I hate to say I told you so, but …

I could be just a bit premature by saying this, but “I told you so!”

A few weeks back, I mentioned how the U.S. Department of Interior had just finished finalizing their regulations reviews regarding carrying concealed firearms on federal lands managed by agencies within that department. The purpose of this review was to simplify and standardize federal regulations and bring them into compliance with existing state laws regarding concealed carry.

The revision allowing concealed carry in National Parks was set to take effect with its publication in the Federal Register. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service already allowed concealed carry by properly licensed individuals, but the National Park Service had a longstanding policy against such activity. This revision of department regulations had been requested by dozens of U.S. Senators at the request of their constituents.

Within hours after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama issued an order through his chief of staff halting the implementation of this and other Bush Administration regulation changes until they could be reviewed for their “appropriateness.”

During the presidential campaign, I spoke with many people, almost all gun owners, who felt President Obama wasn’t going to do anything about gun control. They all said he had too many other “more important” issues facing him to worry about trying to implement further firearms restrictions.

I don’t argue that the economy, jobs, housing values, and terrorism are all extremely serious issues for the president to deal with. I sincerely hope he can help turn things around in the economy. I also hope he will continue to keep terrorist attacks from occurring within this country’s borders. However, he wasted no time in taking a small step toward maintaining government control of who can have firearms under certain situations, and he did it with an executive order, not legislative action.

The use of presidential executive orders is becoming a preferred way to enact a law without having to wait for the legislative process to function. During the campaign, Obama promised to reinstate the Clinton assault weapons ban. Some differences are that Obama wants his ban to be permanent (Clinton’s had a 10-year sunset clause) and he will expand it to include hundreds of models of firearms the Clinton ban did not include.

Oh, in case you don’t remember, Clinton instituted his ban via executive order, not legislative action. President Obama will use the same approach!

It’s just a matter of time before you will be hearing the liberal-leaning media trumpeting this announcement.

On another topic, I just recently returned from a Board of Fisheries (BOF) meeting in Petersburg. The board did nothing specific with the Petersburg proposals which would have a bearing on fisheries in this part of the world. However, the board did vote to accept an emergency petition submitted by the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association (CIAA) asking that the cost recovery management plan CIAA uses be changed. This proposed action will be heard by the board at the upcoming March meeting in Anchorage.

There also were several proposals asking the board to create subsistence fisheries in various locations in Southeast. As it turned out, by simply adjusting the personal use regulations, the creation of subsistence fisheries was not needed and the proposers of every subsistence proposal withdrew their support before the proposals were heard.

Had the board moved ahead to address these subsistence proposals, I doubt they would have passed. The Subsistence Division background comments for these proposals contained inaccurate information regarding previous customary and traditional (C&T) findings for king crab in the region. This inaccuracy was brought to the board’s attention by one of the meeting attendees, a former BOF member and past chairman.

This gentleman had been the chairman when the board made the negative C&T findings for king crab in that area. None of the Subsistence Division staff present at the meeting was around when these findings were made. The importance of institutional memory and good research was glaringly evident with this situation.

I also experienced a personal first for a BOF meeting. One proposal asked for a commercial fisheries closure of an area to allow uninterrupted noncommercial use. Obviously, the commercial guys didn’t like that! In committee, the person representing the noncommercial users offered to compromise on the size of the area, seasons, bag limits, and whatever it would take to reach an agreement accommodating both sides. The commercial users snubbed the offer and the proposal ultimately failed.

That attitude of unwillingness to compromise bothered me and I made an issue of it during board deliberations. The whole purpose of the board committee process is to allow contentious issues to be worked out between the stakeholders. I said my piece and figured I would pay for it later with some angry comments from the commercial sector.

Sure enough, on a break, a commercial fisherman came up to me to comment. Much to my surprise, he thanked me for pointing out their unwillingness to work toward a solution and said there was no excuse for snubbing the compromise offer made in committee.

Can you imagine the fisheries issues that could be resolved in Cook Inlet if all users were willing to make meaningful compromises.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.