Leelanau News and Events

Native Tribes, Sport Fishers Clash Over New Fishery Management Decree

By Craig Manning | Dec. 13, 2023

We all know the saying “There are plenty more fish in the sea.” But are there enough fish in the Great Lakes for everyone who wants to catch them? That question is at the crux of a long-simmering dispute between tribal fishing interests and Michigan’s sport fishing industry – a dispute coming to a head for the first time in decades.

Earlier this year, a federal judge approved an agreement between four Native American tribes and state regulators regarding fishing policies in three of the Great Lakes. Now, a sport fishing coalition led by a Leland charter boat captain is pushing back, arguing it puts already-stressed Great Lakes fish populations in jeopardy – and, by extension, threatens Michigan’s entire fishing industry.

The agreement in question is the latest in a series of consent decrees between the tribes and the state, each relating back to a lawsuit – United States v. State of Michigan – that began in the 1970s and has never been firmly settled. Initially, the case posed two primary questions: First, whether modern Native American tribes in Michigan should retain the hunting and fishing rights secured by their ancestors in various 19th century treaties; and second, what those hunting and fishing rights actually entail. In 1979, a federal judge ruled that the tribes did indeed have treaty rights to fishing in the Great Lakes, but left it up to the state and the tribes to determine precisely how those treaty rights should be observed, limited, or enforced.

A long back-and-forth between the tribes and the state followed, leading ultimately to the Sault Ste. Marie agreement, a 1985 consent decree that effectively created a compromise on how to balance fishing interests in the lakes between tribal and non-tribal fishers. The agreement took the sections of lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior covered in the 1836 Treaty of Washington and divided them into zones. Some zones had rules that were more favorable to sport fishing interests, while others were dominated by native tribes.

That agreement remained in place until 2000, when the parties had to negotiate a new decree. Similar to the first agreement, the 2000 version apportioned the lakes into zones, set catch limits on certain fish, and limited the types of fishing gear commercial tribal fishers were allowed to use.

At the core of the 2000 agreement was an effort by the state to curb the tribes’ use of gill nets, large walls of netting that sport fishers in Michigan have long argued will bring about the collapse of the Great Lakes fishery by catching and killing fish too indiscriminately. As part of the 2000 consent decree, the state paid out more than $14 million to tribal fishers to help them switch from gill nets to trap nets, which have lower fish mortality rates.

The 2000 decree technically expired in August 2020, but a federal court extended its rules to provide time for involved parties to negotiate a new agreement. That new agreement, between state regulators and four of the five Michigan tribes, was approved this past August by U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney. (A fifth tribe, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, refused to participate in the negotiations and is appealing the decree.) Per Maloney, the new agreement “respects and promotes tribal fishing rights and opportunities, yet it also preserves the Great Lakes fishery and recognizes the shared nature of the resource.”

A group of Michigan sport fishers disagree with Maloney and are bringing an appeal of their own in hopes of overturning parts of the new decree. Captain Tony Radjenovich of Reelin Leland Fishing Charters is president of that group – called the Coalition to Protect Michigan Resources (CPMR) – which takes issue with how the 2023 decree rolls back gill net restrictions.

According to Radjenovich, commercial tribal fishers will now be allowed to deploy gill nets in areas where they haven’t been used in years (particularly in Grand Traverse Bay) and to use gill nets for more months out of the year in certain key northern Michigan fishing zones (such as off the shores of Leland). Radjenovich and his fellow CPMR members fear the increase in gill nets will catch and kill more fish, not only jeopardizing their businesses but also Great Lakes fish populations.

“This appeal is specifically about protecting the resource, and by that, we mean the abundance of fish in the Great Lakes,” Radjenovich tells the Leelanau Ticker. “It’s not about ‘their fish,’ ‘our fish,’ ‘someone else’s fish.’ It’s about how there are less fish now than there were in 2000. Whitefish, for instance, are down to maybe 10-15 percent of what they were back then. And if there’s only 15 percent of the whitefish left, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put more gill nets in the water."

“The fact that there is slightly expanded area for gill net fishing does not mean more fish will be harvested,” counters Bill Rastetter, attorney for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB). “The quotas remain the same; the allocation remains the same. In fact, Tony and his sportfishing colleagues have a greater allocation – 60-40 – of lake trout than GTB fishers in the waters offshore from Leland, to demonstrate what a good neighbor GTB is.”

Judge Maloney also cited quotas in his approval of the new decree, writing in his 139-page opinion that “whether they meet that harvest limit quickly by using the efficient method of gill nets, or whether they meet that harvest limit over time by using less efficient means of fishing, the tribes are still subject to the same harvest limits regardless of gear used.”

But Radjenovich contends that “only two species have a total allowable catch: whitefish and lake trout,” and that the new decree doesn’t have any protections to make sure quota species aren’t being caught and killed “incidentally” in the course of fishing for other species.

“The way it works in the current decree is that, once you reach a quota in your area [for either lake trout or whitefish], you stop fishing that area,” Radjenovich says. “The way they wrote this new decree, the tribes just get to keep fishing. So, say you’ve already caught your lake trout quota, but you have an incidental catch of lake trout while you’re out trying for whitefish or walleye or perch. Well, now that doesn’t matter: The tribes can release those fish, and every fish they release – dead or alive – doesn’t have to be counted.”

For Rastetter, CPMR’s entire argument amounts to fearmongering. He says the tribes have federally-approved self-regulation measures in place that ensure the health and long-term sustainability of the Great Lakes fishery, and suggests that CPMR and other opponents are ignoring and disrespecting those practices by repeating “the same old canard from 4-5 decades ago [about how] ‘gill nets will destroy the world as we know it.’”

Pictured: A map of the 2023 decree, courtesy of GTB, which outlines northern Michigan fishing zones and their different rules.

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