Policy News
Fish and wildlife programs in the United States are suffering from a financial wasting disease of staggering proportions. Governments struggle mightily to sustain basic research, management, regulatory, and education programs, losing each year in the battle for citizen support and discretionary dollars. Against that backdrop, former Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal and Bass Pro Shops CEO... Read More
“The Cost of Trout Fishing,” a recent op-ed piece by Douglas Thompson in the New York Times (Thompson 2015), included several inaccurate statements and fundamental misunderstandings of fisheries management and aquaculture. As fisheries research and management professionals, the American Fisheries Society would like to set the record straight. The mission of the American Fisheries Society... Read More
Douglas Austen, AFS Executive Director Back on April 11, 2015, the New York Times (NYT) published an op-ed by Douglas Thompson on trout fishing and hatcheries that some AFS members found to include some truths but also a troubling amount of erroneous information and misrepresentations of facts. Until relatively recently, AFS has not been actively... Read More
Thomas E. Bigford, AFS Policy Director [email protected] Finally, courtesy of a federal rule issued in late May, society can push the pause button on the long debate about wetland policy and science. While the central issue of what is and is not a wetland was addressed in the final Clean Water Act (CWA) rule released... Read More
“Silt happens!” That simple riff off a common bumper sticker is a quote from Gary Esslinger, manager of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District in southern New Mexico (Weiser 2011). His sentiment arose from desert country but might have been uttered by Exelon Power about its Conowingo hydropower project on the Susquehanna River or the owners... Read More
Doesn’t everyone revere Mother Nature? Granted, some might not be as love-struck as me, but I suspect most AFS members appreciate Mother’s ability to get things right. It was while reading about the science and policy of habitat conservation (protection and restoration) that I began to sense a theme, or at least imagine one. If... Read More
by Thomas E. Bigford, Policy Director, American Fisheries Society Advocacy in its simplest construct has two components — an issue and a voice. Life is rarely so simple, as is definitely true about advocacy. AFS is actively engaged in that debate as we consider roles that may position us to be a stronger advocate... Read More
Serving as your dutiful correspondent and policy wonk, I wrote this column from the AFS Southern Division Annual Meeting in Savannah, Georgia (late January), a gorgeous coastal city that also hosted the mid-year meeting of the AFS Governing Board (early February). The hugely successful Southern Division event reminded me how much AFS members offer to... Read More
I dedicated one of my columns to how we and our Society can wield greater influence through partnerships. Fish-centric opportunities abound, but bonus points await those who reach beyond fish and toward aquatic systems on larger geographic scales, toward other natural resources such as wildlife, toward cross-cutting efforts based on topical themes such as resource economics,... Read More
by AFS Policy Director Tom Bigford This column started with a singular focus on the ecological value of artificial or engineered spaces as surrogates for natural habitats. After some enlightening conversations at the AFS Annual Meeting in Québec City, my topic morphed into a broader policy arena. Besides habitats, we might create with sculpted sediments,... Read More
