WASHINGTON (July 3, 2024) – Today, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-CA), Ed Case (D-HI), Mary Peltola (D-AK), and James Moylan (R-Guam) launched the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act of 2024, a invoice that reauthorizes the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), our nation’s main federal fisheries legislation.
“This bill introduces stronger protections for seabirds, which rely on healthy forage fish populations to survive,” stated Bethany Carl Kraft, senior director of coastal and marine resilience on the National Audubon Society. “By factoring in the importance of forage fish to the ocean ecosystem, accounting for the impacts of climate change, and boosting essential fish habitat protections, this bill will strengthen the MSA for future generations.”
Seabirds are in disaster. Threatened by oil spills, overfishing, habitat loss, and getting by chance hooked on fishing gear, seabird populations world wide have declined by 70 p.c since 1950.
Seabirds depend on small, education fish often called forage fish to eat and to feed their chicks. Forage fish should not but included in federal fisheries administration, leaving them susceptible to overfishing. Large fish, whales, and dolphins additionally feed on forage fish, making them important for the industrial and leisure fishing industries in addition to ecotourism.
The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act provides new provisions to the MSA, like accounting for the wants of seabirds and different predators when deciding what number of forage fish will be caught. The invoice additionally elements local weather develop into the fisheries administration course of, prevents seabirds and different wildlife from turning into hooked or entangled by fishing gear, and offers higher protections for coastal habitats like seagrass beds that function nurseries and feeding grounds for each birds and fish.
###
About Audubon
The National Audubon Society protects birds and the locations they want, right this moment and tomorrow. Audubon works all through the Americas utilizing science, advocacy, schooling, and on-the-ground conservation. State applications, nature facilities, chapters, and companions give Audubon an unparalleled wingspan that reaches tens of millions of individuals every year to tell, encourage, and unite numerous communities in conservation motion. A nonprofit conservation group since 1905, Audubon believes in a world by which folks and wildlife thrive.
Contact: Rachel Guillory, rachel.guillory@audubon.org
