LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT.

• Author: Campbell, Bradley
• Position: CONSERVATION MATTERS

With so many environmental challenges facing us today, it can be easy to look at New England's chronic overfishing of Atlantic cod and ask, why should I care about the fate of one fish in our vast and abundant ocean?

But of course, you and I both recognize that CLF's work is never about just one fish (any more than it is about one coal-fired power plant, one corporate polluter, or one fracked gas pipeline). What's happening to New England's iconic fish is emblematic of a larger governmental failure to deal effectively with threats to the resources so essential to our environment, economy, and culture.

Consider cod our canary in the coal mine--a species once so abundant that, if you believe the legends, fishermen could walk across their backs to reach the shore. Instead of stewarding this remarkable resource, however, cod have been exploited to the point of collapse--despite decades of warnings that the cod bonanza could not be sustained. If government regulators could allow our most iconic fish to reach such a desperate condition, then how can they be trusted to protect our other precious resources, whether in the sea or on the land, let alone our climate?

That is where CLF comes in (and you with us). For decades, every time fishery managers have made a bad call, we have been there to raise the alarm. When our government has refused to step up and do the right thing, we have held them to account. When corporate polluters have tried to poison our waters, we have taken them to court. And when bad laws and ineffective policy have stood in the way of progress, we have rewritten them or created new ones.

CLF has faced impossible odds more than times than I can count--and with your support, we have emerged the victor. We're not giving up on Atlantic cod, because if we leave behind even one fish in New England's ocean, then we risk them all--and the way of the life that goes with them.

We're not going to let that happen on our watch, and I know you won't...