by Dan Bacher
November 4, 2008 -- The ripping away of public trust access to our waterways and ocean waters by extreme property rights folks and the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations is something that many sportsmen don't seem to understand. I get sick and  tired of some ill-informed sportsmen who point to "animal rights groups," "environmentalists," and "liberals" as the reason why we are seeing more and more areas closed to fishing, when it is the two state and federal administrations that are in power at this time, along with their buddies in the "wise use" property rights movement, that are actually responsible.

Unfortunately, some of the larger, corporate funded environmental groups  have served as collaborators with the Bush and Schwarzenegger regimes in instituting no fishing zones along the coast in an egregious example of federal-state-environmental green washing. However, if you actually review the history of fishing closures in California history, the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations have consistently been the biggest proponents of closures and no fishing zones off the California coast.

The Marine Life Protection Act was passed by a Democratic-dominated legislature, but it is Schwarzenegger, a Republican, that has fast-tracked this process. Most sportsmen aren't opposed to Marine Protected Areas (MPAs); they are opposed to the inequitable and hasty manner in which they have been imposed. MPAs under the Schwarzenegger only "protect" areas of ocean from recreational and commercial fishermen, a largely redundant and punitive effort since salmon fishing is completely closed this season and rockfishing is severely restricted to certain depth areas and seasons by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. At the same time, these MPAs do nothing to cause the declines of fish caused by pollution or help stop future oil and chemical spills from taking place!

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger has consistently vetoed fishery restoration passed by the Legislature and pushed for the destruction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations by building a peripheral canal and more dams to bail out subsidized corporate water contractors.

Although certain environmental groups support "no fishing" zones in the state's ocean waters, I would argue that the greatest threat to public fishing access is the anti-fishing rights policies of the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations, as well as the ascendancy of the lunatic fringe of the "wise use" property rights movement. Every angler should consider the destruction of fishing rights and fisheries under these two regimes before they go into the voting booth on Tuesday.

Just look at this year's unprecedented salmon closures in California and Oregon ocean waters and Central Valley rivers. Politically manipulated Bush administration biological opinions, coinciding with Department of Water Resources failures to observe the provisions of the Endangered Species and Clean Water Acts, resulted in massive increases of export pumping and the loss of thousands of thousands of salmon smolts. The DFG's failure to put the salmon in acclimation pens, combined with bad "ocean conditions," produced the "perfect storm" leading to the salmon collapse.

In 2006, the Bush administration, not "liberals" or "environmentalists," tried to close down all recreational and commercial salmon fishing on the ocean off California and southern Oregon, due to the alarmingly low numbers of Klamath River fall-run chinooks. To add insult to injury, these closures were the direct result of the Karl Rove-instigated fish kills of 2002. Fortunately, massive outcry by West Coast Democratic Congressmen and sportfishing and commercial fishing groups allowed anglers to have a season that year, although commercial fishermen were severely limited.

At the same time, the property rights fanatics, through compliant Sheriffs Departments and District Attorneys and the anti-fishing zealots in the federal and state governments, have closed off vast areas of public trust access on levees to bank fishermen on the Delta and Sacramento River - in direct violation of the California Constitution.  

According to the California Constitution, Article 1, Declaration of Rights, Section 25, "The people shall have the right to fish upon and from the public lands of the State and in the waters thereof, excepting upon lands set aside for fish hatcheries, and no land owned by the State shall ever be sold or transferred without reserving in the people the absolute right to fish thereupon; and no law shall ever be passed making it a crime for the people to enter upon the public lands within this State for the purpose of fishing in any wate containing fish that have been planted therein by the State; provided, that the legislature may by statute, provide for the season when and the conditions under which the different species of fish may be taken."

This right is also guaranteed in Article 10, water, Section 4, "No individual, partnership, or corporation, claiming or possessing the frontage or tidal lands of a harbor, bay, inlet, estuary, or other navigable water in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose, nor to destroy or obstruct the free navigation of such water; and the Legislature shall enact such laws as will give the most liberal construction to this provision, so that access to the navigable waters of this State shall be always attainable for the people thereof."  

Since 2001, the Bush administration on the federal level and Governor Gray Davis, succeeded by the even more anti-fishing Schwarzenenegger administration in 2003, have closed more fishing areas and destroyed more fisheries than all of the previous administrations, Democratic and Republican, combined.

Fishing closures that have taken place under the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations include the following:

• The complete closure of the continental shelf in federal waters to rockfishing, due to federal and state mismanagement of the groundfish fishery for nearly a decade by the PFMC.

• The adoption of severely restricted fishing seasons for rockfish, lingcod and greenling in recent years, along with early closures this year and last based on the rebuilding paradox: canary and yelloweye rockfish are rebounding, so anglers have more contact  with them!

• The fast tracking of the MLPA process by Schwarzenegger, resulting in massive no fishing zones off the Central Coast, and looming closures on the North Central and South Coasts.

• Increasing closures of bank fishing access on roads, maintained with public funds, on levees along the Sacramento River and throughout the Delta. This started with the closure of the Sacramento River below Freeport and the closures have expanded to include vast areas of public trust access to navigable rivers in Solano, Yolo, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties. Local reclamation districts, in collaboration with state and federal governments, have fenced off vast tracts of land on the Delta. The Prospect Island fish kill of November 2007, when tens of thousands of striped bass, Sacramento blackfish, Sacramento splittail and other species perished after a levee repair by the Bureau of Reclamation, occurred on federal land that was closed to public access and would probably not have been exposed unless two duck hunters had trespassed on the land.  

• Illegal denial of public fishing access by "wise use" property rights advocates on the Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced and San Joaquin rivers - and numerous other streams throughout the state. The massive evisceration of public trust fishing rights, a gross violation of the California Constitution, has been engineered by local and regional water districts and agencies in collaboration with the state and federal governments.  

When all is said and done, these closures have much less to with "preservation" or "conservation" than they do with corporate and agribusiness greed and the desire of corrupt politicians to get the stewards and watch dogs of the environment, anglers like you and me, off the water! Where is the outrage when our fishing rights are being trampled upon everywhere we look?