The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled on Friday that the National Marine Fisheries Service had no legal basis for relying on pessimistic statistics to justify imposing expensive federal regulations upon fisheries and lobstermen.
In its decision, the court found that the NMFS had “egregiously erred” in its interpretations of the Endangered Species Act. This would have allowed the agency to impose expensive regulations on lobstermen to protect endangered whales. According to the court decision, the challenged regulations required lobstermen and their gear to meet new standards before they could receive reauthorization by the federal government for access to the lobster fishery.
Dustin Delano (COO of New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association and former vice-president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association) told Daily Caller News Foundation that if the ruling had not been overturned our fishery would have ceased to exist.
The NMFS is responsible for licensing access to American fishing. According to the court decision, to do this, the ESA requires the agency to first write an opinion that assesses what impact fishery activities will have on protected species in the same waters. According to the court’s decision, the NMFS is able to project impacts when there are uncertainties using statistical models based on the “best scientific and commercial data available.”
According to the decision of the court, in this case the NMFS granted “the benefit-of-the doubt” to protected right whales “by relying on worst-case scenarios or optimistic assumptions.” According to the court’s decision, NMFS cannot grant “the benefits of the doubt” in cases like this one by “relying on worst-case scenarios or pessimistic assumption to benefit a favored party.”
According to the court’s ruling, if the court had affirmed the NMFS legal arguments and approved the proposed implementation plan of the regulations, the American lobstering sector could have lost up to $90,000,000 in the first six years if the NMFS was successful.
Delano, in a press release issued on Friday, said that “NMFS rules could have destroyed a trade iconic based upon a distorted interpretation of data which the law doesn’t justify.” “Lobstermen are formed, like all New England fisherman, in an ethic that predates federal regulations and environmental movements.”
