Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
California
Central Valley
North Coast
Environment & Forest Defense
Government & Elections
Racial Justice
Coalition Exposes Secret MLPA Meetings
Osborn then submitted to the Commissioners the copies of emails and correspondence by MLPA officials documenting private, non-public meetings. Secret meetings of the Blue Ribbon Task Force were held in April 2007 and on November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, October 20, 21 and 22, 2009.
Coalition Exposes Secret MLPA Meetings
by Dan Bacher
George Osborn, spokesman for the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), presented a 25 page document documenting illegal private, non-public meetings of Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative officials to the California Fish and Game Commission during its meeting on February 2 in Sacramento.
The PSO, a coalition of national and regional fishing organization including the Coastside Fishing Club and United Anglers of Southern California, filed suit in San Diego Superior Court in late January, seeking to overturn South Coast and North Central Coast MLPA closures, alleging violations of the State Administrative Procedure Act.
During his brief public testimony, Osborn exposed the corruption and violations of law by the MLPA's Blue Ribbon Task Force (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA).
“After reviewing the documents turned over to us, which previously the BRTF had improperly withheld from the public, we now have evidence, indicating that the public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged Kabuki performance, choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions, in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF," said Osborn. "Clearly, this has not been the most open and transparent process, as it has so often been described.”
“The BRTF’s behavior taints the regulations that are the end product of its work, and these regulations must be reversed,” he emphasized. “The PSO respectfully requests that the Commission begin the process to un-do these wrongs committed against California’s recreational anglers and all Californians, see that the MLPA is implemented properly, and reverse actions that unnecessarily close areas to fishing.”
“Let’s work with Governor Brown and direct California’s meager resources to solve real problems that harm the ocean we love,” he concluded.
Commissioner Dan Richards asked Osborn for proof about the secret meetings that PSO has accused the privately funded MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force of conducting.
Osborn then submitted to the Commissioners the copies of emails and correspondence by MLPA officials documenting private, non-public meetings. Secret meetings of the Blue Ribbon Task Force were held in April 2007 and on November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, October 20, 21 and 22, 2009.
The documents included correspondence by Ken Wiseman, MLPA executive director, Don Benninghoven, former Fish and Game Commissoner, Melissa Miller-Henson, program manager of the MLPA Initiative, Meg Caldwell, BRTF member and others.
The documents also include the email by Fort Bragg City Council member Jere Melo on November 5, 2009, regarding his resignation from the MLPA Statewide Interest Group (SIG) for its failure to obey state laws.
"I cannot continue on a body that advertises its functions as 'public' and then provides very little or no public notice of its meetings," said Melo. "There is a real ethics question for a person who holds a public office."
The February 2 meeting was a joint hearing of the Fish and Game Commission and the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast. The Commission adopted a unified proposal crafted by recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, environmentalists and business owners that would create marine protected areas in approximately 13 percent of the North Coast state's waters - and for the first time acknowledged tribal gathering rights on the ocean.
The Yurok and other North Coast Tribes did not endorse the proposal, but accepted it, providing that the state formally acknowledges the sovereign rights of Tribes to gather along the coast as they have done from thousands of years.
“There is no evidence that tribes have had a negative impact upon the ecosystem," said Thomas O'Rourke, Chair of the Yurok Tribal Council "They have been part of the ecosystem since time immemorial. Science needs to recognize people as part of the ecosystem. If you don’t include people, the proposal will fail. Our rights are not negotiable.”
He emphasized, "The Tribe doesn't endorse the unified proposal, but it accepts the proposal."
"Nothing is final until it's final," O'Rourke said after the meeting, in responding to the Commission's decision to move the unified proposal forward. "We are as comfortable as we can be in this stage of the process."
In reference to the lawsuit filed by PSO, O'Rourke stated, "If the state doesn't listen to us and tries to impose regulations on the Tribes, the fishermen's lawsuit is possibly one of many they will have to deal with."
The Commission also heard from supporters of Option Zero, who felt shortchanged because they were only given one minute each to comment at the end of the public comment period. This was done in spite of a letter from Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro and Senator Noreen Evans urging the Commission to "allow for a briefing from Option Zero supporters."
Option Zero proponents, including environmentalists, recreational anglers, and commercial fishermen, support managing fisheries on the North Coast through existing regulations - and criticize the MLPA process for setting up marine protected areas that fail to protect the ocean from water pollution, oil spills and drilling, military testing, wave energy projects and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
MLPA critics also slam the process for its many conflicts of interest, including the domination of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate interests. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served on both the North Central Coast and North Coast task forces and chaired the South coast task force.
The MLPA process was privatized in 2004 when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger directed the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a private corporation that North Coast environmental leader John Stephens-Lewallen described as a "money laundering operation for corporations," to fund the controversial process through a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Fish and Game.
Since then, the MLPA Initiative has violated numerous state, federal and international laws, including the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act, the California Public Records Act, the State Administrative Procedure Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
To see the entire 25-page set of BRTF private meeting documents, go to the San Diego Freedivers website: http://www.sandiegofreedivers.com/MLPABRTFofflinemeetingdocumentation.pdf
Video of George Osborn at Fish and Game meeting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA
by Dan Bacher
George Osborn, spokesman for the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), presented a 25 page document documenting illegal private, non-public meetings of Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative officials to the California Fish and Game Commission during its meeting on February 2 in Sacramento.
The PSO, a coalition of national and regional fishing organization including the Coastside Fishing Club and United Anglers of Southern California, filed suit in San Diego Superior Court in late January, seeking to overturn South Coast and North Central Coast MLPA closures, alleging violations of the State Administrative Procedure Act.
During his brief public testimony, Osborn exposed the corruption and violations of law by the MLPA's Blue Ribbon Task Force (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA).
“After reviewing the documents turned over to us, which previously the BRTF had improperly withheld from the public, we now have evidence, indicating that the public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged Kabuki performance, choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions, in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF," said Osborn. "Clearly, this has not been the most open and transparent process, as it has so often been described.”
“The BRTF’s behavior taints the regulations that are the end product of its work, and these regulations must be reversed,” he emphasized. “The PSO respectfully requests that the Commission begin the process to un-do these wrongs committed against California’s recreational anglers and all Californians, see that the MLPA is implemented properly, and reverse actions that unnecessarily close areas to fishing.”
“Let’s work with Governor Brown and direct California’s meager resources to solve real problems that harm the ocean we love,” he concluded.
Commissioner Dan Richards asked Osborn for proof about the secret meetings that PSO has accused the privately funded MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force of conducting.
Osborn then submitted to the Commissioners the copies of emails and correspondence by MLPA officials documenting private, non-public meetings. Secret meetings of the Blue Ribbon Task Force were held in April 2007 and on November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, October 20, 21 and 22, 2009.
The documents included correspondence by Ken Wiseman, MLPA executive director, Don Benninghoven, former Fish and Game Commissoner, Melissa Miller-Henson, program manager of the MLPA Initiative, Meg Caldwell, BRTF member and others.
The documents also include the email by Fort Bragg City Council member Jere Melo on November 5, 2009, regarding his resignation from the MLPA Statewide Interest Group (SIG) for its failure to obey state laws.
"I cannot continue on a body that advertises its functions as 'public' and then provides very little or no public notice of its meetings," said Melo. "There is a real ethics question for a person who holds a public office."
The February 2 meeting was a joint hearing of the Fish and Game Commission and the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast. The Commission adopted a unified proposal crafted by recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, environmentalists and business owners that would create marine protected areas in approximately 13 percent of the North Coast state's waters - and for the first time acknowledged tribal gathering rights on the ocean.
The Yurok and other North Coast Tribes did not endorse the proposal, but accepted it, providing that the state formally acknowledges the sovereign rights of Tribes to gather along the coast as they have done from thousands of years.
“There is no evidence that tribes have had a negative impact upon the ecosystem," said Thomas O'Rourke, Chair of the Yurok Tribal Council "They have been part of the ecosystem since time immemorial. Science needs to recognize people as part of the ecosystem. If you don’t include people, the proposal will fail. Our rights are not negotiable.”
He emphasized, "The Tribe doesn't endorse the unified proposal, but it accepts the proposal."
"Nothing is final until it's final," O'Rourke said after the meeting, in responding to the Commission's decision to move the unified proposal forward. "We are as comfortable as we can be in this stage of the process."
In reference to the lawsuit filed by PSO, O'Rourke stated, "If the state doesn't listen to us and tries to impose regulations on the Tribes, the fishermen's lawsuit is possibly one of many they will have to deal with."
The Commission also heard from supporters of Option Zero, who felt shortchanged because they were only given one minute each to comment at the end of the public comment period. This was done in spite of a letter from Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro and Senator Noreen Evans urging the Commission to "allow for a briefing from Option Zero supporters."
Option Zero proponents, including environmentalists, recreational anglers, and commercial fishermen, support managing fisheries on the North Coast through existing regulations - and criticize the MLPA process for setting up marine protected areas that fail to protect the ocean from water pollution, oil spills and drilling, military testing, wave energy projects and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
MLPA critics also slam the process for its many conflicts of interest, including the domination of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate interests. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served on both the North Central Coast and North Coast task forces and chaired the South coast task force.
The MLPA process was privatized in 2004 when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger directed the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a private corporation that North Coast environmental leader John Stephens-Lewallen described as a "money laundering operation for corporations," to fund the controversial process through a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Fish and Game.
Since then, the MLPA Initiative has violated numerous state, federal and international laws, including the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act, the California Public Records Act, the State Administrative Procedure Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
To see the entire 25-page set of BRTF private meeting documents, go to the San Diego Freedivers website: http://www.sandiegofreedivers.com/MLPABRTFofflinemeetingdocumentation.pdf
Video of George Osborn at Fish and Game meeting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
Check out the website exposing the so-called "Partnership for Sustainable Oceans" at http://www.somethingsfishyaboutpso.com
For more information:
http://www.somethingsfishyaboutpso.com
Fisherman's Tale
Since you have no basis for your "argument" in support of the MLPA Initiative, you have to resort to absurd claims that anybody who opposes the corruption and conflicts of interests of the privately funded MLPA fiasco represents "foreign fishing interests."
How can you possibly support a process that on the South Coast was overseen by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, and a proponent of new offshore oil drilling off the California coast? In one of the most egregious conflicts of interest in California history, Reheis-Boyd was chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast.
Officials from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, you and other MLPA supporters keep repeating the lie that the process is “open, transparent and inclusive” and “science-based."
The proponents of the process refuse to address the many criticisms that advocates of true ocean protection have leveled against the MLPA Initiative. I have challenged MLPA proponents to answer a series of hard questions that cut to the core of the current MLPA process.
You and other MLPA proponents have failed to respond to my specific questions, but only continue to repeat your unsubstantiated claims that the Initiative is “open, transparent and inclusive” and that anybody who criticizes the initiative is an opponent of “ocean protection.”
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) is a comprehensive, landmark law that was signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999. The MLPA, as amended in 2004, 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.
The law also broadly defines a “marine protected area” (MPA) as “a named, discrete geographic marine or estuarine area seaward of the mean high tide line or the mouth of a coastal river, including any area of inertial or sub tidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora and fauna that has been designated by law, administrative action, or voter initiative to protect or conserve marine life and habitat” (Fish and Game Code 2852, section c).
Furthermore, the law also defines a “Marine life reserve,” as “a marine protected area in which all extractive activities, including the taking of marine species, and, at the discretion of the commission and within the authority of the commission, other activities that upset the natural ecological functions of the area, are prohibited. While, to the extent feasible, the area shall be open to the public for managed enjoyment and study, the area shall be maintained to the extent practicable in an undisturbed and unpolluted state” (Fish and Game Code 2852, section d).
However, the implementation of the law has become a parody of real marine protection. The MLPA process has taken oil drilling, water pollution, wave energy development, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering off the table. The MLPA would do nothing to stop another Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon oil disaster from devastating the California coast.
Here are the questions:
Why did Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and MLPA officials install an oil industry lobbyist, a marina developer, a real estate executive and other corporate interests as “marine guardians” to remove Indian Tribes, fishermen and seaweed harvesters from the water by creating so-called “marine protected areas” (MPAS)? Isn’t this very bad public policy?
Why was Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, allowed to make decisions as the chair of the BRTF for the South Coast and as a member of the BRTF for the North Coast, panels that are supposedly designed to “protect” the ocean, when she has called for new oil drilling off the California coast? Do we want to see oil rigs off Point Arena, Fort Bragg and other areas of some of the most beautiful coastline of North America?
Why is a private corporation, the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, being allowed to privatize ocean resource management in California through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DFG?
Why do MLPA staff and the California Fish and Game Commission refuse to hear the pleas of the representatives of the California Fish and Game Wardens Association, who oppose the creation of any new MPAs until they have enough funding for wardens to patrol existing reserves?
Why did MLPA staff until recently violate the Bagley-Keene Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by banning video and audio coverage of the initiative’s work sessions?
Why has the Initiative shown little or no respect for tribal subsistence and ceremonial rights? In fact, it was only because of massive opposition by North Coast Tribes and their allies that an amendment that would have terminated tribal fishing and gathering rights failed to pass during a special MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force teleconference meeting held in Fort Bragg, Crescent City and Eureka on December 9.
Since the MLPA was privatized in 2004, the initiative has violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Article 32, Section 2, of the Declaration mandates “free prior and informed consent” in consultation with the indigenous population affected by a state action (http://www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp).
The MLPA also violates Article 26, Section 3, that declares, “States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.”
The unified proposal adopted by North Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force is the first MLPA proposal that acknowledges tribal gathering and fishing rights, a tribute to the hard work of the Tribal, fishing and environmental stakeholders? However, why did it take 6 years for this to happen?
Why were there no Tribal scientists on the MLPA Science Advisory Team and why were there no Tribal representatives on the Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast or South Coast MLPA Study Regions? Isn’t this a case of institutional racism on behalf of MLPA officials?
Why does the initiative discard the results of any scientists who disagree with the MLPA’s pre-ordained conclusions? These include the peer reviewed study by Dr. Ray Hilborn, Dr. Boris Worm and 18 other scientists, featured in Science magazine in July 2009, that concluded that the California current had the lowest rate of fishery exploitation of any place studied on the planet.
Why did the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force hold illegal secret meetings, including those held in April 2007 and on November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, October 20, 21 and 22, 2009? Why did it take a lawsuit to get the emails and correspondence by MLPA officials documenting these private, non-public meetings disclosed to the public?
Finally, why did 300 Tribal members, fishermen, immigrant workers and environmentalists feel so left out of the MLPA process that they had to organize a march and direct action to take over a MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting in Fort Bragg of July 21 so their voices would be finally heard?
Proponents of the MLPA Initiative have failed to address the many criticisms of the MLPA process by Indian Tribes, recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen, conservationists and environmental justice advocates.
Real environmentalists support true, comprehensive ocean protection as the MLPA originally intended, not the facade of protection that Schwarzenegger’s MLPA Initiative provides.
Real environmentalists don’t support a process that has gone to great lengths to take 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 perverse concept of marine “protection.”
Finally, real environmentalists oppose the privatization of ocean conservation that has occurred under the MLPA Initiative.
The MLPA process must be seen in the context of the campaign by the Schwarzenegger administration, corporate media, some NGOs and political hacks to greenwash the environmental legacy of the worst Governor in California history for fish, water and the environment. This is the same Governor who presided over the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other fish species, relentlessly campaigned for the construction of an environmentally destructive and enormously expensive peripheral canal and new dams and vetoed numerous laws protecting fish, water and the environment.
Since you have no basis for your "argument" in support of the MLPA Initiative, you have to resort to absurd claims that anybody who opposes the corruption and conflicts of interests of the privately funded MLPA fiasco represents "foreign fishing interests."
How can you possibly support a process that on the South Coast was overseen by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, and a proponent of new offshore oil drilling off the California coast? In one of the most egregious conflicts of interest in California history, Reheis-Boyd was chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast.
Officials from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, you and other MLPA supporters keep repeating the lie that the process is “open, transparent and inclusive” and “science-based."
The proponents of the process refuse to address the many criticisms that advocates of true ocean protection have leveled against the MLPA Initiative. I have challenged MLPA proponents to answer a series of hard questions that cut to the core of the current MLPA process.
You and other MLPA proponents have failed to respond to my specific questions, but only continue to repeat your unsubstantiated claims that the Initiative is “open, transparent and inclusive” and that anybody who criticizes the initiative is an opponent of “ocean protection.”
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) is a comprehensive, landmark law that was signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999. The MLPA, as amended in 2004, 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.
The law also broadly defines a “marine protected area” (MPA) as “a named, discrete geographic marine or estuarine area seaward of the mean high tide line or the mouth of a coastal river, including any area of inertial or sub tidal terrain, together with its overlying water and associated flora and fauna that has been designated by law, administrative action, or voter initiative to protect or conserve marine life and habitat” (Fish and Game Code 2852, section c).
Furthermore, the law also defines a “Marine life reserve,” as “a marine protected area in which all extractive activities, including the taking of marine species, and, at the discretion of the commission and within the authority of the commission, other activities that upset the natural ecological functions of the area, are prohibited. While, to the extent feasible, the area shall be open to the public for managed enjoyment and study, the area shall be maintained to the extent practicable in an undisturbed and unpolluted state” (Fish and Game Code 2852, section d).
However, the implementation of the law has become a parody of real marine protection. The MLPA process has taken oil drilling, water pollution, wave energy development, habitat destruction and other human uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering off the table. The MLPA would do nothing to stop another Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon oil disaster from devastating the California coast.
Here are the questions:
Why did Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and MLPA officials install an oil industry lobbyist, a marina developer, a real estate executive and other corporate interests as “marine guardians” to remove Indian Tribes, fishermen and seaweed harvesters from the water by creating so-called “marine protected areas” (MPAS)? Isn’t this very bad public policy?
Why was Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, allowed to make decisions as the chair of the BRTF for the South Coast and as a member of the BRTF for the North Coast, panels that are supposedly designed to “protect” the ocean, when she has called for new oil drilling off the California coast? Do we want to see oil rigs off Point Arena, Fort Bragg and other areas of some of the most beautiful coastline of North America?
Why is a private corporation, the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, being allowed to privatize ocean resource management in California through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DFG?
Why do MLPA staff and the California Fish and Game Commission refuse to hear the pleas of the representatives of the California Fish and Game Wardens Association, who oppose the creation of any new MPAs until they have enough funding for wardens to patrol existing reserves?
Why did MLPA staff until recently violate the Bagley-Keene Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by banning video and audio coverage of the initiative’s work sessions?
Why has the Initiative shown little or no respect for tribal subsistence and ceremonial rights? In fact, it was only because of massive opposition by North Coast Tribes and their allies that an amendment that would have terminated tribal fishing and gathering rights failed to pass during a special MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force teleconference meeting held in Fort Bragg, Crescent City and Eureka on December 9.
Since the MLPA was privatized in 2004, the initiative has violated the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Article 32, Section 2, of the Declaration mandates “free prior and informed consent” in consultation with the indigenous population affected by a state action (http://www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp).
The MLPA also violates Article 26, Section 3, that declares, “States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.”
The unified proposal adopted by North Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force is the first MLPA proposal that acknowledges tribal gathering and fishing rights, a tribute to the hard work of the Tribal, fishing and environmental stakeholders? However, why did it take 6 years for this to happen?
Why were there no Tribal scientists on the MLPA Science Advisory Team and why were there no Tribal representatives on the Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast or South Coast MLPA Study Regions? Isn’t this a case of institutional racism on behalf of MLPA officials?
Why does the initiative discard the results of any scientists who disagree with the MLPA’s pre-ordained conclusions? These include the peer reviewed study by Dr. Ray Hilborn, Dr. Boris Worm and 18 other scientists, featured in Science magazine in July 2009, that concluded that the California current had the lowest rate of fishery exploitation of any place studied on the planet.
Why did the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force hold illegal secret meetings, including those held in April 2007 and on November 3, 2008, December 10, 2008, February 25, 2009, October 20, 21 and 22, 2009? Why did it take a lawsuit to get the emails and correspondence by MLPA officials documenting these private, non-public meetings disclosed to the public?
Finally, why did 300 Tribal members, fishermen, immigrant workers and environmentalists feel so left out of the MLPA process that they had to organize a march and direct action to take over a MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force meeting in Fort Bragg of July 21 so their voices would be finally heard?
Proponents of the MLPA Initiative have failed to address the many criticisms of the MLPA process by Indian Tribes, recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen, conservationists and environmental justice advocates.
Real environmentalists support true, comprehensive ocean protection as the MLPA originally intended, not the facade of protection that Schwarzenegger’s MLPA Initiative provides.
Real environmentalists don’t support a process that has gone to great lengths to take 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 perverse concept of marine “protection.”
Finally, real environmentalists oppose the privatization of ocean conservation that has occurred under the MLPA Initiative.
The MLPA process must be seen in the context of the campaign by the Schwarzenegger administration, corporate media, some NGOs and political hacks to greenwash the environmental legacy of the worst Governor in California history for fish, water and the environment. This is the same Governor who presided over the unprecedented collapse of Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon, Sacramento splittail and other fish species, relentlessly campaigned for the construction of an environmentally destructive and enormously expensive peripheral canal and new dams and vetoed numerous laws protecting fish, water and the environment.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$355.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network