As a boy in Woodstock Vermont, George Perkins Marsh suffered from strained and damaged eyesight from intensive reading. The remedy was to send him outdoors where he became an avid fisherman. Years later Vermont commissioned George Perkin Marsh to determine reasons for the decline of the state’s fisheries and the feasibility of establishing a fish culture program to replenish state waters.
Marsh’s 1857 report identified a primary cause of fisheries loss as “the improvidence of fishermen in taking them at the spawning season, or in greater numbers at other times than the natural increase can support.” His report further identified other “obscure” causes including the rampant clearing of land that caused rapid runoff and choked rivers with silt—one of the first times the fate of a game species was linked to habitat condition.
George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882)
Marsh’s report concluded that the legal and social will did not exist for creating public fish-breeding program. He further noted, “the habits of our people as so adverse to the restraints of game-laws… that any general legislation of this character would probably be found an inadequate safeguard.” He advised that Atlantic salmon and American shad runs in the Connecticut River could be restored only if cooperative action was taken by every state through which the river passed, but “the difficulties of a cooperation with other States by concurrent legislation seem, for the present at least, insuperable.” The Vermont Legislature praised Marsh’s report… but declined to act on it.
Flag of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries
In 1871, responding to appeals from numerous sectors of the public, academia, and government, Congress created the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The Commission was the first federal agency created to study and protect a natural resource. Congress charged the Commission with investigating and determining both the causes for declines in coastal and inland fisheries and “practicable methods that could be applied for their restoration.”
Spencer Fullerton Baird, a prominent research scientist and a Marsh protégé, relied heavily on Marsh’s fish report in his own 1872-1873 federal fisheries report and credited Marsh with initiating salmon restoration efforts in the United States and creating a conservation approach for federal fisheries management.
In 1903, the Fish Commission was reorganized as the United States Bureau of Fisheries, which operated until 1940 when it became part of the newly created U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Sources:
John Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, Oregon State University Press (2001).
Robin Kundis Craig, George Perkins Marsh: Anticipating the Anthropocene, Utah Law Digital Commons (2020).
Top photo: R/V Fish Hawk (1880-1925). Learn more about the vessel’s service.