A gluttonous tragedy

I first ventured to Alaska in earnest in 2003, well after the heyday, to work a seasonal fisheries job for the U.S. Forest Service in southeast Alaska.  I had just been accepted to law school and was looking for one last epic opportunity to chase fish. 

You really ought to click that picture and make it a bit bigger.

Having, to that point, been almost exclusively a catch-and-release angler who valued fish first and foremost for their intrinsic and sporting value, I was disgusted to see people with readily-available alternative food sources setting gill nets across entire stream widths that effectively blocked entire salmon runs, dipnetting more than they possibly could consume in a single year, and generally killing everything in sight in an orgy of overabundance and shortsightedness.  Yeah, your freezer might be full this winter, but what about the winter a few years from now?

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to later learn that one of the most prolific sockeye fisheries in that area had been closed.  From a 2008 news release:

The weir count to date is 90 sockeye. The weir count in 2007, as of the same date, was 2765 . . .

***

As I eluded to in my last post, The Wife and I spent the Fourth of July weekend fishing and camping.  I had pulled an all-nighter on Thursday in order to meet a work deadline and was in no condition to go anywhere after work on Friday but bed.  It had been a rough week.

Come Saturday morning, we geared up and headed north with our good friends Sam and Liz.  Because King Season was in full swing, we had planned to avoid the combat-fishing crowds and target areas farther up stream for rainbows.  Seemed to make sense at the time since few things repulse me more than rubbing shoulders on the stream bank with people too self interested to see beyond the tip of their fishing rod. 

From some exploring I had done last year, I had some ideas about where to go.  We drove down a too-narrow-for-my-truck two-track road to the river with hopes that we might have the place to ourselves.  Of course, we did not:

The first day only afforded us an afternoon on the water before calling it and heading back to the rig to set up camp and cook some grub.  Of course, the camera wasn't around when I hooked into my best fish--a feisty rainbow around 20" that almost got away from me down a side channel on the far side of the river.  By the time the camera came back, all I had to show for my efforts was this stick, broken roughly to the proper length and every bit as exciting to Karta as the real thing:

With the camera back in tow, Liz grabbed a hold of this guy:

 Got's to put forth the effort (there's a dog in there too):

Of course, it rained all night and by morning the too-narrow-for-my-truck two-track road turned into a too-muddy-for-my-truck two-track road:

Yeehaw!  With much coercion, we forced things along and made it back to pavement after only an hour or two delay.

While neither The Wife nor I managed to take a single picture for the remainder of Sunday the Fourth, we worked our way north, exploring new streams before ultimately enjoying beers in Talkeetna, then turning back to a nearly vacant campground that allowed us to stretch our legs a bit.  We definitely saw more people on the water than I cared to see, but I can't complain about the crowds where we chose to camp.

Having fished hard for two days with very limited success (no fish were caught on Sunday), we headed back to a familiar stream hoping to up our catch rate.  Sam found some Chinook schooling up in this big bend:

And soon thereafter we started hooking fish:

And the rainbow version:

The Wife sending it:

After all was said and done, we had had a great weekend.  We fished hard, ripped a little lip, shotgunned a couple PBRs, and generally had a great time--but something was missing.  Something was off.  For the peak of Chinook season, we only saw a handful of salmon.  There might have been more people on some of these creeks than salmon.

Little did I know, since we were planning to chase rainbows all along, but the Chinook fishery was in such dire straights that it had been closed.  This is Alaska folks.  What the hell?

Thinking back to my days in southeast Alaska, I couldn't help but wonder about the individual and collective greed that likely led to these low salmon abundance numbers.  Apparently, I'm not the only one with these thoughts.  In more eloquent words that I might provide, you really ought to give this opinion piece by a Mr. Wittshirk a read.  It's better fare than anything the ADN typically provides.

Since it's late, I'll leave you to come to your own conclusions here . . . but I can't help but look for some sort of lesson.  With our ridiculous history of overfishing and short-term fisheries management--in southeast Alaska, here locally, and in nearly every other fishery in the world--perhaps . . .

Thoughts on property

After moving to Wyoming about ten months ago, we still have numerous unopened boxes strewn about. There's probably a pertinent post I could do about the utility of owning so much junk, but that is for another day. You see, yesterday, The Wife finally got the whip cracking on our unopened boxes of books and I came across this gem of a book:

Bill Moshofsky is a strong property rights advocate, and one of the major promoters of Oregon's Measure 37, a ballot measure that requires state and local governments to compensate a landowner when regulation inhibits a landowner's use of their land. You want urban growth boundaries and zoning ordinances that prohibit me from subdividing my farm and creating new urban sprawl? Fine, but it will be a taking and you need to pay up.

According to the book description from the publisher (I haven't actually read the book, although I have heard Mr. Moshofsky speak on several occasions):

The land use regulatory system needlessly crams almost all people and development on less than 2% of the land in the state, unfairly strips landowners of their rights to use their land, blocks development and escalates its cost, makes housing unaffordable, misdirects resources, hurts the economy, intentionally increases traffi c congestion, impairs quality of life, and reduces tax revenues needed for schools and public services.

Seeing this book reminded me of a very interesting article entitled Goodbye to the Public-Private Divide by Eric Freyfogle, a law professor at the University of Illinois. While his article touches on numerous issues, one of his main points goes something like this: Private rights in land are defined by law which, in turn, only is legitimate if in the public interest. Thus, private rights in land only are legitimate if they serve the public good.

This changes the dialogue from "I can do whatever I want with my land so long as I don't harm my neighbors" to "I have rights in my land so long as it serves the public good."

Obviously, these two views of property rights are at opposite ends of the spectrum. While I like the logic of Mr. Freyfogle's position, in actuality, a court likely would define property rights somewhere between the two--or at least interpret the public good necessary under Mr. Freyfogle's analysis quite broadly.

Turning back to Mr. Moshofsky, there are two points worth mentioning here. First, his property rights view is an obvious expansion of the property rights afforded by the U.S. and state constitutions and law. Regulatory takings certainly exist, but not on this scale--Mr. Moshofsky would create property rights where they previously didn't exist. Second, his book description states that one problem of land use regulation is that it "makes housing unaffordable." If regulation increases housing costs (and property values), removing regulation must decreases costs (and value). Thus, we are just moving money around. Do we want concentrated urban areas of high property values and rural areas of lower property values? Or, do we want a sprawling landscape where everything is moderately valued but there is no open landscape? Just moving money around (and altering the landscape), right?

Going back to Mr. Freyfogle, where is the public good in Measure 37-style property rights? After all, if the law--and an implemented measure 37 becomes law--doesn't serve the public good, it should be an invalid exercise of governmental power. Right?