The best thing about Nov. 6 this year was that our pro and college football games — our entire lives really — were no longer going to be interrupted by mud-slinging campaign ads.
Enough, already!
Somehow those campaign-running folks continue to overlook an aspect of America’s daily life — at least most every weekend life — when it comes to making campaign promises.
When was the last time you heard a candidate for national office offer to build a new state-of-the-art boat ramp in every state, and two in every state where the voters gave “me” a majority.
What about federal funds to stock bass or another highly sought species in one or more lakes in those states?
What about improved access to public lands?
What about more public input into decisions made about federal fishing and hunting regulations — and taking that public comment to heart?
What about taking recreational fishing from under the purview of the U.S. Department of Commerce and moving it to (what else?) the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?
After all these years under Commerce’s watch, haven’t we learned that “commerce” applies more to commercial operations than it does to recreational fishing?
Haven’t we learned in all those years that federal fisheries folks have a tough time grasping the real-life economic benefits of a healthy recreational fishing sector?
Looking ahead
Despite the only-too-recent moves to include recreational fishing objectives in decisions made in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic Fishery Management councils, the strong-and-getting-stronger national and regional recreational fishing groups must take a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to promises of “making progress” on matters like red snapper and several other reef-fish species.
And, maybe with a shift in the White House come January we will see demands on federal fisheries managers and the fishery management councils they control to abide by the Modern Fish Act to finally reallocate the catch allocations between recreational and commercial sectors. Yep, that mandate is in this law.
This is not to ignore progress made in the final months of this current administration. Yes, there is a Recreational Initiative showing up on the Gulf Council’s agenda. And, yes, there are positive moves to increase public access to public lands.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s don’t try to make these 11th-hour moves appear as if they had been on this administration’s short-term plans and then explain it away by “… it just took this long to arrive at a workable solution.”
For outdoorsmen fighting hard for access, those late moves falls into the last part of an old tome, the one about “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
What us Louisianans can hope for this Christmas is an administration that will abandon the idea that “idle iron” — the oil and gas platforms off our coast are as valuable to fishermen as they were to the transportation needs of our country.
That Louisiana is an oil and natural gas producer and, despite claims to the opposite, our country continues to need them and, even more, needs to have them come from our country and not some foreign power.
What’s more, continued oil and gas production would pour more money into coastal restoration plans and projects.
The Mid-Barataria Diversion Project
Mentioning the coast brings us to another topic.
It’s beyond comprehension why Louisiana’s chief executive, our state’s second in line for that position and a handful of Plaquemines Parish oyster dealers have decided to put the quietus on the Mid-Barataria Diversion Project.
The plan is simple: divert waters from the silt-laden Mississippi River into the upper reaches of the Barataria Basin to reduce the effects of saltwater intrusion into this valuable fisheries and, hopefully over the years, form reefs then islands over an area that’s subsided to the point where it’s almost open water from Golden Meadow south to Grand Isle.
We’re now past 100 years since levees have cut the flow from the Mississippi River into marshes east and west of the river south of New Orleans.
What’s most disturbing is our elected officials in our state’s highest offices and these Plaquemines Parish movers and shakers (ok if we calls them “shuckers”?) fail to understand that the very land they stand on was built by the Mississippi River over thousands of years and without that river there would be no Plaquemines Parish nor most of what we call home today.
Their decision to delay this project, if not stop it outright, could cost our state hundreds of millions of dollars in suits by contractors and the loss of funding from the BP oil disaster settlement.
Today, the space under our tree is barren. The outdoors men, women and children of our state can only hope federal and state officers will scan our Christmas list and find we’re nice, not naughty, and see their way clear to putting a nice bow on these wishes.
Merry Christmas, and this comes with a sincere wish that you and yours are safe and healthy.
