the California Current marine ecosystem has the lowest fishery exploitation rate of any place in the world examined by co-authors Ray Hilborn and Boris Worm and 19 other scientists.

“The drastic reductions in harvest in California have been designed to rebuild the overexploited rockfish stocks,” said Dr. Hilborn. “At present the community of groundfish is now at about 60% of its unfished biomass, far above the 30-40% level target for maximum sustained yield.”

The conclusions by the 21 international scientists with widely divergent views effectively counter the false arguments by Schwarzengger and his staff for the urgent “need” to fast-track the MLPA process because of the “dire condition” that rockfish, lingcod and other groundfish stocks are supposedly in along the California coast.

“Much of the motivation for the MLPA was concern about the state of the groundfish stocks - there is clear evidence that these can be rebuilt without MPAs resulting from the MLPA that have only recently begun to be implemented,” Hilborn said. “The benefits of the MPAs established under the MLPA will be primarily to have some areas of high abundance of species with limited mobility.”

Jim Martin said the new study confirmed what North Coast environmentalists, anglers and seaweed harvesters have known all along – that efforts to restore groundfish populations through the highly restrictive Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) process are working.

“The conclusion that California has the lowest rate of groundfish exploitation of any place examined in the study demonstrates that the idea that we must rush into the MLPA process or there won’t be any fish left in the ocean is completely false,” said Martin.

Meanwhile, in yet another example of the Schwarzenegger administration's elitist, top-down approach to controlling California's coastal waters, an email soliciting nominations for the North Coast Science Advisory Team (SAT) gives locals barely two weeks to try to impact composition of the powerful body charged with providing scientific information on the proposed North Coast Marine Protected Area (MPA) from Point Arena north. North Coast ocean activists are protesting the August 14 deadline in an MLPA process that is rife with conflicts of interests, mission creep and the corruption of the democratic process.

Judith Vidaver, chair of the Mendocino non-profit Ocean Protection Coalition, slammed the invitation as "disingenuous and inadequate." "This thinly veiled effort to stack the deck in the State's favor is more of the same heavy-handed treatment true stewards of the ocean are objecting to so strenuously," she stated. "If the State is really interested in facilitating public participation in the MLPA process, adequate outreach and time for input would be the minimum the public should expect."

While grassroots, principled environmental groups such as the Ocean Protection Coalition are asking for a halt or suspension of the MLPA process, some corporate and foundation funded "environmental" NGOs are collaborating with the worst-ever Governor and Resources Secretary for fish and the environment in California history, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Chrisman, to remove sustainable fishermen and seaweed harvesters from their traditional harvesting areas, even though there is absolutely no science to support this.

At the same time Schwarzenegger is pushing for more unneeded ocean closures, the Governor and his collaborators are pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal and more dams that will result in the destruction of the Bay-Delta Estuary, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas.

No to the Peripheral Canal - No to the Corrupt MLPA Process! Stop Schwarzenegger's Corporate Greenwashing Campaign! Speak Out for Environmental Justice!

For the meeting agenda, go to http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2009/080509agd.asp.

Directions: Take Hwy 16 West from I-5 at Woodland exit, then north on County Rd. 94B)

For more information, contact:
Jim Martin
West Coast Regional Director
Recreational Fishing Alliance
(707) 964-8326
http://www.JoinRFA.org
P.O. Box 2420
Fort Bragg, CA 95437