>Hatcheries which are designed to restore species
>populations, but without also working towards restoring natural
>(non-hatchery) spawning, aren't "restoring" anything but fishing
>opportunity.
Between 1980 and 1982, Maryland shut down the commercial harvest of shad within
its borders. Virginia began a similar moratorium in 1994. Maine, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, and Rhode Island also prohibit the harvest of migrating shad.
Other than limited recreational dipnetting and catch-and-release angling,
nobody's taking shad from the waters where they are being intensively stocked.
Just last year, the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission began a
5-year phase-out of all "intercept" or ocean shad fishing along the Atlantic
Coast of the U.S. The only people to complain about it the shad fishing
industry, which stated that there is no conclusive scientific evidence that
taking shad from the ocean is affecting the numbers of shad that spawn upriver.
Duh! The reason there's no "evidence" is that no one's bothered to waste the
money proving a foregone conclusion!
>>Pennsylvania taxpayers are footing the bill for these efforts, right?
>
>Extremely unlikely. More probable is that it's Pennsylvania's anglers and
>hunters who foot the bill.
The utility companies that built the huge hydroelectric dams are footing most of
the big bills. BTW, the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission was formed in 1866
expressly for the purpose of restoring shad.
Chris Scharpf
Baltimore
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