On Tuesday, November 16, KRITFC Executive Director Mary Sattler Peltola testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Waters, Oceans, and Wildlife about proposed reauthorizations to the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA). Her witness statement focused on Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Case (D-HI)’s reauthorization bill, H.R. 4690, Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act.

In her witness statement about H.R. 4690, Mary emphasized the urgency to:

1. Make the federal fishery management system climate-ready and responsive to changing environmental conditions. KRITFC Commissioners and Tribal citizens know firsthand how climate change is impacting our ways of life, and we support legislation like H.R. 4690 that seeks to address this.

2. Include Tribes and Traditional Knowledge in federal fishery management decisions. KRITFC supports H.R. 4690’s inclusion of subsistence fishing as a sustainable use of fisheries resources, and its addition of two voting Tribal seats to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council

3. Reduce bycatch in federal fisheries by removing the phrase “to the extent practicable” from MSA National Standard 9, which allows industrial fishing to minimize bycatch inasmuch as it does not harm commercial fishing profits. KRITFC hopes that doing this, as H.R. 4690 proposes, will address serious equity and conservation concerns about salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery.

KRITFC looks forward to continuing to work with this congressional subcommittee and its staff to move the H.R. 4690 forward and continuing protecting our fisheries and ways of life.