Tag Archives: Conservation Law Foundation
Is NOAA studying river herring to death?
If you’ve been following the (mis)management of river herring over the last few years, you may not even be surprised at the latest shenanigans of the NOAA fisheries officials: a delay tactic in the form of a “working group.” Read more here 10:57
Judge’s Groundfishing Rulings Bring Mixed Reaction in Maine –
There was mixed reaction today from environmental advocates following a couple of recent decisions by a federal judge regarding New England’s groundfishing industry. Listen, and Read more here 18:17
Then, there’s this obligatory piece from CLF Shyster Peter Shelley, Court Issues Decisions on NOAA’s Fishing Rules here
We can’t win if we don’t fight! “Save the Oceans” – Not from “overfishing”, but from GREED!
This is a response (and hopefully an alternative) to the position of “Well, it’s coming anyway, it’s inevitable; so’s we might as well take whatever we can get out of it…go on home, and call it good” In fact, we probably won’t survive at all…if we don’t fight. Are we willing to give over our fisheries to the barnstorming energy industrialists looking for a new pair of financial roller skates? Are we willing to let them turn our fishing grounds into oilfields and windfarms, where for “security reasons” they’ll install multi-mile buffer zones preventing any and all craft from entering—except the “officially authorized” of course? Are we willing to let a bunch of Conservation Law Foundation lawyers take over our fisheries management and influence public opinion and cowed officials to regulate fishing into oblivion? . click here to read the story 15:49
Maine offshore wind project faces 1st major hurdle –
“We need to start reaping the benefits of offshore wind, both the economic benefits and renewable benefits,” said Sean Mahoney, executive vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, who criticized the administration for scuttling Statoil’s project last year. (what benefit is that?!! Irreplaceable ocean bottom that you morons want to remove from Monhegans lobstermen?) Read more@portlandpress” 12:07
MSA Reauth Road Show: Fisheries Survival Fund responds to Conservation Law Foundation attack on scallop industry testimony
FSF did not say management has failed but rather changes are needed to provide flexibility and consistency to meet market demands. Industry has proven its stewardship of the resource. Maintaining all closures allows the scallops to age and die, providing no benefit to communities. Allowing access into some closed areas will introduce more areas into the rotational system allowing a more consistent scallop catch without threatening the sustainability of the scallop fishery. more here 23:15
Peter Shelley throws down at the hearing: The Magnuson-Stevens Act is Working in New England
Good morning, Senator Begich, Senator Warren, Senator Markey, Congressman Tierney, Congressman Keating, and other members of the panel. My name is Peter Shelley. I am Senior Counsel with New England’s Conservation Law Foundation. Yes you are! more@talkingfish 20:31
Conservation Law Foundation twists law, science in latest attack on Omnibus Habitat Amendment
In effect, CLF narrows the terms of acceptable debate by treating its own position on the Amendment — dealing with the management of closed areas in Georges Bank — as the only acceptable choice. But in fact, there are many scientifically acceptable outcomes of the Omnibus Amendment process that CLF does not mention in its report. [email protected] 17:20
A “Golden Opportunity” Don’t take NOAA for an answer – Video
What we have here is a golden opportunity. This report ( National Academy of Sciences report) about how NOAA manages fish has been percolating for what, three or four years? Former NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco ordered up this study to deflect the hailstorm of criticism she endured following the catch shares and sector management scheme started strangling the Northeast groundfishery. more@southcoasttoday 09:31
New waterkeeper says Portsmouth NH needs new sewer plant now
Known locally as a founding volunteer for an oyster recycling project for improving water quality in Great Bay — and as president of the state chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association — Jeff Barnum has been named Great Bay – Piscataqua waterkeeper. Just a few days on the job working for the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group, and Barnum is already taking aim at Portsmouth for its “incessant pleas for delay” with regard to upgrading its circa 1964 sewage treatment plant on Peirce Island. more@seacoastonline 15:03
Judge questions Cape Cod wastewater pollution claims
BOSTON — After months of inaction on two lawsuits brought by environmental groups against the Environmental Protection Agency over Cape Cod’s plans, a federal judge hinted Tuesday at the possible outcomes of the cases. more@capecodtimes 10:09
NOAA Northeast Administrator John Bullard chief defends openings from two sides
“We recognize it’s probably not going to make anyone happy,” Bullard said. But, continued@gdt
savingseafood.org: Inaccuracies Abound in Joint Press Release from the Conservation Law Foundation & Earthjustice
The press release misstates important facts about groundfish, starting with a quote from CLF’s Senior Counsel, Peter Shelley: “cod are in the worst condition ever in the history of New England fishing and probably getting worse.” But, while both Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine cod stocks are certainly in the middle of a rebuilding process, neither faces historic low’s. continued@savingseafood
Counsel touts fishery suits as ‘education’ By Richard Gaines – (Peter Shelley said the action was not “hypocritical at all.”)
In drawing a distinction between a federal lawsuit filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley to halt NOAA’s draconian groundfish catch limits and federal lawsuits like one he filed against NOAA a day later for his Conservation Law Foundation, CLF’s senior counsel Peter Shelley said the action was not “hypocritical at all.” continued @ Gloucester Daily Times
CLF sues NOAA to block openings – “It’s not hypocritical at all,” says Peter Shelley who criticized Coakley for interfering with the federal regulatory process.
The day after Peter Shelley, senior counsel for Conservation Law Foundation, derided Attorney General Martha Coakley’s federal lawsuit to block NOAA’s tight new groundfish catch limits as political “soapbox” posturing, CLF and a litigation partner filed two lawsuits of their own against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. continued
Fisherynation Featured Writer Dick Drachek – CLF NMFS AND LAWSUITS
Conservation Law Foundation has been suing NOAA since 1991. In 2001 during a speech to an audience in Phoenix concerning the cost/benefit of litigation in fishery management, entitled Ten Years ‘After The Fall’: Litigation and Grou
ndfish Recovery in New England, Peter Shelley, senior attorney at CLF and a Pew Marine Fellow, refers to the National Marine Fisheries Service as “… A kind of bumbling adolescent” and CLF, the adult, had to step in with a lawsuit to straighten out and save the fishing industry and the agency from its adolescent ineptitudes. This paternalistic role became the paradigm for the Conservation Law Foundation’s behavior toward the Fishing industry and The National Marine Fisheries Service, which is evident in CLF’s current legal machinations.
But it wasn’t just about groundfish it was more about CLF gaining a seat at the bargaining table in terms of fishery management, it was also about, in Shelley’s words “…our suit was the first suit that tried to look at the Magnuson-Stevens Act itself and determine which statutory requirements in the Act actually had teeth.” continued
Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice file lawsuits in federal district court challenging NMFS
Suits challenge plans to open no-fishing zones and to boost catch limits. Attorneys from Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice filed a pair of lawsuits today in the federal district court challenging recent decisions by the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding New England groundfish. continued
“The Attorney General is wrong on the law and she is wrong on the facts.” – Peter Shelley, Conservation Law Foundation
“The Attorney General is wrong on the law and she is wrong on the facts,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel with CLF, who has been actively engaged in fisheries management for more than 20 years. “Political interference like this action by Attorney General Coakley has been a leading cause of the destruction of these fisheries over the past twenty years, harassing fishery managers to ignore the best science available.” continued , believe it or not.
Fisherynation.com Editorial: The Great Atlantic Sturgeon Debacle
This Sturgeon debacle should serve as a pretty clear indication of how our fisheries “management” system works, or more to the point, how it doesn’t work.
How, by any stretch of regulation protocol, methodology, or just plain ol’ administrative integrity, can NOAA declare a species to be endangered without an assessment? Perhaps NOAA’s luminous legal department, Lois Schiffer, could give us the “legal” justification,,,continued
BULLARD, SHELLEY, and COD: or Fish Being and Nothingness – Featured Writer Dick Grachek
“Returning Our New England Fisheries to Profitability”: “You’re doin’ a great job, Brownie” aka, Janie, Johnny, Petey. You should be proud. Mission Accomplished?
In her resignation email Lubchenco made the gravity-defying claim that she had made “notable progress” in “ending overfishing, rebuilding depleted stocks, and returning fishing to profitability”; but soon after, John Bullard “In an interview at the Times, Bullard said the telling figure was that the fleet caught only 54 percent of the allowed catch in 2012, and reasoned from that statistic that there is a dearth of inshore cod, a situation that warrants serious action to reverse.” Richard Gaines March 8, 2013 Gloucester Daily Times, “NOAA head explains stock stand”
Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation explains the Cod Dilemma in a wormy little video he so humorously named “For Cod’s Sake”…..continued
Fishermen challenge stats in limit cuts – calling out the number fudging opportunists!
NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard and Peter Shelley, the senior counsel for the Conservation Law Foundation, point to the table from the NOAA Science Center showing participants in the Northeast groundfishery failed last year to catch anything close to their allocation in virtually every one of the 20 stocks as a sign that the ecosystem was so weak the fishermen could not find enough fish to catch. Both Bullard and Shelley ascribed special significance to the fact that fishermen were able to take about two thirds of the allocation in Gulf of Maine cod, the most important fish for the inshore fleet of day boats. continued
The Warped Musing’s of a Climate Change Opportunist / Ocean Industrialization Habitat Destruction Hypocrite
The hypocrisy! – capecodtoday – Conservation Law Foundation Op Ed is a strong rebuttal to NOAA’s new limits The catch limits on the most endangered stocks will still allow excessive mortality levels, putting the future of the fishery at risk. continued
Must be tough for these guy’s when their progressive champions are on the “wrong” side! CLF: New rules could allow ‘full collapse’ of cod stocks
CLF and CLF Ventures: or we get rich by litigating the hostile takeover and trading away of public resources for corporate exploitation while claiming to save the planet. Dick Grachek
The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and their “strategy-consulting arm” CLF Ventures apparently have become fisheries Policy Makers, Litigators, Fishing Quota Fund Administrators, and the authors of a “suite” of fishery conservation goals and the “metrics of success” of this suite of goals.
CLF and CLF Ventures engineered this catch share privatization scam right from the beginning—with the help of some Cape Cod “fishermen”. The Cape Cod Trust program was set up as a “success story”, a prototype for the implementation of the Amendment 16 catch shares program, the market-based atrocity that we have today. CLF Ventures (most deservedly) collects fees along the line “…as the strategy-consulting arm of the Conservation Law Foundation.”
It’s the “doing good while doing well” credo of “Free-Market Environmentalism, the Enviro- Capitalists” or translated: We get rich by stealing and trading public resources while claiming to save the planet. continue reading!
CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION: Saving Seafood is “rather discomposed” Really?!!!
The Conservation Law Foundation’s Sean Cosgrove responds to our analysis of their criticism of NEFMC Council Member Laura Ramsden and their arguments on proposed changes to closed areas. 13 March 2013 “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair continue
Note Saving Seafood has been more than generous providing space for the ENGO agenda. They have always been accurate in their analysis, unlike the pampered poodles of the ENGO crowd. Sean Cosgrove should be absolutely ashamed of himself for quoting Upton Sinclair, especially if he understands the quote, and avoids looking in the mirror!
Saving Seafood Analysis – Conservation Law Foundation Misleads Public on Habitat Closed Area Changes
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) March 13, 2013 – In the article, “Destructive Trawling and the Myth of ‘Farming the Sea’,” Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF) Sean Cosgrove argues against the New English Fishery Management Council’s (NEFMC) recent recommendation to open certain areas previously closed to fishing, claiming that trawling, in every instance, is detrimental to ocean habitats. But Mr. Cosgrove cites incomplete and unrelated evidence in order to argue that marine scientists “unanimously” agree with his allegations. In reality, Mr. Cosgrove’s claims are contradicted by numerous peer-revised studies focused specifically on New England’s marine ecosystems. Continued
Who owns the fish?
“We’ve been frozen out,” said Collins, who docks near the Golden Gate Bridge. “This system has given it all to the big guys.” More and more wild-caught fish species and fishing territories in the United States are managed under catch shares, which work by providing harvesting or access rights to fishermen. These rights – worth tens of billions of dollars in the United States alone – are translated into a percentage, or share, that can then be divided, traded, sold, bought or leveraged for financing, just like any asset. Catch shares have been backed by an alliance of conservative, free-market advocates and environmental groups, some of which have financed scientific studies promoting the merits of the system, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. continued
Maine Voices: Plight of cod fishery should serve as wake-up call for policymakers By Peter Shelley, CLF
By Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation — Before New England’s most important fishery collapses completely and takes our codfish with it, solutions must start with the facts at hand: Many of New England’s groundfish, particularly Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod, are at historically low levels and may be in complete collapse. Read more
Not so fast, Councilor
Cod, NOAA, and Existence
Fishermen’s troubles are a direct result of mismanagement: inadequate science, unreasonable Maximum Sustainable Yield-crisis centric regulations, NOAA’s single species approach to a complex multi-species fishery, and then, of course, our beloved “returning profitability to fishermen” catch shares, a disastrous campaign to privatize and turn the fish resource into a Wall Street commodity at the expense and demise of working fishermen. Additionally, NOAA has traditionally ignored environmental factors, such as climate change, predation, and natural cycles, focusing solely on managing the fishermen, not the fish in their environment. If this cod stock is indeed “collapsing”, it is certainly not due to “over harvesting”—the groundfish managers’ Total Allowable Catch has been under-harvested for years, sometimes by 75%, but consistently underfished by at least 50%. https://fisherynation.com/dick-gracek
Editorial: Fishery shutdown would showcase economic impact
The senior counsel for the Conservation Law Foundation may be arguing for all the wrong reasons, but he makes a valid point: Read more here
Peter Shelley -Conservation Law Foundation – Enviro group urges fishery shutdown
While fishing industry group and federal lawmakers have sought to ease dire new catch limits seen as threatening Gloucester’s and New England’s groundfishery, a leader of at least one prominent environmental group says the limit cuts of up to 77 percent “did not go far enough. ”In his report, Shelley wrote that “recent assessments showed stocks at the lowest levels and declining rapidly. The fish just aren’t there anymore.” Read more here
Closed Areas need fed’s OK to open
The New England Fishery Management Council has voted to recommend giving commercial groundfishermen access to parts of five areas that have been closed to them for many years. The request to open closed areas to commercial fishing came days before the NOAA Science Center issued a report on the 2011 fishing year that contained the revelation that only 41 percent of allocated fish were landed in 2011. Read More
