Sportfishing Industry Applauds Senate

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The American Sportfishing Association (ASA), along with the country's leading conservation and sportsmen's and women's organizations, applauds the Senate for passing the RESTORE the Gulf Coast Act (S. 1400) as an amendment to the Senate transportation bill.

Introduced by Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), RESTORE represents extraordinary bipartisan consensus among lawmakers in the Gulf of Mexico region and beyond and is a crucial measure that ensures that 80 percent of the funds from the Clean Water Act and other penalties assessed in the wake of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill are used to pay for economic and environmental restoration projects in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Due to Senator Nelson's leadership, of particular importance to the sportfishing industry, is funding provided in RESTORE to establish a research, science and technology program aimed at improving Gulf fisheries management and monitoring.

This amendment also includes a major, much-needed increase in funding for the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. The fund provides money to federal, state and local governments for the acquisition of land and water to benefit conservation and recreation. The provision would double current funding levels for the fund to $700 million for each of the next two years and reauthorize it until 2022, for a total of $1.4 billion.

Taken together, if the transportation bill with the RESTORE amendment attached should win final passage, these two doses of conservation funding would represent, by some estimates, the largest boost in conservation funding in American history.

"The entire sportfishing community thanks Sens. Landrieu, Nelson and Shelby not just for taking a huge step forward to help ensure the long-term health of the Gulf Coast ecosystem and coastal economies, but also for infusing significant, and essential, conservation dollars into the Land and Water Conservation Fund," ASA Vice President Gordon Robertson said. "Sportsmen and women, and the businesses they support, rely on clean water to ensure an enjoyable and productive day on the water. Consequently, anglers have consistently advocated for the conservation of our nation's waters and wetlands. America's 60 million anglers should celebrate this truly historic vote."

Robertson also recognized the efforts of Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) for his leadership in ensuring that not only the Gulf, but the entire country benefits from RESTORE and the funds now available for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Saltwater recreational fishing contributes more than $8 billion in economic output in the Gulf Coast region annually and supports approximately 82,000 jobs. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most popular areas for recreational fishing in the United States with 3.6 million saltwater anglers spending more than 42.5 million days on the water each year. Beyond recreational fishing, the Gulf is a strong engine of commerce. It produces roughly 40 percent of all the seafood in the lower 48 states. The region is home to 10 of the nation's 15 largest ports, while over 25 percent of the nation's waterborne exports pass through Louisiana ports alone.