Brian Bilbray: “this issue invokes a lot of emotion. We all feel very strongly about our bond with dolphins and porpoises. As somebody…”

“this issue invokes a lot of emotion. We all feel very strongly about our bond with dolphins and porpoises. As somebody who spends a lot of time in the ocean, I, no less than anybody else, feel strongly about it. But this issue really needs to be looked at in the strong light of science. Two major components that we have recognized in the last decade that we have to do if we are going to be responsible to the environment is first abandon the monospecies concept of species management and use multispecies management; look at the big picture from nature's point of view. The other issue is to go from the mononational to the international strategies when we are addressing environmental problems. H.R. 408 makes that transition from the old law that basically only looked at dolphins, only related to the impacts of the environment based on dolphins, but de facto, unintentionally encouraged and actually made basically the only economic opportunity a thing called log fishing, which as many scientists will document, has caused the deaths of endangered species and subspecies that were never meant to be hurt by the original law. I do not think we should have to make a choice between Flipper over here and the Ninja Sea Turtles over there. I think everyone recognizes that we should look at the big picture from the species management point of view.”