Fishery Restoration

Your community's revitalization should eventually encompass your entire region for maximum effectiveness.  It can start with a primary focus on any of the 12 sectors of restorable assets, but if you have a commercial or recreational fishing economy, fishery restoration can be a powerful way to bring your community or region together.  

Why?  Two reasons: 1) Many of them are in desperate condition, so citizens know something has to be done, and 2) many fisheries have tremendous bounce-back capacity, so you can sometimes get dramatic pay-back for your efforts in a relatively short period of time.

If you've already got a strong fishery restoration program, it can be an excellent foundation from which to launch your Renewal Capacity Program.

Definition & overview: There's no formal definition of fishery restoration, as it can focus on a number of restorable functions and assets, such as estuaries, coastal areas, coral reefs, etc. as well as the economic viability of the local fishing industry.   

Fisheries are, by far, the most multi-jurisdictional of the twelve sectors of restorative development.  Even restoring a small fishery, such as a shad run, can involve multiple states/provinces and dozens--if not hundreds--of communities.  The restoration of pelagic (open ocean) species--such as cod, swordfish, sharks, and tuna--would involve dozens of countries.  But fisheries account for over 10% of the global economy, and up to 80% of some costal economies, so overcoming such jurisdictional barriers is essential. The flip side of this challenge is that fishery restoration has tremendous potential as a tool for greater international cooperation, which can lead to cooperation on other critical issues, such as watershed restoration, war restoration, etc.