Academic scientist Brian Rothschild has issued a harsh critique of fishery management policies, asserting that the rush to create a catch share commodities market in New England's groundfishery has meant a transfer of "public resources to private individuals" yielding an unnecessary government-made "economic crisis."
Rothschild went further, arguing that the catch share program, which took effect last May 1, was implemented illegally, prematurely and somewhat cavalierly "without the level of analysis, planning, budgeting and community dialog that would be expected of a major federal action."
"It is difficult to consider the catch share system as having any function other than economic allocation as it's sole purpose," he wrote. Yet, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, he noted, states that no "conservation and management measure … shall have economic allocation as its sole purpose."
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