| I urge you to support this action alert calling for a 90-day extension of the public comment period for the South Coast Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) as part of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's widely-contested Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. Please send in your comments TODAY and then attend the California Fish and Game Commission meeting at McClellan (north of the city of Sacramento) from noon to 5 pm on Thursday.
Below the action alert is my article on the upcoming meeting, followed by a letter from the California Fisheries Coalition supporting an extension of the public comment period.
Please forward widely!
Thanks
Dan
Urgent Action Alert from Keep America Fishing:
California Fish and Game Commission to Hold Special Meeting to Discuss Timeline for South Coast MLPA Report
Send in your comments today asking for more time for review of this large, complex and highly important document
The Situation
On September 29, 2010, the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) will hold a special meeting to discuss and consider a potential extension to the public comment period for the South Coast region Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) as part of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) implementation process. The DEIR, which was released on August 18, 2010, analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the marine protected area (MPA) proposals currently under consideration for this area. The DEIR was given a 45-day review and comment period.
The DEIR is a 548-page document that addresses a number of complex environmental issues that require careful consideration. The recreational fishing and boating community believes that it is imperative that the FGC extend this to a 90-day period to provide the public with sufficient time to review and comment on this report.
Decisions made under the MLPA process, including the DEIR, will have significant and long-lasting consequences for angling and boating in the region. The public deserves enough time to carefully review and provide input on the DEIR to ensure it is as comprehensive, informative and accurate as possible and is not driven by a need to meet arbitrary deadlines.
SEND YOUR MESSAGE NOW - EXTEND THE COMMENT PERIOD DEADLINE
Send the letter to the FGC urging them to extend the comment period on the DEIR to 90 days by going to http://www.keepamericafishing....
ATTEND UPCOMING FGC MEETING
The FGC will also be receiving public comment during its September 29 meeting. This is your chance to convey to the FGC - in person - the importance of allowing an extension.
The meeting will be held from Noon - 5 p.m. PDT at the Lion's Gate Hotel & Conference Center, 3410 Westover Street, McClellan, Calif.
For more details regarding the September 29 FGC meeting, visit http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings...
Commission to Discuss Extending South Coast MLPA Comment Period
by Dan Bacher
The California Fish and Game Commission will hold a special meeting on September 29 in McClellan, California to discuss and consider a potential extension to the public comment period for the South Coast Region Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.
Fishing and conservation groups are supporting a 90 day extension of the controversial MLPA process to provide the public with sufficient time to review and comment on this report, while some environmental NGOs are opposing the delay in their effort to keep the initiative on its fast track. The initiative is privately funded by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, led by executive director Michael Eaton.
The DEIR, released on August 18, analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the marine protected area (MPA) proposals currently under consideration for this area. The DEIR was given a 45-day review and comment period. The DEIR is a 548-page document that addresses a number of complex environmental issues that require careful consideration.
"Decisions made under the MLPA process, including the DEIR, will have significant and long-lasting consequences for angling and boating in the region," according to a statement from Keep America Fishing (http://www.keepamericafishing.org). "The public deserves enough time to carefully review and provide input on the DEIR to ensure it is as comprehensive, informative and accurate as possible and is not driven by a need to meet arbitrary deadlines."
In contrast, an action alert from the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper (http://www.independent.com/news/2010/sep/20/channelkeeper-asks-help-protecting-socal-coast) claimed, "Delaying plans for Southern California could threaten the historic Marine Life Protection Act-one of our state's most important ocean protection laws that calls for the creation of a statewide network of marine protected areas."
"Half of this network already exists along the California coast from Point Conception to Point Arena, where MPAs are already working to restore ocean health in breathtaking biodiversity hot spots like the Channel Islands, Point Sur, and Point Reyes," the Channelkeeper stated. "But it's up to the Fish and Game Commission to complete the statewide network of protected areas, starting with Southern California."
Unfortunately, the Channelkeeper and other MLPA advocates fail to acknowledge that the so-called "marine protected area" network is a grotesque parody of real marine protection being used by Schwarzenegger to greenwash his abysmal environmental legacy. This is the same governor that has presided over the collapse of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail, young striped bass and other fish populations while campaigning for a peripheral canal, new dams and increased water exports out of the California Delta.
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), a comprehensive, landmark law signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, is very broad in its scope. The law was intended to not only restrict or prohibit fishing in a network of "marine protected areas," but to restrict or prohibit other human activities including coastal development and water pollution.
"Coastal development, water pollution, and other human activities threaten the health of marine habitat and the biological diversity found in California's ocean waters," the law states in Fish and Game Code Section 2851, section c.
In contrast with the intent of the original law, the MLPA Initiative under Schwarzenegger has taken oil drilling, water pollution, wave energy development, habitat destruction, military testing and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering off the table in its bizarre concept of "marine protection." The MLPA would do nothing to stop another Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon oil disaster from devastating the California coast.
The Channelkeeper and other MLPA advocates also fail to acknowledge the corruption and conficts of interest that have proliferated under the process. The Governor has installed an oil industry lobbyist, a marina developer, a real estate executive and other corporate interests with numerous conflicts of interests as "marine guardians" on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces to remove Indian Tribes, fishermen and seaweed harvesters from the water in these fake marine protected areas.
In fact, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served as the chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) for the South Coast, as well as a member of the task forces for the North Coast and North Central Coast. This oil industry superstar has in recent months repeatedly called for new oil drilling off the California coast. How can there be any justice under this initiative when Schwarzenegger's head MLPA official for the South Coast is the head oil lobbyist for the Western United States?
On July 21, over 300 people, including members of 50 Indian Nations, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, immigrant seafood industry workers, environmentalists and seaweed harvesters, peacefully took over a meeting of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force in Fort Bragg to protest the violation of tribal gathering rights and the corporate greenwashing that have proliferated under the initiative.
"This is the largest demonstration on the North Coast since the Redwood Summer of 1990," Dan Hamburg, former North Coast Congressman and current candidate for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, told me as we marched through the streets of Fort Bragg on the way to the meeting.
"Whether it is their intention or not, what the Marine Life Protection Act does to tribes is systematically decimate our ability to be who we are," said Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal ceremonial leader and organizer for the Coastal Justice Coalition. "That is the definition of cultural genocide."
The privatization of ocean conservation management under the shadowy and unaccountable Resources Legacy Fund Foundation is at the core of everything that is wrong with the MLPA process. The time has come for a suspension of the privately-funded initiative, and for state and federal investigations of the conflicts of interests and violations of state, federal and international laws that have bloomed under the MLPA process.
I urge everybody to send a letter to the Fish and Game Commission (FGC) urging them to extend the comment period on the DEIR to 90 days by going to http://www.keepamericafishing.... The FGC needs to hear from you before the upcoming meeting!
You should also attend the commission meeting on September 29. The FGC will be receiving public comment during this meeting. This is your chance to convey to the FGC - in person - the importance of allowing an extension.
The meeting will be held from Noon - 5 p.m. PDT at the Lion's Gate Hotel & Conference Center, 3410 Westover Street, McClellan, California. For more details regarding the September 29 FGC meeting, visit http://www.fgc.ca.gov/meetings...
For more information on the MLPA Initiative, read my piece, "The questions that Arnold's MLPA proponents don't want to answer," http://www.indybay.org/newsite... |
