Press Releases

Wednesday, July 23, 2014
10:00 AM (ET)

1334 Hearing Room in the Longworth House Office Building

Washington D.C. 20515

The hearing is open to the public and a live video stream will be broadcast at
 http://naturalresources.house.gov/live

Tomorrow, Wednesday July 23, 2014, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs will hold a legislative hearing on Congressman Paul Gosar’s (AZ-4) sponsored legislation H.R. 5026, the Fish Hatchery Protection Act. The hearing will include two witnesses from Arizona testifying in support of H.R. 5026, Robert Mansell, Chairman of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission and Hildy Angius, Chairman of the Mohave County Board of Supervisors.

Background:

The Fish Hatchery Protection Act preserves propagation fish hatcheries and propagation programs within the National Fish Hatchery System and stipulates that only Congress can authorize the termination or significant alteration of such facilities and programs.

In November 2013, the Fish and Wildlife Service arbitrarily changed the priorities for the five different propagation program categories and announced their intent to close propagation programs and possibly hatcheries throughout the nation in fiscal year 2015.

Following the Service’s announcement, theWillow Beach National Fish Hatchery was instructed on November 24, 2013, to focus on producing suckers and other fish that do not attract anglers or generate revenues for local economies and to terminate its rainbow trout stocking propagation program.

The bureaucratic decision to terminate recreational fishing propagation programs is extremely misguided as several of the hatcheries affected were constructed more than 50 years ago for the sole purpose of offsetting the loss of native fisheries resulting from the construction of federal dams. This is the case for the Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery which was created in 1962 to counter the negative impacts on fishery resources that resulted from construction of the Hoover Dam.

Supervisor Hildy Angius, recently testified before the Appropriations Committee about the importance of preserving recreational propagation programs for fishing and stated that recreational fishing in her county supports almost 1,700 jobs and has an annual impact of almost $75 million annually for the Mohave County economy. The local hatchery in Mohave County was instructed by the Fish and Wildlife Service to focus on producing suckers and other fish that do not attract anglers or generate revenues for local economies and to terminate its recreational fishing propagation program.

By the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own estimates, the National Fish Hatchery System returns $28 to the national economy for every dollar spent and $3.6 billion to our economy annually.

Current Cosponsors of the bill include Reps. Doug Collins (R-GA), Rick Crawford (R-AR), Phil Roe (R-TN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Joe Heck (R-NV), Tim Griffin (R-AR), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Mike Michaud (D-ME).

The bill is endorsed by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the American Sportfishing Association and the Mohave County Board of Supervisors.

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