The Best We Can Hope For
conservation. Sen. Ted Stevens has hardly been known as a friend of the environment. In the past three sessions of the Senate (which have been pretty typical of the Alaska republican’s record as a senator since 1969), Stevens earned ratings on the environment overall of 8, 5 and most recently 4 out of a possible 100 from the League of Conservation Voters. And Stevens has been a driving force for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Last winter he attempted to get that pushed through by attaching it to the national defense appropriations bill — damn the torpedoes and full-speed ahead, even as our military awaited passage of that bill to fund the Iraq war.) he’s worked tirelessly to weaken or gut the Endangered Species Act), his bill will take precedence over better House fisheries legislation proposed by Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), though some of Gilchrest’s good ideas may end up wrapped into the PomboYoung-Frank bill. Some notable shortcomings of the Pombo bill: Fisheries management councils would be permitted to harvest beyond allowable levels with no consequence or penalties. (Under the Stevens bill, any such excess catch would have to be deducted from the following year’s harvest.) The Best We Can Hope For But suddenly last spring a strange thing happened. Stevens emerged as something of a champion for marine-fish conservation. That’s because the bill that the senator introduced to revise the MagnusonStevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the nation’s 30-year-old primary federal fisheries law, offers a surprising level of protection for our oceans and fishery resources. Don’t get me wrong: It’s far from ideal. But it could be worse. And the fact is, it may get worse. Similar legislation was more recently introduced on the House side by three congressmen whose records suggest they’d have no problem legislating fishermen to take the very last fish from the ocean if they had the chance: Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), Don Young (R-Alaska), who has earned a perennial environmental ranking of 0 out of 100, and Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who’s long been a very good friend of the New England fishing industry. Should this House bill on fisheries become law, the Magnuson Act would be diminished in some key respects and overfished stocks left with even less protection. Since Pombo is chairman of the House Resources Committee (where).
he’s worked tirelessly to weaken or gut the Endangered Species Act), his bill will take precedence over better House fisheries legislation proposed by Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), though some of Gilchrest’s good ideas may end up wrapped into the PomboYoung-Frank bill. Some notable shortcomings of the Pombo bill: Fisheries management councils would be permitted to harvest beyond allowable levels with no consequence or penalties. (Under the Stevens bill, any such excess catch would have to be deducted from the following year’s harvest.)
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