environmentalrevie · and the prospects for conservation in the tongass....

EnvironmentalReviewAMonthly Newsletter of Environmental Science and Policy

Volume Eleven Number Nine September 2004

CONTENTS:

LOGGINGOURONLYTEMPERATERAINFORESTJohnSchoen

EFFECTSOFRECREATIONALFISHINGONOVER-FISHEDSTOCKSFeliciaColeman

The Tongass NationalForest: An Ecosystemon the Brink

Introduction:The Tongass National Forest in

southeast Alaska is big, wet and still atleast partlywild. At 16.8million acresthe Tongass is the size of West Vir-ginia. The Tongass is one of the fewremaining temperate rainforests in theworld; it is the largest remaining part ofthe Pacific Coast rainforest, whichonce followed the coast south all theway to the redwoods of California.Unlike most other national forests, alarge proportion of the Tongass is stillintact; that is, it hasn't been roaded orlogged.PresidentClinton implementedthe Roadless Rule to protect that smallfraction of all national forest lands thathave not yet been penetrated by roads.The Roadless Rule was thoroughlyreviewed and had wide support in thescientific community and amongcitizens in Alaska and the Lower Forty-eight, everybody except the timberindustry and their camp followers.President Bush promptly rescinded theRoadless Rule for the Tongass and isnow considering it for the rest of thecountry's national forests.

Although much of the Tongass hasalready been logged, much old-growthremains and the ecosystem still sup-ports wolves, bear, eagles and healthysalmon runs. If the people of Alaskawant to see what the southeast will looklike if they continue to clear-cut theTongass, they need only look at the

lower forty-eight states where we havebits and pieces of forest ecosystems invarious degrees of dysfunction:wolves, grizzlies and cougars arepersecuted if they stray out of theirenclaves; wild salmon runs are either introuble or extinct; and stands of old-growth trees are set aside as noveltyitems in parks and wilderness areas.

We spoke with John Schoen abouthis years of work in southeast Alaskaand the prospects for conservation inthe Tongass.

ER:Dr. Schoen, what is your training?

JS: I received my Ph.D. in wildlifeecology at the University ofWashing-ton in 1977 where I studied the ecologyof elk in the Cedar River watershed. Ibegan work with Alaska Fish and Gamein southeastern Alaska in 1977 where I

was the principal investigator ofresearch on black-tailed deer, mountaingoats and brown bears in the TongassNational Forest. I worked for AlaskaFish and Game for twenty years. I amcurrently the senior scientist forAudubonAlaska.

ER:How big is the Tongass?

JS:At 16.8 million acres the Tongass isroughly the size ofWest Virginia. It isthe largest national forest in theUnitedStates and it encompasses 80 percentof southeast Alaska. Juneau, the statecapitol, is right in themiddle of theTongass. Southeast Alaska altogether isabout 21million acres and 16.8millionacres of it is the Tongass. The Tongassincludes most of the AlexanderArchipelago�s 1,000 islands and thenarrow strip of mainland coast thatborders Canada. The mainland coast ishighlyglaciatedand includesMistyFiords National Monument and TracyArm-Fords Terror Wilderness. Thepoint is that much of the Tongass issteep: rocky cliffs and ice fields withscattered forests of relatively lowcommercial value.

ER:Why is the Tongass consideredunique?

JS: The Tongass Forest is a temperaterainforest and temperate rainforests arerelatively rare. It is part of the northPacific Coast temperate rainforest,which extended originally from PrinceWilliamSound inSouthcentralAlaskaall the way down to northern California.The Tongass represents 14 percent ofall the temperate rainforest in the world,

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Photo by Steve Hillebrand USFWS

and it still has about 30 percent of theworld�s unlogged temperate rainforest.The Tongass still has substantial old-growth temperate rainforest, perhapsthe most in the world. Besides thePacific Coast, temperate rainforestsalso occur today along the coasts ofChile, Japan, Norway, SouthernAustralia-TasmaniaandNewZealand.And of course rain is the key. Temper-ate rainforests receive 100 inches ormore of rainfall a year.

ER:What was thesouthern boundary ofthat rainforest before wecut it?

JS: The coastal red-woods in California wasthe southern boundaryof the Pacific temperaterainforest. The Sitkaspruce/western hemlockzone runs from coastalOregon up throughWashingtonandBritishColumbia to southernAlaska. In the Pacificrainforest, as you gonorth you see differentspecies of trees andunderstory plants. Redwoods onlyoccur in the far south. We don�t haveDouglas fir in Alaska, we have westernred cedar around Ketchikan and Princeof Wales Island; then that drops out andfarther north we have Alaska yellowcedar. Then as you go north fromPrinceWilliamSound and theChugachNational Forest, you get into the borealforests which don�t get nearly as muchrainfall.

ER:The rainforest inOlympicNationalPark is like a cathedral. It has a highcanopy and a lot of space between thetrees. Is that the natural structure ofthese rainforests?

JS:Yes. You are describing thestructure of an old-growth forest. Inthese truly old forests you don�t haverecurrent fire and therefore the forestshave trees of all ages and sizes; as

individual trees blow down and fall outof the canopy new trees come up andtake their place.

Old-growth rainforests areuneven-aged,withmultilayeredcanopies and canopy gaps so sunlightpenetrates to the forest floor, unlikeyoung second-growth stands that aredark and sterile. Your description ofcathedral-like is very appropriate.

ER:Besides their beautywhat ecologi-cal value do they have?

JS: Old-growth stands are morediverse in their structure than youngforests; there are dead trees stillstanding, as well as trees lying on theground, and they are all a valuable partof the forest for wildlife, and fornutrient cycling. Old-school forestersoften say old-growth is a decadentforest and the rotting trees are a wasteof valuable timber, but in fact, rot ispart of the cycle of renewal. Dead trees

recycle nutrients,build soils, andprovide fish andwildlifehabitat.

A second-growth or managedforest that is fifty,one-hundred oreven 150 years oldis very differentfrom an old-growthforest. The trees inthese youngerforests all begangrowing at aboutthe same time andremaineven-agedthroughout thestand�s develop-ment. The trees arepacked more

densely and the upper canopy shadesout much more sunlight from the forestfloor. These stands have very littleunderstory vegetation growing in themand are poorwildlife habitat.

Second-growth forests arebasically tree plantations with a fewspecies of trees and not much elsegrowing on the forest floor. It�s arelatively sterile environmentwith lowdiversity in terms of species it sup-ports, in terms of forest structure andtree age.

Much of the Tongass National Forest is rock and ice.

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There is a world of differencebetween an old-growth forest and asecond-growth forest, and on theTongass we still have abundant standsof old-growth. The average timberrotation� the time between harvests� in southeast Alaska is one hundredyears; an extended timber rotationwould be 200 years. You cannotduplicate the ecological structure andcondition of an old-growth forest even in200 years. Once youremove an old-growthforest and put it undermanagement you havechanged the structureof that forest essen-tially forever. If we letit go for 500 years it�llcome back, but in anormalmanagementcontext, old-growth isecologicallynonre-newable.

ER: So the ecosystemis still more or lessintact?

JS:Unlike theWash-ington andOregoncoast and much of the British Columbiacoast, the Tongass still has large areasof old-growth forest and intact water-sheds. There are certainly roads andclear-cuts in the Tongass but there arestill significant amounts of old-growththat are protected or haven�t yet beencut. And as a consequence in southeastAlaskawe still have abundant popula-tions of all five Pacific salmon, wolves,brown bears, and bald eagles whilemost of these species have declinedprecipitously or have been extirpated inthe southern portions of their range.

Althoughold-growth is stillabundant, there�s also been nearly halfamillion acres of logging on theTongass and about 300,000 acres of

logging on native corporation lands.That may not sound like much for theentire region, but much of Southeastand the Tongass is rock and ice:tidewater glaciers, alpine meadows,and muskeg bogs. The Tongass Foresthas thousands and thousands of acresof that kind of country.

ER: It's colder but it's still considered a

rainforest.

JS: Compared to Washington orOregon, the growing season in Alaskais shorter, the temperatures are cooler,the soil is less productive and the forestis less extensive and tends to be morefragmented. The most productiveforests are at the low elevations,generally below 1,000 feet.

The big tree stands have beendisproportionately cut. Unfortunately,these same forests were the mostimportant and productive habitats forfish andwildlife.

ER: So they just cut the best trees?

JS:Yes. High-grading is the term weuse for taking only the most profitabletrees. And this is part of the numbersgame the Forest Service and the timberindustry use. They frequently say,We�ve only logged a small part of thesoutheast and we�re only going to log asmall percentage in the future. Sowhat's the problem?

As an ecologist who has workedand traveled exten-sively in the PacificNorthwest andsoutheast Alaska, Ican attest to the factthat we have exten-sivelyhighgradedthe best of theseremarkable forests.On the Tongassforest today andthroughout southeastAlaska, the areaswith the biggest treesat low elevations areat great risk. Thoseforests provideessential habitat forblack-taileddeer,brown bear, wolves,marbledmurelets,gosshawks, bald

eagles, cavity nesting birds and fivespecies of Pacific salmon, not tomention the myriad other species westill know so little about. But becausethe industry has clear-cut the bestforests and built over 5,000 miles oflogging roads, the ecological integrityof the rainforest is now at risk in theTongass.

ER:What would be the result of morecutting?

JS: Look atWashington state: marbledmurelets are listed as threatened, thespotted owl is endangered, wolves aregone, salmon have dwindled. In theLower Forty-eight you are doing

Old-growth has widely spaced trees of different ages.


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restoration ecology and you�re trying tomaintain some of the pieces. In Alaskawe haven�t yet hit the threshold wherethe ecosystem starts to unravel.

It has begun to unravel on PrinceofWales Island, the largest island insoutheast Alaska (2,770 square miles),which has been hammered. There are1,800 miles of logging roads on PrinceofWales Island alone and the biggesttrees have already been cut and aregrowing back in dense second-standswith low habitat value for most wildlifespecies. The human-caused mortalityon wolves on Prince of Wales Island isover 50 percent in large part because ofincreased logging roads and thetrapping and illegal hunting that comeswith that. People hunt deer for food,and wolves arecompetitors for deerso that increases thehostility thatmanylocalpeoplehavetoward wolves. It�s adownward spiralwhere after a certainpoint the ecosystem starts to unravel.

ER:TheNativeAmericans have done alot of logging haven't they?

JS: In the 1971 the United StatesGovernment had to reach a settlement(AlaskaNativeClaimsSettlementAct)with the Alaska Natives before theycould develop thePrudhoeBayoil fieldsandbuild theoil pipeline.TheNativepeople of Alaska received a cashsettlement of $962million and 44million acres of land; they establishedregional andvillage corporations tomanage their assets. There�s a regionalcorporation in southeast Alaska calledSealaskaCorporation and severalvillage corporations. If you were aNative corporation executive ofSealaska or a village corporation andyou could select your land, what landswould you select?

ER: The best I could get.

JS: Right, and that�s what the Nativecorporations did. They took the besttimberlands they could get their handson, and those lands have for the mostpart been extensively logged. In mostcases, village corporations went in andquickly liquidated the timber inoneshot, not on a sustainable basis.

ER:Are the corporations doing a betterjob now?

JS: The corporations are distinct fromthe people of the villages, and some ofthe villagers are not happy. Some of thevillage corporations selected landsaway from their village and they logged

the hell out of them, but they protectedlands around their village.Others, likethe Hoonah Corporation on northernChichagof Island logged the areaaround theirvillageextensivelyandmany of the villagers who depended onfishing and deer hunting are not happyabout it.

Sealaska has been fairly success-ful. They�ve logged on a more thought-ful, progressive basis, but they stillhave logged a lot of land.

ER: It seems like there are differentkinds of high-grading. You can take thebest trees or you can take the bestforest.

JS: There were different levels of high-grading. One was to first log the mostproductive regions such as Prince ofWales Island nearKetchikan.

ER: Because that was easy to get to?

JS: It was easy to get to and it had thebiggest trees. They started at the lowelevations in the most productivevalleys and theywould log large areas.Today there�s a different kind of high-grading: they�re still going into themostproductive valleys, but they don�t logthe whole valley, they clear-cut smallerpatches (usually less than sixty acres)but still focus on the low-elevationstands of biggest trees.

ER: To me sixty acres is a big clear-cut.

JS:Anything above sixty acres theyneed to get special approval. In the old

days clear-cuts werethousands of acres. In the1980s and 90s the SheeAtikaNativeCorporationout of Sitka clear-cut threewatersheds (which theyselectedunderANCSA)on northwest Admiralty

Island�Admiralty Island was anational monument� and they havelogged 22,000 acres, all of the low-elevation timber around those threewatersheds. I worked in some of thoseforests before they were logged and itis heartbreaking to see.

Today the Forest Service allowsthe industry to high-grade by going intothe best watersheds of what�s left andthe best timber stands get cut.

ER: This is the numbers game youmentioned when they say they�relogging a small percentage of theforest?

JS: That�s right. The numbers I amabout to give you come right out of aForest Service publication, the 2003Tongass Land Management Plan SEIS.�Forty-two percent of the land on the

The Tongass is a remnant of the Pacific Coasttemperate rainforest. Its southern boundary was thecoastal redwoods in California.


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Tongass National Forest is non-forestwhich includes rock, ice, and alpinetundra, 26 percent of the land is scrubforest which includes high subalpineforest and muskeg bog forest, and 32percent of the land is productiveforest." The Forest Service callscommercially valuable trees productiveforests. Of that one third of theTongass that the Forest Service callsproductive forest, the stands of bigtrees, three to eight feet in diameter,account for about 4 percent of the totalarea of the Tongass.

ER:What does that look like?

JS: On the lowerelevationfloodplainsalong the big riverssome Sitka sprucestands will have treesthat are six-to-ten feetin diameter and over200 feet tall. The treesare wildly spaced and they have a lot ofdevil�s club and salmon berry in theunderstory. These are the big sprucestands that loggers love; and so dobrown bears and the salmon that spawnin the streams that run through theseforests. This is their best habitat.

These kinds of forests with hugeSitka spruce represent less than one-half of one percent of the Tongass, andmuch of them have already been cut.That�s why you have to be carefulwhen you talk about logging a smallpercentage of the forest.

Based on my experience in south-east Alaska� I�m a pilot and I�veflown all over southeast Alaska, I�ve

boated all over southeast Alaska, andI�ve hiked through many of thoseforests � at least half of the mostecologically important stands of old-growth have been logged.

ER:Clear-cut?

JS:Most have been clear-cut but youraise an important point. In the earlydays, there was quite a bit of handlogging where the loggers would cutthe biggest trees and winch them outand leave most of the forest intact; thatwas done all the way up to the 1940s.We can go to those stands that were

hand logged seventy years ago and seethat they still retain the characteristicsof old-growth forest. They may havelost the biggest trees, but they have thestructure and diversity of an old-growth forest. That was a differentkind of logging, one that was much lessharmful to the structure and ecology ofthose forests. An old-growth forest insoutheast Alaska will have trees thatrange in age from seedlings andsaplings up to 1,000 years-old or evenolder, which means the forest isancient. Unfortunately the biggest treesin the Tongass are now by and largestumps.

ER:You can see those big old stumpsaround Seattle�s foothills. You can stillmake out the notches where they putthe springboards.

JS: That is, I think, one of the reasonsthat the Tongass has become such aposter child: the Tongass still has all ofits parts: its wolves, its brown andblack bears, its goshawks and mureletsand all five species of salmon inabundance. The integrity of theTongass is still intact, but I think it is onthe brink. The decisions of the next fiveyears can make the difference betweenmaintaining the integrity of the Tongass

or tipping it over thebrink and starting it tounravel.AldoLeopoldwrote that the firstprecautionof intelli-gent tinkering is tosave all the parts. Thatis the challenge weface today on the

Tongass.

ER:What do the local people thinkabout letting up on the Tongass?

JS: I think that generally the Chamberof Commerce, the timber industry andthe Forest Service are intent on maxi-mizing timber production. But some ofthe smaller communities that have asubsistence lifestyle, a commercialfishing lifestyle or that depend ontourism, those communities such asTenekee Springs and Elfin Cove onChichagof Island, Point Baker onPrince of Wales Island, or Meyer�sChuck north of Ketchikan, are ques-

Because the timber industry has clear-cut the bestforests and built over 5,000 miles of logging roads,the ecological integrity of the rainforest is now at riskin the Tongass.


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tioning why there is still such anemphasis on industrial scale loggingwhen it affects their quality of life and itcosts taxpayers money. But thereaction is mixed because some peoplein the oldmill towns still want thosejobs. I can�t tell you what percentage,but it could be as much as 50 percent ofthe people in Southeast Alaska arequestioning the scale of logging,particularly in roadlessareas. I think thatthere�s a strong voicegrowing in southeastAlaska for habitatprotection.

ER:What about thelong-term contractswith themills?

JS: In the 1950s whenindustrial forestrybegan with the fifty-year pulp contracts inSitka andKetchikan,the companies loggedthe best lands first andthey loggedwholevalleys.

ER:For pulp?

JS:Much of it was forpulp, but the bigmoney in southeast Alaska is the old-growth spruce that they shipped toJapan for veneer; most of the hemlockwas used for pulp. A lot of old-growthtrees were made into pulp, but thebiggest valley bottom trees, the old-growth Sitka spruce logs were madeinto four-sided cants and most of thatwas exported to Japan.

The timber harvest has declinedsubstantially since the 1980s. TheAlaska Natural Interest Lands Conser-vation Act of 1980 mandated a 450million board foot per year timberharvest on the Tongass. There was so

much concern about what that wasdoing to the region�s ecology, towildlife and fish populations and to thepeople who used them that Congressreviewed the issue and passed theTongass Timber Reform Act in 1990.That eliminated the450millionboardfoot harvest mandate and it alsoaddressed the high-grading issue. TheTongass Timber Reform Act stated

that the fifty-year contracts could nothigh-grade the best timber lands.Withthat and other constraints of theTongass Timber Reform Act, the twocompanies that held fifty-year con-tracts walked away from their con-tracts. Logging with those restraintswas no longer lucrative enough forthem.But the high-grading provisionapplied only to the fifty-year contracts,so now there are still no constraints onhigh-grading.

ER:High-grading in this contextmeanswhat?

JS:High-grading in this context meanslaying timber sales out in the water-sheds or valleys that have the besttimber stands. That�s what we�ve beentalking about: losing the integrity of theforests by taking out the best parts. Thewildlife and fish that depend on thosehabitatswill decline and the peoplewhouse and value themwill suffer.

ER: In the LowerForty-eight theForest Service paysbig subsidies to thetimber industry: theybuild the roads, fightthe fires, clean up theslash and replant thetrees. Is this the casein the Tongass too?

JS: Yes. In theForest Service�s2003SupplementalEnvironmentalImpact Statement forthe Tongass Forest,they listed the 2002Tongass timberbudget as $16.4millionbut the timberreceipts brought in$2.4million.

ER:What does theRoadless Rule mean to the Tongass?

JS:Near the end of President Clinton�sterm he implemented the RoadlessConservationRule.This administrativepolicy was a conservation action thatapplied to roadless areas on nationalforest lands. During the public reviewprocess there was some questionwhether or not the Roadless Ruleshould apply to the Tongass and therewas tremendous support both nation-ally and in Alaska for the Tongass to beincluded in the Roadless Rule. I workedon this project and we developed a

Young second-growth forest has closely spaced trees ofthe same size. They have less light, less diversity ofstructure and species than old-growth and are poorwildlife habitat.


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letter to President Clinton that wassigned by 330 North American scien-tists that recommended that theTongass forest be included in theRoadless Rule. Scientists tend not toget involved in policy debates, but 100scientists from Alaska from differentagencies and universities signed thatletter.

The Roadless Rule was enacted in2001 to protect 58.5 million acres ofroadless areas in ournational forests fromlogging and roadbuilding.This rule hadyears of public reviewand received morethan2.5millioncomments fromAmericans across thecountry. Our nation�snational forests alreadyhave 386,000 miles ofroads and a $10 billionbacklog of roadrepairs. Roadless areasprovide vital fish andwildlifehabitatandrefuge for peopleseeking backcountryrecreation. TheRoadless Rule wasscience-based and hadwidespread publicsupport and received ten times morepublic comments than any federal rulein history. Protecting roadless areas inour nation�s forests makes sense anyway you look at it including economi-cally, but President Bush rescinded theRoadless Rule on the Tongass and is inthe process of dismantling the RoadlessRule across the country.

ER:Most people in the Forest Serviceknow how roads degrade wildlifehabitat.

JS: Let me read a quote for you out of a2001 Forest Service general technical

publication. The title of this report is,Forest Roads: A Synthesis of ScientificInformation. �Roads can have majoreffects on biodiversity. As road densityincreases, thresholds may be passedthat cause some species to go locallyextinct.� The Forest Service knowswhat will happen if we continue to cutour remaining roadless areas likethere�s no tomorrow.

On Prince ofWales Island in

southeast Alaska, there�s great concernabout road density and wolves; there�salso a direct correlation between roaddensity and increasing brown bearmortality on Chichagof Island. Theseissues are well studied. In southeastAlaska it�s not only an issue of clear-cutting, it�s also a concern aboutbuilding roads and all the direct andindirect effects roads have on adjacentecosystems. The combination ofputting roads into roadless areas andlogging themostecologicallyvaluabletimber stands has significant cumula-tive effects.

I�ve been involved in two Tongassland management planing processes,once when I worked for Alaska Fishand Game and once with Audubon, andI have watched the Forest Service gothrough major changes. Twelve yearsago the Forest Service made a changein direction when they started focusingon ecosystem management. They hiredgood ecologists and were makingdecisions on an ecosystem level. In the

last four years therehas been a shift awayfrom ecosystemmanagement back tocommodity use andthey ignore thescience when it suitsthem. But I still havetremendous respectfor the people up herethat work for theForest Service.

ER:Youhaveworked with ForestService scientistshaven't you?

JS: Yes. In 1977 Istarted deer researchin southeastAlaskawith a colleague thatworked for the

research branch of the Forest Service,Dr. Charlie Wallmo, who was one ofthe eminent deer researchers in NorthAmerica. We were told that some of theFish and Game biologists were worriedabout the effects of clear-cutting ondeer. At that time about 20,000 acres ayear were being logged in Southeast,and although they were taught inforestry school that clear-cuts are goodhabitat for deer, the biologists whoworked in the field were not seeing it.

ER: That was what you heard fromforesters back then: a deer would have

One form of highgrading is to lay out timber sales in thebest, valley-bottom stands.


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to pack a lunch in old-growth; they likesecond-growth and clearings.

JS: That's right. That was a wide-spread misconception. We wrote apaper on that back in 19802. Wemeasured deer use in clear-cuts,second-growth and old-growth. Wedid plots all over northern southeastAlaska in the springtime tomeasurewinter use, and in the fall to measuresummer use. On average, deer use wasseven times higher in the old-growthforest than in the clear-cuts or thesecond-growth.

The timber industry didn�t likehearing this at all, they said it wasbogus science. The Forest Serviceeven hired people to come up anddiscredit the work;some of that is stillgoing on today. Butthe paper has stoodthe test of time. Otherresearchers didsimilar projects inBritishColumbiaandAlaska, andwe laterdid some radio telemetry studies ondeer confirming the values of old-growth forest as winter deer habitat.

There is a clear difference betweensecond-growth and old-growth interms of their habitat values for deerand many other wildlife species. Todayecologists recognize the tremendousdiversity and the value of old-growthforest compared to second-growth.

ER:How did that idea about deer getestablished?

JS:As a side project, Charlie, MattKirchhoff (an Alaska Fish&GameBiologist) and I reviewed old photo-graphs and historical documents andwe pieced together evidence that theabundance of deer in the old-growth

forest of North America was probablyquitehigh.

You have to remember that most ofthe nation�s old-growth was alreadyharvested before quantitative ecologywas even started. In the PacificNorthwest in the 1950 and 60s biolo-gists were comparing clear-cuts tosecond-growth that was sixty-to-onehundred years old. This kind ofsecond-growth, which in some casesthey were calling old-growth was notas good for dear as clear-cuts, particu-larly in the absence of winter snow.That�s where this misconception thatclear-cutting is good for deer camefrom.

ER: So you didn't have much success

with the Forest Service in the early1980s?

JS:We were meeting tremendousresistance from the Forest Service inthe late 1970s and early 80s.

ER:When was the change? In the late80s?

JS:Yes. In the mid-80s and into the1990s there was a transition in thehighest levels of the Forest Service.Jack Ward Thomas came in as chief ofthe Forest Service, and Mike Dombeckfollowed him. [Thomas was the firstchief of the Forest Service to comefrom an academic background. Ed.]There were many positive changesduring this time as the Forest Servicebeganmanaging national forests as a

forest ecosystem not a timber planta-tion.

ER:How effective were they inchanging the culture of the ForestService?

JS: Changes come slowly but newbiologists were hired, people in theForest Service upper echelons had newperspectives, and they were looking atthe forest as an ecosystem with manyvaluableoutputs including fish,wildlife,clean water and recreation. Timber wasno longer the number one consider-ation.

ER: Thomas was frustrated in the job.Do you think those were changes that

he put in place?

JS:Absolutely. I think thatJack Thomas was instru-mental in looking at ournational forest with abroader, more ecologicalperspective, and Dombeckcontinued in that vein. But in

the last four years there has been a hugechange at the highest levels of theForest Service; and I know it�s frus-trating to people in the field. Our forestsare our national heritage, they belong toall the people of the United States, not afew special interests or industries. Ourold-growth forests and the remainingroadless areas are rare and they haveincredibly high value; they aremorethan a source of timber. We need tomanage them wisely and we must listento scientists and the American people,not just the timber industry.

Literature cited:

1) Response of deer to secondaryforest succession in southeast Alaska.OCWallmo, JW Schoen. 1980 ForestScience26:448-462

An old-growth forest in southeast Alaska will havetrees that range in age from saplings up to 1,000years-old and older, which means the forest isancient. In terms of a human life span, once it's cut,it's gone.


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Recreational FishingTakes a Bite Out ofDepleted Stocks

Introduction:

FeliciaColemanofFloridaStateUniversity and her colleagueswerestruck by an apparent contradiction:according to theNationalMarineFisheries Service, recreational fishingaccounts for only 2 percent of alllandings in the country; but recreationalfishing is the biggest and sometimes theonly fishing pressure on severaloverfished stocks. So Coleman and hercolleagues collectedandanalyzedlandings data for the U.S. (excludingAlaska) for the last nineteen years andfound some interesting and surprisingpatterns1. Commercialfishing is indeed respon-sible for the vast majorityof landings, 96 percent;but if you look at popula-tions that are listed byNMFS as overfished,many are getting ham-mered by the recreational fisheries. Forexample, for populations of concern,recreational fishing accounts for 23percent of all landings nationwide,rising to 38 percent in the south Atlanticand 64 percent in the Gulf of Mexico.Several of the most valued species suchas red drum, red snapper and bocaccioare taken primarily by recreationalfishers.

We spoke with Dr. Coleman abouther work and what it means to fisheriesmanagers, and about how to regulaterecreational fishingmore effectivelyand fairly.

ER:Dr. Coleman, what is yourtraining?

FC:My training is in basic ecology, notin fisheries. For my Masters Degree Iworked on the systematics and repro-ductive style of a little reef fish calledthe rough-tongued bass. For myDoctorate I worked on the effects ofparasitism on the physiology andbehavior of the sheepshead minnow,particularly those effects that made thefish more susceptible to predation bythe parasite�s definitive host. A lot moreesoteric than what I do now, buttremendously fun.

I started working on economicallyimportant fishes like gag, scamp andred grouper after that. Without gettinginto too much detail, in these studies itbecame clear that the gag and scamppopulations had low percentages ofmales appearing on the spawning sitesduring the spawning season. It alsowas clear that the historical percent-ages were an order of magnitude higher

for gag before intense offshore fishingon them started.

We took that information to thefishery management councils, andwere surprised to find that the manag-ers seemed less interested in theabsence of males than they were in thefact that catches were still relativelygood. In other words, the currentcatches were more important thanissues that might affect the sustainabil-ity of those catches. It was probablythis realizationmore than any other thatled tomy involvement in fisheriesissues and ultimately to my serving on

the Gulf ofMexico FisheryManage-ment Council. That was a tremendouslearning experience about wherescience and policy intersect. In manycases, it seemed that politics trumpedscience.

ER:What drew your attention torecreational fishing?

FC: Perhaps the primary issue leadingto the studymy colleagues,WillFigueira, Jeff Ueland, and LarryCrowder just published in Sciencewasa basic contradiction: NMFS said thatrecreational fishing only accounted forabout two or three percent of the totalfishery landings in theUnited States,but in our experience we saw that therecreational take exceeded the com-mercial take in the Gulf ofMexico for anumber of important species.

Everything in themedia and inmost of the scientific literature focusedon commercial fishing problems: by-catch in the shrimp industry, habitat

damage fromtrawlers, over-exploitationofspecies afterspecies. The publicview of recreationalfishing was that itwas small and

ecologically inconsequential.Untilserving on the Gulf Council, I hadmuch the same impression, but thatview is not entirely accurate. Clearly,the commercial fishery has far greaterimpact overall. It�s responsible for 96percent of the landings and it�s respon-sible for 76 percent of the overfishedstock landings. But recreational fishingis not trivial for a number of speciesand is not without ecological conse-quence.

ER:Howbig is the recreationalfishery?

Commercial fishing is responsible for 76 percent ofthe overfished stock landings. But recreationalfishing is not trivial for a number of species and isnot without ecological consequence.


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FC:The recreational fishery is largeand complicated. It consists of thosewho fish for food and those who fishfor sport. It consists of private boat andshore-based fishers; but it also has afully commercial component, the for-hire recreational fishery. The for-hirecomponent consists of charter boats,where the vessel is chartered, andheadboats, where a single spot on avessel is paid for.Charters typically takeout a few people whilea headboat can havespots for forty to asmany as one hundredpeople. The captainand the crew on for-hire vessels areprofessional fishermenand they have all theknowledge, expertiseand technologicaladvantages that thecommercial fishermenhave.

ER:Depth finders, fishfinders.

FC: Depth finders,globalpositioning,satellite imagery, theworks.With globalpositioning, forinstance, a goodfishing spot, once discovered, can befound repeatedly, with incredibleaccuracy. These technologies are usedroutinely in the commercial and for hireindustries and are not at all out of theeconomic reach of individuals.

Surprisingly, there are about thesame number of charter plus headboatreef-fish permits in the Gulf of Mexicoas there are commercial reef fishpermits. It is this portion of the recre-ational fishery that is typically respon-sible for most of the catch.

Another reason we were interestedin recreational fishing impacts was thatthe U.S. Commission on Ocean Policyreport and the Pew Oceans Commis-sion report both came out in the pastyear. The first commission waspresidentially-appointed,while thesecond was put together by The PewCharitable Trusts. Despite theirdifferent mandates and different origins

these two commissions delivered thesame messages to the President, toCongress and to the citizens of theUnited States: from ecological, mana-gerial and political perspectives, theoceans and our coasts are in serioustrouble, and both reports identifiedoverfishing as one of the more seriousocean-related problems the nationneeds to face. My colleagues and Iidentified the need to balance theintensive focus on commercial fishingwith an extensive overview of therecreational fishery.

ER: Howdid you evaluate this 2percent contribution for the recre-ational fishery?

FC: The first step was coming up witha rational explanation for the 2 percentfigure. Howwas it derived? Andmoreimportant, is it meaningful? It wasrelatively easy to duplicate the twopercent, using the NOAAwebsites to

get the total com-mercial landingsandtotal recreationallandings for 2001,for instance. Butthese same websiteshave disclaimers thatessentially say,Don�t do this athome if you want acomplete or accuratepicture of thefisheries.

ER: It was a quickand dirty calculation.

FC: That�s right.Absolutely back-of-the-envelope. ThereasonNOAAhasthe disclaimers isthat the websites arenot complete. At thetime we made thatcalculation, there

were freshwater species on the websitethat aren�t managed by NMFS, andmissing data sets for the southeasternU.S. headboats, among other omis-sions. NMFS is constantly improvingthose datasets, but the websites aresimply not as accurate as the data thatNMFS uses in stock assessments.

At this point, we felt it best that wecompile the data ourselves. To do this,we worked closely with the NMFSMarineRecreationalFishingStatisticalSurvey (MRFSS) program to deter-

An undated photo of a recreational fisher with tenGoliath grouper.


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mine where these data sets could befound. Many they had. Others wereobtained from interstate marinefisheries commissions, state naturalresource agencies, and other places inNOAA.After compilingall thosedata,the recreational component of thelandings went from 2 percent to 4percent. That�s not a big difference,and it�s still not a particularlymeaning-ful number.

ER:Whynot?

FC:Given thecommission reportsidentifyingoverfish-ingasanational-levelproblem, it seemedmore important tofocus on thosepopulations thatwere overfished orexperiencingoverfishing, than onthose that areconsideredwellmanaged.

The NMFSmonitors over 900populations and justtwo of those,menhaden and pollock, account forover half of the landings. Approxi-mately four and one-half billion poundsof pollock are taken each year, and abillion pounds ofmenhaden. Norecreational fishery operates at thatlevel of exploitation, but neither do anyother commercial fisheries. In addition,menhaden and pollock aren�t takenrecreationally and they aren�t consid-ered overfished.

We focused on the relative propor-tions of recreationally and commer-cially caught fish in populations thatNMFS considered overfished and/orapproaching an overfished condition in

each region of the continental UnitedStates (excluding Alaska). That�s theonly thing we did that was different.The interpretations of population statusare those of theNationalMarineFisheries Service, as are most of thedata.

ER:Howmany stocks are overfished?

FC: There are currently some seventy-

odd stocks considered overfishedacross the country, including aboutsixteen sharks, two skates, six floun-der, seven rockfish, three tuna, eightgrouper, two snapper, three billfish aswell as a number of other species.Some of these are among the mostimportant recreational species indifferent regions of the country, suchas bluefish in the northeast, and redsnapper in the Gulf of Mexico.

Every year since 1996, when theMagnuson Act was reauthorized, theNationalMarineFisheriesServicesends Congress a report on how thingsare going for all the 900-plus stocks

they manage. Nearly 800 of these arefish populations. Each population iscategorized as to whether it is over-fished, experiencing overfishing, orapproaching an overfished condition. Ifnone of these events is occurring, thenthe population is considered sustain-ably-fished.Whilemanypopulationsare evaluated on a regular basis, there isno information on the status of nearlyone quarter of the major fish stocks and

over three quarters ofthe minor fish stocks.Absence of informa-tion doesn�t meanabsence of a problem.In fact, it is safer toassume that stockswith similar life historycharacteristics arelikely to respond tofishing pressure insimilar ways. Long-livedandsequentiallyhermaphroditic speciesseem to be particularlyvulnerable to fishingpressure, for instance,born out by theinclusion of manyspecies of rockfish andseveral grouper�including red grouper,

gag, snowy grouper, and Warsawgrouper � among the overfishedpopulations. The status of scamp,black grouper, and yellow edge grouperis unknown but there is little doubt as totheirvulnerability.

ER:How did you focus in on thevulnerable stocks?

FC: Focusing on the populations ofconcern meant removing the biomassattributable to healthy stocks (includingthe enormous menhaden and pollockcatches), as well as the biomassattributable to populations for which

One person catching one red drum is no big deal, but thereare 17 million saltwater recreational fishers in the U.S.


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the status was unknown. This steprevealed that the recreational compo-nent of the harvest of species consid-ered overfished or experiencingoverfishing was about 23 percent. Thisis a meaningful number.

ER:Did you see regional patterns?

FC: There was a regional difference inthe importance of recreational fisheriesto overfished populations. In 2002, 64percent of the landings of populationsof concern in the Gulf of Mexico wererecreational, approximately 13,000metric tons of fish. In the Northeast itwas 12 percent recreational, but thatrepresents about 12,000 metric tons offish. So while the percentage is lowestin the northeast, the biomass is secondonly to that in the Gulf of Mexico. Thesouth Atlantic catch in 2002 was 38percent recreational, representing about2,400 metric tons; the Pacific coasttwenty-year average is 14 percent,although in the last year or two with thedecline in commercial landings, therecreational component rose to 59percent in 2002, representing 1,300metric tons.

ER:People aregoing to besurprised aboutthe impact ofrecreationalfishing.

FC: I know I was when I first learnedabout it. But perhaps we shouldn�t bethat surprised. Recreational fishing isone of the most popular sports in thenation. The primary messages of ourwork are first, that the cumulativeimpact of this popular sport is notbenign; and that the regulations inpractice do not effectively constrain thefishery. The individual fishermanmayfeel constrained by the bag limits and

size limits, but there are nearly 17millionsaltwater recreational fishermenin theUnited States, with essentially nolimits on the number of people allowedto fish, and virtually no cumulativequotas for individual fisheries. Imaginemanaging commercial fisheries thisway.

Think of the prospects for thefuture. Development on the Gulf Coastand elsewhere in the Southeast isgrowing every year, the number ofrecreational boats has skyrocketed, andthe number of people fishing continuesto increase.While the landings havebeen relatively stable for some time, thefishing effort focuses more on catchand release. Catch and release is apractice that is not without conse-quences. These consequences aregreatest in deeper water where releasemortality often exceeds 50 percentdespite venting practices.

ER: Yours was one of the few papersin Science that received attention in themainstreammedia. Was any of thecriticism it received on the mark?

FC: The main objections we�ve heardin the firestorm of criticism following

our article focus on the commercialfishery, as if that sector has somehowbeen ignored. Clearly, that is not thecase. With 23 percent of the landingscoming from recreational fisheries, theremainder is commercial. Our paperstarts off by acknowledging thecommercial contribution to the state ofthe fisheries and discussing the man-agement trajectory since Magnuson.

ER: Can we focus on a couple specificcases of recreational overfishing?

FC: Let�s start with two of those thatthere seems to be a lot of concernabout, red drum and red snapper. Thereis a certain perspective that all theproblems in the red drum fishery lie at

the feet of commercial fishingin theGulf.

We traced the reddrum fishery in the Gulf fromthe early 1980s. The recre-ational fishery was alwayslarger than the commercial

fishery until the mid-1980s. Then therewas �The Paul Prudhomme effect.�Blackened red fish hit the restaurants,wowed the dining public, and led tosuch a dramatic increase in the com-mercial catch that it finally exceededthe recreational catch by about 1985. Italso led to rapid overfishing and,ultimately a commercial closure for reddrum in the Exclusive Economic Zonein 1988. The recreational fishery has

In 2002, 64 percent of the landings of populations ofconcern in the Gulf of Mexico were recreational,approximately 13,000metric tons of fish.


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increased consistently since then, andby 2000 the recreational catch ex-ceeded the highest catch levels everexperienced by the commercial fishery

Red drum is managed with slotlimits, bag limits and seasons. Thecommercial fishery hasn�t operated inover fifteen years, and yet the popula-tion continues to be listed in the Gulf ofMexico by NMFS as overfished. Theproblem hasn�t been solved. The onlything that has happened here is asubstitution of one sector for another.That is not conservation.

ER: It seems like everybody is blamingsomeone else for overfishing.

FC: Finger pointing seems to be thenorm in the red snapper fishery,whether it�s between the commercialand the recreationalred snapper fishery,or between thedirected fishery andthe shrimp trawlfishery. The com-mercial and recre-ational fisheries eachget an allocation of the total allowablecatch, with 49 percent going to therecreational fishery. Despite the factthat the fishery has been overfishedsince 1988, the council raised the quotafrom 4million pounds in 1991 to 6million pounds in 1993 and then to 9.12million pounds in 1996.When thecommercial catch reaches its annualquota, the fishery is closed for theremainder of the year but no suchclosure occurs for the recreationalcomponent. In fact, the recreationalcatch has consistently exceeded itsallocation by 1.1 to nearly 2 times in allbut one year since 1992.

ER: Is by-catch an issue with snapper?

FC:You bet it is. The directed fisheryblames the lack of recovery of redsnapper on the by-catch of juvenile redsnapper in shrimp trawls, despite thefact that the quota for this overfishedspecies has been raised twice in the lastten years, and despite the fact that thesize and age structures of the adultpopulation are significantly truncated� a result of intense directed fishing,not trawling.

By-catch is a tremendous problemin the commercial fishery. The publichears about it all the time associatedwith shrimp trawlers and long linefisheries, involving sea turtles, marinemammals, and seabirds. But it is also aproblem in the recreational fishery,where fish are discarded either becausethey are undersized, because a largerfish is subsequently caught, or as partof catch and release practices. Let�s

just use gag as an example. In 1994,there were about 1.6million gagreleased in the recreational fishery.Assuming a 20 percent release mortal-ity (which is quite conservative), thismeans that about 322,000 released fishdiedwhile in the same year, only252,000 fish were actually kept.3

By-catch may take as much as 70percent of the age 0 fish in each year,but nobody has ever published aparticularly thorough study to showwhat effect this by-catch mortality hason red snapper recovery.

ER: Is there a way to figure out thenatural mortality of a fish population tosee how much fishing pressure it canhandle?

FC:Yes. The National ResearchCounciladdressed this issue some timeago and suggested using temporaryclosures to determine realistic levels ofnaturalmortality

4. PresumablyNMFS

has sufficient data on where the redsnapper juvenile-trawl interaction isgreatest. Some of these hot spots couldbe closed to trawling long enough tocompare the mortality rates within andoutside of those closures. The insidemortality rateswould indicate naturalmortality while those occurring in thepresence of trawling would be acombination of natural and fishingmortality. This is a pretty straightfor-ward study that would provide adefinitive answer to that question andallowmanagement to move on.

ER:You could apply the same test onthe directed fishery too.

FC: In a way. Butthe truncated age andsize structure seen inadult red snapper istypical of popula-tions that areintensely fished.

Closures could be used effectively bothto recover the full range of sizes andages and to determine the naturalmortality rates. But the other issue inthe directed fishery is one of even-handedmanagement. Closing thecommercial fishery when it reaches itsquota but not doing the same for therecreational fishery creates an inequitythat serves only to intensify the animos-ity between these sectors of thefishery.

ER:What do you think we ought to do?

FC: First we have to decide as asociety if we want to have sustainablefisheries. The Magnuson Act suggeststhat we do. That being the case, weneed to be sure that management

By-catch is a tremendous problem in the commercialfishery. But it is also a problem in the recreational fisheryeither because they are discarded because a bigger fishis caught, or as part of catch and release.


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EnvironmentalReview

actions taken provide sustainablefisheries for U. S. citizens. This meansbasing decisions on the best scientificinformation available.Here�swhere theproblemlies.TheNationalMarineFisheries Service uses the best availablescientific informationavailable in theirstock assessments and typically makessolid, scientifically-based recommen-dations to the councils. In some high-profile cases, the councils have eitherdelayed taking the correct action orsimply chosen toignore these recom-mendations. When thathappens, the Secretaryof Commerce has theauthority to reject theCouncil�s decision, butthis rarely happensprimarily because ofpolitical interference inthemanagementprocess by legislatorsresponsive to fishingsectors not interestedin being constrained.The end result oftencan be law suits.Notableexamplesinclude the summerflounder fishery in the northeast andvermilion snapper in theGulf ofMexico.

ER:How do you propose to constrainrecreational fishing?

FC: In the commercial fisheries, this isaccomplished through quotas, limitedentry, and in some cases, individualtransferable quotas. The approachesthat work best are those that provideincentives for fishers to use conserva-tion-orientedand sustainable fishingpractices. Marine reserves are not veryeffective effort-constraining devices,they just move effort around. Thatdoesn�t mean they aren�t useful,

because they are, particularly forprotecting habitat, spawning popula-tions and nursery grounds.

Management of saltwater recre-ational fisheries needs a serious updateto come in line with modern fishingpractices and technologies, and peopleneed to realize that fishing, whethercommercial or recreational, is aprivilege not a right. The intense fishingeffort that exists now has the sameeffects on the demographics of fish

populations whether it comes fromrecreational fishing or commercialfishing. The resources simply cannottake the level of pressure exerted uponthem without some constraints.

ER: This is the kind of thing that stategovernments are responsible for.

FC: There are many states that havesaltwater fishing licenses and all thestates have freshwater fishing licenses.The Northeastern states are the onlyones lacking a saltwater fishing license,and they are fighting hard to keep it thatway. I don�t understand the intensity of

the resistance because licenses helpmanagers track fishing effort and theyprovide revenue for acquiring betterdata. Better data provides informationfor better management. Licensing alsoprovides ameans of limiting effort inthe fishery and it has been used effec-tively in the commercial fisheries. Forbetter or worse, recreational fishingeffort is so intense that more con-straints are needed.

ER:We�ve done thathere inWashingtonwith geoducks andrazor clams, other-wise there would benone left.

FC:We do this kindof regulation on landall the time, usinglicenselimitation,permit lotteries,annual rather thandailybag limits.There are all sorts ofregulations that allowa lot of people to havea fishing experienceor a hunting experi-

ence, but not everybody all at once orall the time. These are reasonable stepsto take.

The most reasonable place to startis with the for-hire component of therecreational fishing industry. It�scertainly as tractable as commercialfisheries. Perhaps there should be aseparate allocation for the for-hireindustry and for the private boat orshore-based recreational fishers.

ER:What do you say to the recre-ational fishers who think you're pickingon them?

FC:Nothing we�ve said indictsrecreational fishers. The simple fact is

red snapper


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EnvironmentalReview

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that the current regulations do noteffectively limit the cumulative impactof recreational fishing, they only limitthe individual fisher. A big part of theproblem is that current regulations arenot perceived as fair and equitable,which creates a situation in whichcommercial and recreational fishers arepitted against each other instead ofworking together to ensure that thereare sustainable fisheries, suitable habitatand healthy ecosystems for current andfuture generations.

Literature Cited:

1) The Impact of United States Recre-ational Fisheries onMarineFishPopulations. FCColeman,WFFigueira, JSUeland, LBCrowder 2004Science305:1958-1960

2) More information on this topic canbe found at http://www.bio.fsu.edu/us_landings/

3) Schirripa, M. J., and C. M. Legault.1997. Status of the gag stocks of theGulf of Mexico. Assessment 2.0. StockAssessment. 1 October 1997. South-east Fisheries Science Center, Sustain-

ableFisheriesDivision,Miami,Florida.114 pp.

4)Marine Protected Areas: Tools forSustainingOceanEcosystems.NationalResearchCouncil 2001.NationalResearchCouncil,NationalAcademyPress, Washington DC.


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