Quote:
Originally Posted by Smalls
Idk, I don't track every freaking thing CCA backs. That wasn't my point.
Funny **** is, you ***** about them caving and not going with science, but the meeting I was at they went against the science and went with public opinion.
So which is right? Should they represent the public, or go hy the science? You can't have both, and they are a public agency.
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It is folly to think science provides a definitive answer for every public policy question in wildlife management.
Even when the science is done well and there is plenty of data, all science does is provide estimates for the possible ranges of sustainable harvest and the body of regulations likely to lead to harvests within the sustainable ranges.
This still leaves a lot of room for public policy makers to adjust seasons, limits, and other regulations to apportion the harvest among stakeholders, and to decide where within the reasonable range of sustainable harvest they want to the regulations to target in a given season or year.
I tend to prefer regulatory structures that tend toward an even split of harvests between commercial and recreational interests when dealing with resources sufficiently abundant to support commercial harvests and toward regulatory structures that prohibit or severely limit commercial harvests of resources that are not sufficiently abundant to support thriving commercial markets. But how the available resources are allocated is a purely political rather than scientific matter.
Consider the recent crab shortage. I would like to see the commercial harvesters bear more of the burden of the needed harvest reductions. But I'd also like to see the supply available for harvest increased by allowing larger harvests of black drum and other management improvements that can help more crabs reach adulthood in the first place. Good management does not just divide the pie, it figures out how to make a bigger pie. That requires much more attention to habitat and the larger food web.