|
After a multi-week trial, Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins has ruled that the State of North Carolina failed to meet its constitutional obligation to protect the state’s fisheries.
This is a significant victory for North Carolina’s coastal wildlife and fisheries – and for the millions of North Carolinians who have a stake in these public resources. The court’s decision also moves the case into its next phase, with the parties now preparing a report addressing what remedies should be taken.
This ruling is a landmark victory for North Carolina’s coastal fisheries and, most importantly, for every North Carolinian who owns a stake in these public resources. The court affirmed what we have said for years: the state has a responsibility to protect and manage our fisheries for the benefit of all citizens and future generations, and our current system has failed to meet that responsibility.
North Carolinians have paid the price for decades of ineffective fisheries management. We have watched fishing opportunities disappear and once-abundant stocks decline while the state continued to permit unnecessary waste of the very resources it is obligated to protect. In this ruling, the court recognizes that the state cannot use a lack of adequate data as an excuse for failing to protect our fisheries. Collecting the information necessary to understand the health of these public resources is a fundamental part of responsible fisheries management. We cannot effectively conserve what we fail to adequately measure. This ruling makes clear that managing decline is not good enough.
This decision marks a turning point, but the important work of restoring our fisheries is not finished. North Carolina must replace decades of decline with science-based management that protects nursery habitat, reduces unnecessary waste, and gives our fish populations a real chance to recover. We look forward to the remedy phase and to lasting reforms that ensure healthy coastal fisheries are here for generations to come.
|
