Consensus on natural resources issues is elusive, often because the real agenda is not agreed upon. For me, there have been a number of “ah-ha moments,” a realization that there are hidden agendas in play. Many of those moments have come during debates about endangered species, because so often the most obvious solution is not mentioned.
Consider the legal hunting of endangered species. In various countries you can still legally hunt species universally considered endangered: African elephants, lions, cheetahs, hippos, rhinos, even great white sharks. A good example is the perpetual debate about the impact of Alaskan oil production on polar bears. The real debate ought to be about polar bears, but they are merely a tool in the argument about oil, carbon, and global warming. Whether or not we should produce domestic oil instead of relying on imports is a legitimate disagreement – but it is not about polar bears. If we are truly concerned about the fate of polar bears, and think they are in danger of extinction, wouldn’t it make sense to stop killing them on purpose?
The law allows “subsistence hunting,” by Alaska natives (Eskimos), surely a misnamed activity. Beyond that, though, many other hunters still pay up to $50,000 for the privilege of participating in legal trophy hunts. Between 2003 and 2013, over 800 polar bears were killed under this legal system, for recreation. I am a hunting advocate, and hunters support conservation of hundreds of species throughout the world. But if we really think a species is in danger of becoming extinct, one of the first things we would do is stop killing them. The reason we have not done that is simple – they are not really endangered. In fact, the species is in the midst of a dramatic resurgence, so they are simply a tool for the energy debate.
Compare that to the plight of the lowly oyster, which actually is endangered. Seriously endangered. One study, in the journal BioScience, found that 85 percent of all the oyster beds in the world have vanished. Once famous oyster industries have disappeared on Britain’s Essex coast, Holland’s Wadden Sea, and Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, among many others. Called the largest-ever investigation into wild oyster stocks, the study’s team examined 144 famous oyster beds in 40 regions, finding oyster reefs nearly vanished in 70 percent of the world’s bays. “They are functionally extinct, in that they lack any significant ecosystem role and remain at less than 1 percent of prior abundances,” especially North America, Europe, and Australia. No other species is that near extinction, and yet still has no federal legal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Why have they not been officially listed as endangered? Does the oyster industry have that much political power?
Oysters were once the staple of common folks – in the 1880s people ate 700 million a year. Today there are museums where massive industries once thrived, around the English Channel, Long Island Sound, and San Francisco Bay. What happened to the oysters? Despite bitter political debates, the answer is actually simple – people ate them. Almost all of them.
Since the advent of modern fishing methods, especially dredging, entire ocean floors were ripped up, vast oyster beds unable to keep up with public demand. When Captain John Smith first explored the Chesapeake Bay in 1608, it supported a vast array of waterfowl, and more animals than his men had ever seen. They found bald cypress trees 18 feet around, so large that a canoe made from a single tree held 40 men. Smith wrote that the Bay and its rivers contained more sturgeon “than could be devoured by dog or man.” And the oysters were beyond their imagination, where they “lay as thick as stones.” It was difficult for men to wade or swim without cutting their feet on the billions of oysters, some in “reefs that rose above the waves.” Today they are almost all gone.
Debates have raged for decades over restoration of the Chesapeake, in Congress and in state legislatures. Both Maryland and Virginia have strict rules regulating agriculture and other activities that might affect water quality, and the federal EPA has hundreds of bureaucrats assigned to water issues involving the Bay. As westerners certainly know, the Endangered Species Act would provide an enormously powerful tool for regulation. Yet only once (2005) has anyone even proposed listing oysters as endangered, a request the government never considered. Nor have there been serious proposals to stop dredging. Virginia oystermen still “harvest” over 650,000 bushels of oysters every year, and always lobby for more. Maryland says the Bay has less than 10 percent as many oysters as were harvested every year before 1900. Worldwide, they are one of the most endangered of all species, but we still eat them.
In Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” the character Pistol says, “Why then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.” The line is now commonly used to mean one has the opportunity to achieve whatever one wants. But which do we want more – a restored environment or our apparently insatiable appetite for oysters?
This column originally appeared in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel August 16, 2019.
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