September 25 – Globe, Times Miss Boat on Real Issues – The Northeast’s two leading newspapers both editorialized recently on the fragile status of groundfish populations, especially cod, on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, both the Boston Globe and New York Times missed an opportunity to emphasize conservation measures and explain the great risk for fish and fishermen if we weaken those protections.

September 26 – Opening the Closed Areas – A bet we can’t afford to take? – On Thursday, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) will meet for the first time since the Secretary of Commerce declared the New England groundfish fishery, which includes species such as cod, haddock, and flounder, a disaster. One of the ideas currently being discussed is opening groundfish closed areas that have been closed to fishing for the past 15 years; a proposition that could be the final straw causing the collapse of the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine.

September 28 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, September 28 – In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, NEFMC moves to open closed areas; John Bullard reverses his decision on a seasonal gillnetting closure; NOAA proposes exempting scallopers from accountability measures on yellowtail bycatch; a report highlights the culture of distrust between fishermen and regulators; the Center for American Progress explains stock assessments; NOAA finds deep water coral hotspots on Georges Bank; the Boston Globe exposes problems with underweight seafood sold to New England consumers.

Sand Beach, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Photo: timsackton@flickr

Summer is truly a blessed but all too short season in Maine. That is particularly true this year, when weather has been particularly magnificent after a very wet spring. But that has not been the case for most of the rest of the country which is in the grip of one of the worst droughts in over a century and suffering from more bouts of extreme weather.

A number of recent articles and columns brought this point home to me in dramatic terms, including this piece about the impact of such extreme weather on basic infrastructure like roads, drinking water sources and power supply.In the face of this evidence of a changing climate and its threat to some of our very basic building blocks for our way of life – food production, clean water to drink, reliable energy and safe means to travel and ship goods — the issue remains in the hinterlands of our political discourse on a national level, as noted by John Broder in the New York Times. This is shocking to me.

Closer to home, we have news of the steady northward migration of the emerald ash borer, an invasive species that could decimate our ash trees, warming temperatures in the waters off our shores, one reason for the unusually early harvesting of soft shell lobsters which has led in part to the challenges currently facing our critically important lobster industry, as well as the slow motion disaster in progress of ocean acidification, as noted by Professor Mark Green last May.

So what is a poor fellow to do in the face of this depressing news?

A recent column by Philip Conkling, founder and president of the Island Institute, and a CLF Board member, urges us to use our “own senses—your eyes, nose and skin—and act on your own common sense” the next time someone says the climate is not changing and our collective actions have nothing to do with that change.

As we can see, hear, and feel, our climate is changing dramatically with enormous consequences for our communities, our natural resources and our economy. That is a fact. And if our leaders don’t start acting to address these issues, summers in Maine will be altogether different for my children’s children. And that too is a sad but undeniable fact.

Today’s New York Times contains a letter to the Editor I wrote in response to an article published in this weekend’s Sunday Review. See below for a copy of that letter, as it appears in today’s paper. You can also click here to view it on The New York Times website.

To the Editor:

Re “Environmentalists Get Down to Earth” (news analysis, Sunday Review, Dec. 18):

It would be hard to find “a tougher moment over the last 40 years to be a leader in the American environmental movement” only if your sole focus is the national debate. All the rest of us — at the local, state and regional levels — have known for years what the nationals are only now realizing: we’ve got to engage people closer to where they live.

That’s also where we’ll make positive changes on energy and other big issues. The article cites good examples: coal plants, fracking and clean water. Progress on those issues is not happening in Congress. In state and regional arenas, it is.

For those of us who have worked there these last 40 years, the time for our earthbound experience, savvy and skills has arrived. It’s actually a great time to be in the environmental movement. We’re pleased to welcome national organizations to the action.

JOHN B. KASSEL
President
Conservation Law Foundation
Boston, Dec. 18, 2011