10.07.15

Grijalva, Huffman Call for Overdue Hearing on NOAA Plan to Protect Coastal Economies, Build Climate-Resilient Fisheries

Washington, D.C. – House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) sent a letter this morning asking Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee Chairman John Fleming (R-Louisiana) to hold a hearing on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) recently released Fisheries Climate Science Strategy. The request comes just over a month after the August release of the Climate Strategy, which highlights NOAA’s approach to integrating climate-related information into its fisheries management.

As reported by E&E, the Climate Strategy helps regional fishery managers address climate change impacts on marine resources important to fishermen and coastal communities. Climate change increases fishery temperatures, changes species distribution, increases ocean acidification, depletes fishery oxygen and primary productivity, and creates coral bleaching and more extreme weather patterns – impacts Grijalva and Huffman hope to examine in a Committee hearing.

You can read the full letter at http://1.usa.gov/1OldT5n.

As the authors write, “At the very least, skeptics of the Climate Strategy should give NOAA the opportunity to testify before the Committee and answer questions, instead of simply dismissing the agency’s efforts to solve a very real problem.” The majority’s refusal to debate the merits of the program follows a long Committee precedent of rejecting science in favor of ideology, as the Washington Post and other outlets have pointed out previously.

“At the beginning of this Congress, the entire Natural Resources Committee agreed that climate change was a real problem that needed to be addressed,” Grijalva said in sending today’s letter. “We included it in our oversight plan because it’s a serious threat to our nation’s land and water resources. Unfortunately, too many of our Republican colleagues are now keeping their heads in the sand and mischaracterizing a simple data collection framework as too radical to even discuss in Committee.”

Despite the overwhelming science linking climate change to fisheries disruption, Chairman Bishop claimed the NOAA Climate Strategy ruined American fishery assessment standards with “zero scientific justification.” In reality, the Climate Strategy does not regulate, legislate, or increase federal control of fisheries. It is a regionally tailored framework for predicting and mitigating changes in fishery conditions over time – an effort that will help the fishing industry and make it more economically adaptable.

Earlier this year, Republicans passed a partisan Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization bill that ignored climate change impacts, allowed overfishing and rolled back important conservation measures that have already helped many fish stocks recover. As the bill was forced through Committee and passed on the floor, Republicans repeatedly blocked amendments to protect fishery species from climate change, continuing their strategy of ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.

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