I am by no means one of those "whale wars tree huggers" as you put it, Waltrip. I am, however, a conservationist that believes you have to manage the resource right if you have any desire to keep any kind of harvest coming from it. I personally resent shows like that, because some of those so called environmentalists go over the top. I will not chain myself to a tree to save a forest; I will, however, use the knowledge I have to defend it adamantly against those that do not know or fail to understand the dangers of poor or mismanagement. If it is still mismanaged, well I tried my best to sway the opinion of the masses with what we learn through research, but often the masses are unwilling to listen to what those that understand have learned, because they think they know better because they have seen that "this has been there for x amount of years and the marsh hasn't changed".
All marsh isn't the same.
The weirs are managed the way they are for a reason because people that know better have decided that. Yes the ship channel has been there years. But as it has been pointed out time and time again, in its past, Calcasieu Lake had cypress trees on its banks. That precious fishery that exists throughout the system today did not occur as such in the past because the lake was heavily freshwater influenced. Trout did not swim in Prien Lake or Lake Charles. 50 years from now, the fishery will not exist if no attempt is made to maintain the marsh that maintains it because the ecosystem is changing from all the man-made interference, such as the ship channel. So now man has to interfer with weirs to keep Calcasieu Lake in its present, man-made state.
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