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MLPA South Coast Chair: California Would 'Benefit' from New Oil Rigs
"WSPA has not taken a position on specific offshore projects," stated Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association and the chair of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast. "But we have been vocal about our views that California businesses and consumers would benefit from development of the huge reserves of petroleum off the California coast, in both state and federal waters."
MLPA South Coast Chair: California Would 'Benefit' from New Oil Rigs
by Dan Bacher
Only in Governor Arnold's Schwarzenegger's California would an official entrusted to "protect" marine resources call for new oil drilling off the California coast at a time when the biggest oil spill in U.S. history continues to devastate the Gulf of Mexico.
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association and the chair of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Task Force for the South Coast, recently affirmed her support for new offshore oil drilling in her commentary, "Gulf Oil Spill Comments," on the association's website, http://www.wspa.org.
Not only is Reheis-Boyd chair of the South Coast panel appointed by Schwarzenegger to design "marine protected areas" (MPAs), but she served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Central Coast and currently serves on the Task Force for the North Coast.
"The tragic Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s withdrawal of his support for limited offshore oil development near Santa Barbara," lamented Reheis-Boyd.
"WSPA has not taken a position on specific offshore projects," she stated. "But we have been vocal about our views that California businesses and consumers would benefit from development of the huge reserves of petroleum off the California coast, in both state and federal waters."
Reheis-Boyd then goes on to tout the offshore oil operators in California for their exemplary "record of safety" and "sensitivity" to environmental issues, attempting to portray them as some sort of modern day John Muirs of the Sea, valiantly defending the ocean from atop their oil rigs.
"The record of safety established by offshore operators in California over the past 40 years has been excellent," she gushed. "But we recognize an incident on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico accident is going to influence the public policy debate on offshore oil."
"We don’t yet know what caused the accident in the Gulf of Mexico and whether or not there are any lessons to be learned that are applicable to the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf where most offshore oil production in California takes place today," she admitted. "We are waiting for the investigations to be completed."
She also claimed that "The petroleum industry on the West Coast has demonstrated a very high level of sensitivity to environmental issues associated with operating in a marine environment. We are committed to constant improvement in those operations."
"According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, in the past 40 years, more than 1 billion barrels of oil have been produced off the coast of California. During that time, less than 850 barrels of oil have been accidentally spilled into the ocean," she continued.
"The platforms off the California coast produce approximately 36 million barrels of oil per year – about 15 percent of our in-state petroleum production," she said. "Without those important sources of energy, we would need to import more crude oil in tankers. In many cases, that oil comes from less stable foreign sources and with resultant adverse economic consequences for California consumers.
"Oil exploration and production in California ranks among the most closely regulated activities in the world. There are literally hundreds of laws and regulations that govern petroleum industry activities in California. More importantly, though, is the fact that the men and women who work in the industry are committed to doing everything they can to ensure that workers, near-by communities and the environment are protected," Reheis-Boyd concluded.
Unfortunately, fishermen, environmentalists and the general public witnessing the largest oil spill in U.S. history devastate fishing communities throughout the Gulf of Mexico know that Reheis-Boyd's words are hollow in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy. We were repeatedly assured by oil company, state and federal officials that the Gulf oil spill was "under control." The oil industry in the Gulf is also regulated by federal and state laws, but these did nothing to stop the current disaster from taking place.
How can we believe anything that Reheis-Boyd or other representatives of the oil industry say after the BP Oil spill, which still continues unabated?
And what the heck is an oil industry official, who is now calling for new oil rigs off the California coast, doing on three task forces that are kicking fishermen, Indian Tribes and seaweed harvesters, the staunchest defenders of the ocean and the most vocal opponents of offshore drilling, off the water? Anybody with a modicum of reason, intelligence and common sense has got to realize there is something very, very wrong here!
Environmentalists, Indian Tribes and fishermen have blasted the MLPA Initiative for its numerous conflicts of interests, corruption and open violation of indigenous religious, cultural and subsistence fishing and gathering rights. There is no doubt that Schwarzenegger appointed Reheis-Boyd to safeguard the oil industry's interests in the MLPA process.
There is also no doubt that we need to support a complete ban on new drilling off the U.S. coastline to make sure that Reheis-Boyd doesn't get her way in opening the West Coast to new oil drilling.
"The tragic catastrophe spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico offers a rare opportunity to achieve long-term protection from this nightmare for the rich upwelling ecosystem off the Pacific Coast of Washington, Oregon and California," according to John Stephens-Lewallen, one of the North Coast's most respected environmental leaders and a foremost opponent of Schwarzenegger's MLPA corporate greenwashing process.
He said companion bills to "permanently" ban new offshore oil and gas drilling off the Pacific Coast of the three states have been introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
The "West Coast Ocean Protection Act of 2010" is a one-page bill with only one effective provision: "...the Secretary of Interior shall not issue a lease for the exploration, development, or production of oil or natural gas in any area of the outer Continental Shelf off the coast of the State of California, Oregon, or Washington."
"My wife Barbara and I are asking organizations of ocean food providers to formally endorse this simple and powerful bill, and work to get it signed into law this year," he emphasized.
Congressman John Garamendi, who appeared last July at a rally at the State Capitol to speak out against the construction of the peripheral canal and the destruction of the California Delta when he was still Lieutenant Governor, is spearheading the bill in the House, with Representatives Mike Thompson and Lynn Woolsey of Northern California among 35 initial co-sponsors.
Group endorsements can be emailed to Marcus Woodson in Congressman Garamendi's office; or by phone at (202)225-1880.
"For ocean food providers, the stark simplicity of this drilling ban is its beauty," emphasized Stephens-Lewallen. "In one simple statement, it removes the great threat we all face to the purity of the Pacific Coast Upwelling Ecosystem and its renewing abundance of food. Bills with similar wording have been introduced, with heroic pronouncements, in the last several annual sessions of Congress, only to languish in committee without any legislative action."
The Stephens-Lewallens are urging the fishing community and others to "help make this year different" by contacting your federal representatives, and friends throughout the country, in support of the West Coast Ocean Protection Act of 2010.
While an oil industry lobbyist and "marine guardian" like Reheis-Boyd calls for new oil drilling off the California coast, real environmentalists and defenders of the ocean like the Stephens-Lewallens call for support of Garamendi's bill. I join with the Stephens-Lewallens in urging everybody concerned about the fate of our public trust ocean waters to support Garamendi's bill - and at the same time to call for an immediate suspension of the widely-condemned MLPA Initiative.
Garamendi's simple bill contrasts with Schwarzenegger's Marine Life "Protection" Act Initiative, a privately funded process that does absolutely nothing to protect the California coast from oil spills, water pollution, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing. The initiative, led by executive director Ken Wiseman, is funded by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, headed by Michael Eaton, the foundation's executive director.
The MLPA, a landmark law passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been hijacked by oil industry, real estate, marine development and other corporate interests under the Schwarzenegger administration. Schwarzenegger's MLPA Initiative has openly violated numerous state, federal and international laws, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
For more information about the violation of indigenous subsistence, cultural and religious rights under the MLPA, go to: http://www.fishsniffer.com/forums/content.php?r=221 and Violet Wilder's facebook page, "KEEP THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BEACHES ACCESSIBLE FOR THE COASTAL TRIBES" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105945012781743).
by Dan Bacher
Only in Governor Arnold's Schwarzenegger's California would an official entrusted to "protect" marine resources call for new oil drilling off the California coast at a time when the biggest oil spill in U.S. history continues to devastate the Gulf of Mexico.
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association and the chair of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Task Force for the South Coast, recently affirmed her support for new offshore oil drilling in her commentary, "Gulf Oil Spill Comments," on the association's website, http://www.wspa.org.
Not only is Reheis-Boyd chair of the South Coast panel appointed by Schwarzenegger to design "marine protected areas" (MPAs), but she served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Central Coast and currently serves on the Task Force for the North Coast.
"The tragic Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s withdrawal of his support for limited offshore oil development near Santa Barbara," lamented Reheis-Boyd.
"WSPA has not taken a position on specific offshore projects," she stated. "But we have been vocal about our views that California businesses and consumers would benefit from development of the huge reserves of petroleum off the California coast, in both state and federal waters."
Reheis-Boyd then goes on to tout the offshore oil operators in California for their exemplary "record of safety" and "sensitivity" to environmental issues, attempting to portray them as some sort of modern day John Muirs of the Sea, valiantly defending the ocean from atop their oil rigs.
"The record of safety established by offshore operators in California over the past 40 years has been excellent," she gushed. "But we recognize an incident on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico accident is going to influence the public policy debate on offshore oil."
"We don’t yet know what caused the accident in the Gulf of Mexico and whether or not there are any lessons to be learned that are applicable to the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf where most offshore oil production in California takes place today," she admitted. "We are waiting for the investigations to be completed."
She also claimed that "The petroleum industry on the West Coast has demonstrated a very high level of sensitivity to environmental issues associated with operating in a marine environment. We are committed to constant improvement in those operations."
"According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, in the past 40 years, more than 1 billion barrels of oil have been produced off the coast of California. During that time, less than 850 barrels of oil have been accidentally spilled into the ocean," she continued.
"The platforms off the California coast produce approximately 36 million barrels of oil per year – about 15 percent of our in-state petroleum production," she said. "Without those important sources of energy, we would need to import more crude oil in tankers. In many cases, that oil comes from less stable foreign sources and with resultant adverse economic consequences for California consumers.
"Oil exploration and production in California ranks among the most closely regulated activities in the world. There are literally hundreds of laws and regulations that govern petroleum industry activities in California. More importantly, though, is the fact that the men and women who work in the industry are committed to doing everything they can to ensure that workers, near-by communities and the environment are protected," Reheis-Boyd concluded.
Unfortunately, fishermen, environmentalists and the general public witnessing the largest oil spill in U.S. history devastate fishing communities throughout the Gulf of Mexico know that Reheis-Boyd's words are hollow in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy. We were repeatedly assured by oil company, state and federal officials that the Gulf oil spill was "under control." The oil industry in the Gulf is also regulated by federal and state laws, but these did nothing to stop the current disaster from taking place.
How can we believe anything that Reheis-Boyd or other representatives of the oil industry say after the BP Oil spill, which still continues unabated?
And what the heck is an oil industry official, who is now calling for new oil rigs off the California coast, doing on three task forces that are kicking fishermen, Indian Tribes and seaweed harvesters, the staunchest defenders of the ocean and the most vocal opponents of offshore drilling, off the water? Anybody with a modicum of reason, intelligence and common sense has got to realize there is something very, very wrong here!
Environmentalists, Indian Tribes and fishermen have blasted the MLPA Initiative for its numerous conflicts of interests, corruption and open violation of indigenous religious, cultural and subsistence fishing and gathering rights. There is no doubt that Schwarzenegger appointed Reheis-Boyd to safeguard the oil industry's interests in the MLPA process.
There is also no doubt that we need to support a complete ban on new drilling off the U.S. coastline to make sure that Reheis-Boyd doesn't get her way in opening the West Coast to new oil drilling.
"The tragic catastrophe spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico offers a rare opportunity to achieve long-term protection from this nightmare for the rich upwelling ecosystem off the Pacific Coast of Washington, Oregon and California," according to John Stephens-Lewallen, one of the North Coast's most respected environmental leaders and a foremost opponent of Schwarzenegger's MLPA corporate greenwashing process.
He said companion bills to "permanently" ban new offshore oil and gas drilling off the Pacific Coast of the three states have been introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
The "West Coast Ocean Protection Act of 2010" is a one-page bill with only one effective provision: "...the Secretary of Interior shall not issue a lease for the exploration, development, or production of oil or natural gas in any area of the outer Continental Shelf off the coast of the State of California, Oregon, or Washington."
"My wife Barbara and I are asking organizations of ocean food providers to formally endorse this simple and powerful bill, and work to get it signed into law this year," he emphasized.
Congressman John Garamendi, who appeared last July at a rally at the State Capitol to speak out against the construction of the peripheral canal and the destruction of the California Delta when he was still Lieutenant Governor, is spearheading the bill in the House, with Representatives Mike Thompson and Lynn Woolsey of Northern California among 35 initial co-sponsors.
Group endorsements can be emailed to Marcus Woodson in Congressman Garamendi's office; or by phone at (202)225-1880.
"For ocean food providers, the stark simplicity of this drilling ban is its beauty," emphasized Stephens-Lewallen. "In one simple statement, it removes the great threat we all face to the purity of the Pacific Coast Upwelling Ecosystem and its renewing abundance of food. Bills with similar wording have been introduced, with heroic pronouncements, in the last several annual sessions of Congress, only to languish in committee without any legislative action."
The Stephens-Lewallens are urging the fishing community and others to "help make this year different" by contacting your federal representatives, and friends throughout the country, in support of the West Coast Ocean Protection Act of 2010.
While an oil industry lobbyist and "marine guardian" like Reheis-Boyd calls for new oil drilling off the California coast, real environmentalists and defenders of the ocean like the Stephens-Lewallens call for support of Garamendi's bill. I join with the Stephens-Lewallens in urging everybody concerned about the fate of our public trust ocean waters to support Garamendi's bill - and at the same time to call for an immediate suspension of the widely-condemned MLPA Initiative.
Garamendi's simple bill contrasts with Schwarzenegger's Marine Life "Protection" Act Initiative, a privately funded process that does absolutely nothing to protect the California coast from oil spills, water pollution, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing. The initiative, led by executive director Ken Wiseman, is funded by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, headed by Michael Eaton, the foundation's executive director.
The MLPA, a landmark law passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been hijacked by oil industry, real estate, marine development and other corporate interests under the Schwarzenegger administration. Schwarzenegger's MLPA Initiative has openly violated numerous state, federal and international laws, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
For more information about the violation of indigenous subsistence, cultural and religious rights under the MLPA, go to: http://www.fishsniffer.com/forums/content.php?r=221 and Violet Wilder's facebook page, "KEEP THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BEACHES ACCESSIBLE FOR THE COASTAL TRIBES" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105945012781743).
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Studies show marine reserves can be an effective tool for managing fisheries
Studies conducted in California and elsewhere provide support for the use of marine reserves as a tool for managing fisheries and protecting marine habitats, according to biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
A recent study in the Gulf of California, for example, confirmed the validity of a key concept behind marine reserves--the idea that offspring produced in a protected area can replenish the stocks of harvested species outside the reserve.
"It seems really obvious, but it had never been tested," said Peter Raimondi, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC and coauthor of a paper describing the findings in the journal PLoS ONE.
"We created a model to predict the dispersal of larvae outside the reserves, and the results were completely consistent with our predictions," he said.
Raimondi is involved in a collaborative project (called PANGAS) in which researchers are working with Mexican fishing communities to study and manage fisheries in the northern Gulf of California. Local fishermen in the area of Puerto Peasco set up a network of marine reserves as part of a community-based effort to manage their resources. Ecological and social studies conducted before, during, and after the establishment of those reserves enabled the researchers to track the results.
Raimondi emphasized that resource managers have a wide range of tools at their disposal and must take into account both biological and social factors in choosing the best approach. Many species, such as tuna and squid, move around too much to be protected by setting aside certain areas. For species that tend to stay put, marine protected areas can range from no-take reserves to various levels of limited harvesting, and sometimes involve restrictions on who can harvest fish in an area rather than how much can be taken.
The establishment of marine protected areas along the California coast, as called for in the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), has been controversial. A network of protected areas was established on the Central Coast in 2006, and a plan for the North-Central Coast was adopted in August 2009. In Southern California, a task force will soon make recommendations to the state Fish and Game Commission, while on the North Coast the planning process is just getting started.
Raimondi and Mark Carr, also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, have been actively involved in this initiative. In addition to serving on science advisory teams, they are engaged in an intensive monitoring program to track the effects of the reserves that have already been established.
"We are monitoring those areas at unprecedented levels. It's a comprehensive effort to characterize the populations and the ecosystems so that we can compare the responses to different types of protection," Carr said. "Monitoring studies around the globe systematically show positive responses within protected areas. We want to really identify what aspects of reserve design are important in influencing those benefits."
According to Carr, it will take a few more years of monitoring to see the effects of the Central Coast reserves. In the Channel Islands, however, where reserves were established in 2003 (separately from the MLPA process), surveys have yielded the kinds of results scientists expect to see in protected areas. For example, fish species targeted by fishermen tend to be bigger and more plentiful within the reserves.
This effect is important, because studies have shown that larger, older females are much more important than younger fish in maintaining healthy populations of species such as West Coast rockfish.
"When you have a protected population, you not only get spillover effects when fish swim out of the reserve and get caught, you also have major effects on larval production," Carr said. "The bigger, older fish in the reserve produce a lot of larvae that replenish the fished populations outside."
Carr, who contributed to a report on the first five years of monitoring in the Channel Islands, said that the conclusions are limited by a lack of data collected before the reserves were created. It is possible that some of the observed differences existed before the areas were protected, but such doubts will be erased if current population trends continue, he said.
In Puerto Peasco, the shellfish harvested by local fishermen grow and reproduce quickly. As a result, the fishermen saw beneficial effects within a year after they had established a network of reserves. Subsequent events, however, underscored the role of social factors in the success of fishery management efforts. A second paper, published inPLoS ONE in July, describes how, after its initial success, the local reserve system collapsed due to poaching by outsiders.
"The whole thing got wiped out due to disruption of the social structure that had supported it," Raimondi said. "Scientifically it was really interesting, but for the people who experienced it on the ground, it was terrible."
Richard Cudney-Bueno, a research associate at UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences and cofounder of the PANGAS project, is the lead author of both papers. "Here was a group of fishermen that had already seen some declines in the shellfish they harvested. This led to the implementation of community-based efforts to manage their resources, including the establishment of marine reserves," he said. "We found that local control of community resources can work, but there has to be broader government support to back up the local efforts."
A native of Mexico City, Cudney-Bueno has been working with Mexican fishing communities and conducting ecological and social research in the Gulf of California since the mid-1990s. He now has a joint position with UCSC, the University of Arizona, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The first reserve in the Puerto Peasco area was established in 2001 around an island. Cudney-Bueno and other researchers, working with a Mexican nonprofit organization (Centro Intercultural de Estudios de Desiertos y Ocanos), trained the fishermen to monitor shellfish populations in and around the reserve. "The response was really quick, so they could see a classic reserve effect one year later," Cudney-Bueno said. "That led to more areas being closed, and the first paper shows the effects of the network of reserves."
The cooperative was so successful it was recognized by the Mexican government with a Presidential Conservation Award. But word spread quickly along the coast about the thriving shellfish populations in Puerto Peasco, and other fishermen from outside the community began to move in and poach from the reserves. After poaching began, the system of cooperation that had established and protected the reserves broke down.
Now, the situation is beginning to improve again, Cudney-Bueno said. The Mexican government has created one of a handful of exclusive fishing zones in the Gulf of California, giving the local cooperative the exclusive legal right to harvest shellfish in the Puerto Peasco area.
"They now have a strong management plan with legal rights and government support, so I think they will be able to get back to where they were before the poaching started," Cudney-Bueno said. "I see it as part of the evolution of a management system. Social change takes time, and it really hasn't been that long. A lot is happening now in Mexico and around the world as local people are increasingly asking for control over their resources. Various fishing communities in Mexico, including lobster and abalone fishermen in Baja California, have moved forward with the establishment of their own marine reserves and government-backed forms of territorial-use rights."
The PANGAS project, which brings together experts from UCSC, the University of Arizona, and several collaborating academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico, is working with other fishing communities in the Gulf of California to develop management plans for the region's marine resources.
"PANGAS is now working with the Mexican government to build management plans for a series of species in the northern Gulf of California," Raimondi said. "It's interesting to compare that with the MLPA process in California. The approaches are very different, and it has to do with differences in government and social structures."
According to Carr, the California MLPA process is now being used as a model in other parts of the world, most notably in the United Kingdom. Additional information about the MLPA process can be found on the California Department of Fish and Game web site at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/.
Studies conducted in California and elsewhere provide support for the use of marine reserves as a tool for managing fisheries and protecting marine habitats, according to biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
A recent study in the Gulf of California, for example, confirmed the validity of a key concept behind marine reserves--the idea that offspring produced in a protected area can replenish the stocks of harvested species outside the reserve.
"It seems really obvious, but it had never been tested," said Peter Raimondi, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC and coauthor of a paper describing the findings in the journal PLoS ONE.
"We created a model to predict the dispersal of larvae outside the reserves, and the results were completely consistent with our predictions," he said.
Raimondi is involved in a collaborative project (called PANGAS) in which researchers are working with Mexican fishing communities to study and manage fisheries in the northern Gulf of California. Local fishermen in the area of Puerto Peasco set up a network of marine reserves as part of a community-based effort to manage their resources. Ecological and social studies conducted before, during, and after the establishment of those reserves enabled the researchers to track the results.
Raimondi emphasized that resource managers have a wide range of tools at their disposal and must take into account both biological and social factors in choosing the best approach. Many species, such as tuna and squid, move around too much to be protected by setting aside certain areas. For species that tend to stay put, marine protected areas can range from no-take reserves to various levels of limited harvesting, and sometimes involve restrictions on who can harvest fish in an area rather than how much can be taken.
The establishment of marine protected areas along the California coast, as called for in the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), has been controversial. A network of protected areas was established on the Central Coast in 2006, and a plan for the North-Central Coast was adopted in August 2009. In Southern California, a task force will soon make recommendations to the state Fish and Game Commission, while on the North Coast the planning process is just getting started.
Raimondi and Mark Carr, also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, have been actively involved in this initiative. In addition to serving on science advisory teams, they are engaged in an intensive monitoring program to track the effects of the reserves that have already been established.
"We are monitoring those areas at unprecedented levels. It's a comprehensive effort to characterize the populations and the ecosystems so that we can compare the responses to different types of protection," Carr said. "Monitoring studies around the globe systematically show positive responses within protected areas. We want to really identify what aspects of reserve design are important in influencing those benefits."
According to Carr, it will take a few more years of monitoring to see the effects of the Central Coast reserves. In the Channel Islands, however, where reserves were established in 2003 (separately from the MLPA process), surveys have yielded the kinds of results scientists expect to see in protected areas. For example, fish species targeted by fishermen tend to be bigger and more plentiful within the reserves.
This effect is important, because studies have shown that larger, older females are much more important than younger fish in maintaining healthy populations of species such as West Coast rockfish.
"When you have a protected population, you not only get spillover effects when fish swim out of the reserve and get caught, you also have major effects on larval production," Carr said. "The bigger, older fish in the reserve produce a lot of larvae that replenish the fished populations outside."
Carr, who contributed to a report on the first five years of monitoring in the Channel Islands, said that the conclusions are limited by a lack of data collected before the reserves were created. It is possible that some of the observed differences existed before the areas were protected, but such doubts will be erased if current population trends continue, he said.
In Puerto Peasco, the shellfish harvested by local fishermen grow and reproduce quickly. As a result, the fishermen saw beneficial effects within a year after they had established a network of reserves. Subsequent events, however, underscored the role of social factors in the success of fishery management efforts. A second paper, published inPLoS ONE in July, describes how, after its initial success, the local reserve system collapsed due to poaching by outsiders.
"The whole thing got wiped out due to disruption of the social structure that had supported it," Raimondi said. "Scientifically it was really interesting, but for the people who experienced it on the ground, it was terrible."
Richard Cudney-Bueno, a research associate at UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences and cofounder of the PANGAS project, is the lead author of both papers. "Here was a group of fishermen that had already seen some declines in the shellfish they harvested. This led to the implementation of community-based efforts to manage their resources, including the establishment of marine reserves," he said. "We found that local control of community resources can work, but there has to be broader government support to back up the local efforts."
A native of Mexico City, Cudney-Bueno has been working with Mexican fishing communities and conducting ecological and social research in the Gulf of California since the mid-1990s. He now has a joint position with UCSC, the University of Arizona, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The first reserve in the Puerto Peasco area was established in 2001 around an island. Cudney-Bueno and other researchers, working with a Mexican nonprofit organization (Centro Intercultural de Estudios de Desiertos y Ocanos), trained the fishermen to monitor shellfish populations in and around the reserve. "The response was really quick, so they could see a classic reserve effect one year later," Cudney-Bueno said. "That led to more areas being closed, and the first paper shows the effects of the network of reserves."
The cooperative was so successful it was recognized by the Mexican government with a Presidential Conservation Award. But word spread quickly along the coast about the thriving shellfish populations in Puerto Peasco, and other fishermen from outside the community began to move in and poach from the reserves. After poaching began, the system of cooperation that had established and protected the reserves broke down.
Now, the situation is beginning to improve again, Cudney-Bueno said. The Mexican government has created one of a handful of exclusive fishing zones in the Gulf of California, giving the local cooperative the exclusive legal right to harvest shellfish in the Puerto Peasco area.
"They now have a strong management plan with legal rights and government support, so I think they will be able to get back to where they were before the poaching started," Cudney-Bueno said. "I see it as part of the evolution of a management system. Social change takes time, and it really hasn't been that long. A lot is happening now in Mexico and around the world as local people are increasingly asking for control over their resources. Various fishing communities in Mexico, including lobster and abalone fishermen in Baja California, have moved forward with the establishment of their own marine reserves and government-backed forms of territorial-use rights."
The PANGAS project, which brings together experts from UCSC, the University of Arizona, and several collaborating academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico, is working with other fishing communities in the Gulf of California to develop management plans for the region's marine resources.
"PANGAS is now working with the Mexican government to build management plans for a series of species in the northern Gulf of California," Raimondi said. "It's interesting to compare that with the MLPA process in California. The approaches are very different, and it has to do with differences in government and social structures."
According to Carr, the California MLPA process is now being used as a model in other parts of the world, most notably in the United Kingdom. Additional information about the MLPA process can be found on the California Department of Fish and Game web site at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/.
I don’t think the Fish and Game Commission would be allowed to close down a Catholic Church, would they?” said Violet Chappell, Kashia Pomo Tribe Elder.
MLPA Initiative Violates American Indian Religious Freedom Act, UN Declaration
by Dan Bacher
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative has brazenly violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, passed by the UN General Assembly in September 2007.
Passed by both houses of Congress, AIRFA became law on August 11, 1978, spurred by the American Indian Movement's Longest Walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. that year. The act recognized the "inherent right" of American citizens to religious freedom; admitted that in the past the U.S. government had not protected the religious freedom of American Indians; proclaimed the "indispensable and irreplaceable" role of religion "as an integral part of Indian life"; and called upon governmental agencies to "protect and preserve" for American Indians their inherent right to practice their traditional religions.
AIRFA states, “it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.”
The MLPA process has violated this historic law by banning the Kashia Pomo Tribe from practicing their religion by gathering seaweed and shellfish and conducting ceremonies at their sacred site, Danaka, in northern Sonoma County. In the Kashia Pomo's creation story, Danaka (Stewarts Point) is the place where the tribe first walked on land.
The sacred site is located in a so-called "marine protected area" that was part of a package of reserves that the California Fish and Game Commission voted 3 to 2 for on August 5, 2009, in spite of vocal opposition by the tribe, fishermen and environmental justice advocates.
“They’re interfering with our religion, the food that we lived off before the white man came,” said tribal elder Violet Chappell during a blessing ceremony off Danaka on April 30, the day before the May 1 closure, hosted by landowner Arch Richardson.
The gathering on a bluff overlooking the ocean drew 145 people, including members of the Kashia Pomo and other California Indian Tribes, recreational anglers, seaweed harvesters and environmental justice advocates to thank and bless the ocean for the food it has provided to native peoples for thousands of years.
“We used this food every day – we call it health food,” Chappell stated. “The food was created by our creator - we treated it with care and respect. We are here to say respect us for our food - don’t close this area down because it's part of our religion.”
“I don’t think the Fish and Game Commission would be allowed to close down a Catholic Church, would they?” she asked.
Article 32, Section 2, of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People mandates "free prior and informed consent" in consultation with the indigenous population affected by a state action (http://www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp).
It also says, "States shall provide effective mechanisms for provention of, and redress for: Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources."
Ken Wiseman, MLPA Initiative executive director, and the California Fish and Game Commission violated the UN declaration by never consulting with Kashia Pomo and other tribal leaders over the closure of a sacred site. They also provided no mechanism for redress of this grievance.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in October 2009 passed a strongly worded resolution blasting the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process for failing to recognize the tribal subsistence, ceremonial and cultural rights of California Indian Tribes.
“The NCAI does hereby support the demand of the tribes of Northern California that the State of California enter into government to government consultations with these tribes; and that the State of California ensure the protection of tribal subsistence, ceremonial and cultural rights in the implementation of the state of Marine Life Protection Act,” the resolution stated.
The MLPA, a law passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been hijacked by oil industry, real estate, marine development and other corporate interests under the Schwarzenegger administration. MLPA officials have completely taken water pollution, oil drilling, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing in this bizarre parody of marine "protection."
Wiseman and his collaborators constantly claim that the MLPA process is "open and transparent" but the only thing "open" about the initiative is how it has openly violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Not only has it broken these federal and international laws, but until recently MLPA officials openly defied the state of California's Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act and the First Amendment of the U.S.Constitution by barring reporters from covering "work sessions" of the process with video and audio recording equipment.
It was only after an outpouring of outrage by civil liberties advocates and journalists over the arrest of David Gurney, independent journalist, as he filmed an MLPA "work session" that Wiseman decided to finally obey the law.
For more information about the violation of indigenous subsistence, cultural and religious rights under the MLPA, go to: http://www.fishsniffer.com/forums/content.php?r=221 and Violet Wilder's facebook page, "KEEP THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BEACHES ACCESSIBLE FOR THE COASTAL TRIBES" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105945012781743).
MLPA Initiative Violates American Indian Religious Freedom Act, UN Declaration
by Dan Bacher
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative has brazenly violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, passed by the UN General Assembly in September 2007.
Passed by both houses of Congress, AIRFA became law on August 11, 1978, spurred by the American Indian Movement's Longest Walk from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. that year. The act recognized the "inherent right" of American citizens to religious freedom; admitted that in the past the U.S. government had not protected the religious freedom of American Indians; proclaimed the "indispensable and irreplaceable" role of religion "as an integral part of Indian life"; and called upon governmental agencies to "protect and preserve" for American Indians their inherent right to practice their traditional religions.
AIRFA states, “it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.”
The MLPA process has violated this historic law by banning the Kashia Pomo Tribe from practicing their religion by gathering seaweed and shellfish and conducting ceremonies at their sacred site, Danaka, in northern Sonoma County. In the Kashia Pomo's creation story, Danaka (Stewarts Point) is the place where the tribe first walked on land.
The sacred site is located in a so-called "marine protected area" that was part of a package of reserves that the California Fish and Game Commission voted 3 to 2 for on August 5, 2009, in spite of vocal opposition by the tribe, fishermen and environmental justice advocates.
“They’re interfering with our religion, the food that we lived off before the white man came,” said tribal elder Violet Chappell during a blessing ceremony off Danaka on April 30, the day before the May 1 closure, hosted by landowner Arch Richardson.
The gathering on a bluff overlooking the ocean drew 145 people, including members of the Kashia Pomo and other California Indian Tribes, recreational anglers, seaweed harvesters and environmental justice advocates to thank and bless the ocean for the food it has provided to native peoples for thousands of years.
“We used this food every day – we call it health food,” Chappell stated. “The food was created by our creator - we treated it with care and respect. We are here to say respect us for our food - don’t close this area down because it's part of our religion.”
“I don’t think the Fish and Game Commission would be allowed to close down a Catholic Church, would they?” she asked.
Article 32, Section 2, of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People mandates "free prior and informed consent" in consultation with the indigenous population affected by a state action (http://www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp).
It also says, "States shall provide effective mechanisms for provention of, and redress for: Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources."
Ken Wiseman, MLPA Initiative executive director, and the California Fish and Game Commission violated the UN declaration by never consulting with Kashia Pomo and other tribal leaders over the closure of a sacred site. They also provided no mechanism for redress of this grievance.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in October 2009 passed a strongly worded resolution blasting the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process for failing to recognize the tribal subsistence, ceremonial and cultural rights of California Indian Tribes.
“The NCAI does hereby support the demand of the tribes of Northern California that the State of California enter into government to government consultations with these tribes; and that the State of California ensure the protection of tribal subsistence, ceremonial and cultural rights in the implementation of the state of Marine Life Protection Act,” the resolution stated.
The MLPA, a law passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, has been hijacked by oil industry, real estate, marine development and other corporate interests under the Schwarzenegger administration. MLPA officials have completely taken water pollution, oil drilling, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing in this bizarre parody of marine "protection."
Wiseman and his collaborators constantly claim that the MLPA process is "open and transparent" but the only thing "open" about the initiative is how it has openly violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Not only has it broken these federal and international laws, but until recently MLPA officials openly defied the state of California's Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act and the First Amendment of the U.S.Constitution by barring reporters from covering "work sessions" of the process with video and audio recording equipment.
It was only after an outpouring of outrage by civil liberties advocates and journalists over the arrest of David Gurney, independent journalist, as he filmed an MLPA "work session" that Wiseman decided to finally obey the law.
For more information about the violation of indigenous subsistence, cultural and religious rights under the MLPA, go to: http://www.fishsniffer.com/forums/content.php?r=221 and Violet Wilder's facebook page, "KEEP THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BEACHES ACCESSIBLE FOR THE COASTAL TRIBES" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105945012781743).
"We created a model and the results were completely consistent with our predictions", ... and with no current baseline!
That's all they have is models, and no nearshore habitat data, it's all a proxy line of assumptions. Model inputs are single-species life-history data oriented while current fisheries management we are told is inferior because it is based on single species management. Oh and check this - the "Charge of the Science Advisory Team is laid out in the MLPA Master Plan Framework:
"It is important to understand that the charge of the peer review entity is not to authenticate the data presented to them, but to evaluate the scientific methodology employed and the facial plausibility of the conclusions that can be drawn therefrom. More importantly, the peer review entity is not expected to approve, disapprove, or comment on the wisdom of those conclusions. This must be so, because reasonable people can in good faith arrive at different conclusions using the same data and methodology."
The BlueGreen Meanies that want to protect the North Coast State Waters under the MLPAi can't even get the species that "may" benefit right. And while I haven't done the math yet, I would bet that the Blue Whale (named Jane Bluechenko) killed by a research vessel last year off of Fort Bragg, CA while gathering data for the Marine Life Protection Act, removed more biomass from coastal waters than a whole year or more of commercial fishing on the North Coast.
It's Green Machine Wet Dream, Welcome To California Corporate State Waters
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/05/18649960.php
Tomas DiFiore
Seaweed Rebellion
Albion, California
That's all they have is models, and no nearshore habitat data, it's all a proxy line of assumptions. Model inputs are single-species life-history data oriented while current fisheries management we are told is inferior because it is based on single species management. Oh and check this - the "Charge of the Science Advisory Team is laid out in the MLPA Master Plan Framework:
"It is important to understand that the charge of the peer review entity is not to authenticate the data presented to them, but to evaluate the scientific methodology employed and the facial plausibility of the conclusions that can be drawn therefrom. More importantly, the peer review entity is not expected to approve, disapprove, or comment on the wisdom of those conclusions. This must be so, because reasonable people can in good faith arrive at different conclusions using the same data and methodology."
The BlueGreen Meanies that want to protect the North Coast State Waters under the MLPAi can't even get the species that "may" benefit right. And while I haven't done the math yet, I would bet that the Blue Whale (named Jane Bluechenko) killed by a research vessel last year off of Fort Bragg, CA while gathering data for the Marine Life Protection Act, removed more biomass from coastal waters than a whole year or more of commercial fishing on the North Coast.
It's Green Machine Wet Dream, Welcome To California Corporate State Waters
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/05/18649960.php
Tomas DiFiore
Seaweed Rebellion
Albion, California
For more information:
http://www.albionharbor.org
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