Perhaps you’ve seen the American Express TV ad where the famously contentious outdoorsman and clothesmaker Yvon Chouinard looks into the camera and declares, “I’m a dam buster.” He’s not alone in sharing that sentiment, as a sediment-choked dam in Southern California has become the bête noir of conservationists living there. A menacing wedge of concrete jammed between the steep walls of a canyon in the Los Padres National Forest, the Matilija Dam looms over the Ventura River. Built in 1947 both to store precious rainwater and preventing flooding when it did, the dam no longer ... Read More
The Success of Vizcaino’s Fishing Cooperatives
June 14, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Voyage of Kiri writer Kristian Beadle, still on the road in El Hippo, reaches a part of the Pacific Coast of Baja where he learns that cooperation is the key to sustainable fisheries and livelihoods. Location: In Punta Abreojos, in the southern part of the Vizcaíno Peninsula, on the Pacific Coast of central Baja. Conditions: The wind never stops. The car is dusty, inside and out. Discussion: "No fishing today," said Daniel matter-of-factly, his pseudo-bloodshot eyes fixed on the ocean, his big hands clasped calmly together. His living room window had a direct view of the gale-force ... Read More
Blue Day for Bluefin
March 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Carl Safina, president and co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, a conservation organization based on New York's Long Island, is dismayed at the failure of the latest international efforts to rein in the overfishing of threatened bluefin tuna. "I'm very disappointed, as a former tuna fisherman and as a conservationist, at the inability of countries to cooperate and make decisions in the interests of everyone," Safina said. His comments followed the overwhelming rejection of a proposed ban on the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna during Thursday's meeting of the Convention on ... Read More
Power to the (Fishing) People
April 1, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
It is no secret that the world's fisheries are in trouble. Separate recent scientific studies found that more than 90 percent of large pelagic fish have been removed from the sea in the past 50 years alone, that more than half of monitored U.S. fish stocks are overfished, and that if fishing practices don't change, all of Earth's fisheries could be exhausted by mid-century. Given those disturbing findings, it would be reasonable to assume that scientists, fishermen and policy makers are hard at work turning the tide to ensure the long-term sustainability of the world's fisheries. But it ... Read More
