|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Texas overhauls shrimp trawling policies
Call them picky creatures. Kemp's Ridley, the most critically endangered sea turtles in the world, have nested almost exclusively on about five miles of Gulf of Mexico beach near Rancho Nuevo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. A restoration project for nesting Kemp's Ridleys that began in the late 1970s on Padre Island in Texas will benefit from a series of regulations on the shrimp industry that were passed Thursday by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "The (Padre Island) restoration project is trying to re-establish Kemp's Ridleys in greater numbers to protect them from the possibility of an environmental or political disaster in Mexico," said Brian Sybert, natural resources director for the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club. "A hurricane or an oil spill could have a dramatic impact when you only have one nesting area." The regulations call for a six-month closure on shrimp trawling from Dec. 1 to July 15 along the southern portion of the Texas coast. The regulations also require bycatch reduction devices to reduce the amount of fish and animals accidently caught in fishing nets as well as turtle excluder devices on all boats except for bait shrimp and recreation trawls. The new rules will increase nursery areas in bays and estuaries from 12 percent to 18 percent of Texas water. Several conservation groups, including the Sierra Club, Caribbean Conservation Corps and Sea Turtle Restoration Project, have lobbied long and hard for a year-round closure of the area and the northern portion of the Texas coastline. The regulations are a step in the right direction, they say.
"The (wildlife) department should be complimented for the partial closure," said David Godfrey, executive director of the Caribbean Conservation Corps. "From a sea turtles' standpoint, a complete closure would have been the right thing to do. From a political standpoint, I can see why they made this compromise. A lot of people make their living by shrimping." Texas Parks and Wildife plans to conduct a series of biological and economic studies following the closure. "Its going to take a lot of monitoring to find out if the regulations are working," said Sybert. "(The studies) may give us the data to say the closure should be year-round. We are going to continue to advocate for that." While the regulations are mainly aimed at protecting Texas's five endangered sea turtle species, which include Kemp's Ridleys, the Parks and Wildlife Department said they will also improve the health of the state's declining shrimp fishery and lead to a more prosperous industry. Nevertheless, the rules have come under fire from most of the state's shrimp industry members. Shrimp trawling is the most lucrative fishery in the southeastern United States. In Texas alone, the industry brings in $500 million annually. Before turtle excluder devices came into play in the early 1990s for shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic coast, shrimp trawling killed 11,000 sea turtles annually, according to conservationists. Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved RELATED STORIES: World's reptile populations running thin RELATED ENN STORIES: Scientists recommend protection for Texas shrimp RELATED SITES: Padre Island |
Back to the top |
© 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. |