Awesome post Kathy!
Some of my favorite quotes from the article (geeze do they sound familiar or what?):
- "These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning."
- "The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored."
- "Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening."
- "Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June."
- "Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with 'facts,' in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada."
- "That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry."
- "'Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic,' said CSF President Jeff Crane."
- "'We have one of the largest voting blocks in the country and we need to use it. We must not sit idly by.'"
I must say, the pic they used with the article is OUTSTANDING!!
Another great quote from that article:
"'In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority.'
Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for 'marine spatial planning' by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be."
