Fish and wildlife conservation

Fish and wildlife conservation has become an increasingly urgent part of environmentalism as a whole. Once thought limitless, the ocean's bounty has been dying up over the past several decades, with several staple fish not quite going extinct, but being fished beyond sustainability and destroying their numbers to the point where their populations won't recover for generations.

The fish and wildlife conservation act was passed in 1980, and it reads as follows:

Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act ("Nongame Act"; 16 U.S.C. 2901-2911; 94 Stat. 1322) -- Public Law 96-366, approved September 29, 1980, authorizes financial and technical assistance to the States for the development, revision, and implementation of conservation plans and programs for nongame fish and wildlife. The original Act authorized $5 million for each of Fiscal Years 1982 through 1985, for grants for development and implementation of comprehensive State nongame fish and wildlife plans and for administration of the Act. It also required the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to study potential mechanisms for funding these activities and report to Congress by March 1984.

Unfortunately in the following twenty six years since the law expired, it has been gutted repeatedly by lobbyists for big businesses intent upon using up the ocean's resources at their own financial gain but at a net loss for the world as a whole.

So how can you help personally with fish and wildlife conservation? It starts by avoiding the biggest perpetrators of fish and wildlife conservation devastators: big business. Most big businesses don't care one way or the other about fish and wildlife conservation, don't care about long-term damage, because they're governed by the principle that short term cash is the be-all and end-all of morality.

So don't eat canned tuna, or steak from farms that have been created by slashing and burning forests. Do everything you can to eat locally grown and raised foods, and eat fish caught by small, private fisherman that you can pick up at the local market. Doing this will help allow the wild stocks of fish recover to their pre-1900s height, as well as helping you eat a healthier diet overall.

It will also help since eating local food - or becoming a "locavore", as the term has now developed - means the food you eat will come to you fresher and there will have been fewer fossil fuels burned in order to get it to your table. An apple from 10 miles away ain't gonna burn much gas, whereas one from 2000 miles away is gonna leave a train of smog across half the continent.