Bob Harrison writes in Re: Germany and France Ban Pesticides- apistan
:  “Those fishermen may need funding but their problem lies in over fishing 
and brought on themselves and the hand writing has been on the wall for 
years.”

     Bob, with regard to the west coast salmon fishery, if you look 
carefully I think you will find that environmental factors have had the 
biggest negative impact.  In the absence of these factors, such as dams, 
development and poor logging practices, you have to wonder how much of a 
problem the current level of fishing would have caused.  Well maybe not the 
current level because in Oregon and California that is currently zero.  
Perhaps the reason the federal government feels obliged to support 
commercial fishermen is because of the devastating impact on fish runs 
federal dams have had.

See 60 Minutes report on Salmon recovery efforts here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/60minutes/main4198581.shtml.

“They still have got their boats and can move to other fish to fish for.”

Not exactly true, Bob.  Some of them do, some of them don’t.  Some of them 
can, some of them can’t.

     I agree with you that honeybee research is under funded.  I don’t 
think pointing the finger at the commercial fishing industry is going to 
help though.  What’s going to help is beekeepers getting it together like 
the commercial fishermen have gotten it together and lobbying congress from 
a much more powerful position.  You would know more about the politics of 
the beekeeping industry than most of us, Bob, certainly me, but my 
impression is that the industry is not as organized as it needs to be to 
get things done.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?  If commercial 
beeks were really organized they would have been able to take better 
advantage of all this publicity and public sympathy that CCD has 
generated.  But they are not that organized and in fact they seem to tend 
more toward the loner category, and from what I can tell they tend to hide 
their problems from one another, which seems really counter productive to 
me.  I may be wrong about this, and I welcome correction if I am.

Steve Noble   

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