Farming, industrialization, population growth, and overharvest degraded our Nation's water quality and fisheries resources. By the mid-1800's, fishermen recognized a decline in fish populations. In 1871, Spencer Fullerton Baird, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote to Congress urging Federal protection for the Nation's fisheries. Baird warned that the "time is not far distant" that America will lose fish as a source of "subsistence and support," a "calamity that would involve a vast number of evils in its train." Baird's warning was echoed by the American Fish Culturalists' Association (now the American Fisheries Society).
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Last updated:
August 19, 2008
