WASHINGTON - The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) today applauded President Bush’s signing of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006. The nation’s primary coastal fisheries law, commonly called the Magnuson-Stevens Act, had long needed an update. The version of the act passed today had been shaped by a 109th Congress that paid close attention to the concerns of the sportfishing and conservation communities.
A TRCP-sponsored coalition of organizations that care about the future of this nation’s marine resources and improved recreational angling opportunities, the Angling 4 Oceans Coalition, advocated a set of principles to be advanced in the reauthorization process. In what became known as the “SALT Principles,” the coalition called for Science-driven marine policy, an Allocation of fisheries stocks that better reflected the economic contributions of recreational anglers, a License or national registry system to improve recreational data collection, and Tackle and gear restrictions that will reduce bycatch.
“The bill addressed each of the key concerns expressed by recreational saltwater anglers,” said Bob Hayes, counsel for the Coastal Conservation Association and American Sportfishing Association. “The reauthorization took the biggest steps forward for the interests of sportfishermen that we’ve seen in recent decades.”
“Throughout this whole process, we have been impressed by the number of lawmakers who committed to improved management of our coastal fisheries,” said Eric Schwaab, Resource Director for the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. “We also appreciate efforts to build a better framework for cooperation between state and federal fisheries managers.”
“In the period of intense public debate that preceded the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, we saw an unprecedented number of recreational fishing and conservation groups standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and our ultimate success can be traced to their unity,” said Matthew B. Connolly Jr., Chairman and CEO of the TRCP. “There a lot of folks talking about the potential of cooperative conservation, and here we have our proof. We were thrilled to see all these groups come together – putting aside some differences in order to find an all-too-uncommon common ground – and better public policy is the final result.”
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The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is a coalition of leading hunting, fishing and conservation organizations and individual partners working together to guarantee access to places to hunt and fish, conserve fish and wildlife habitat, and increase funding for conservation.