Scale framing of scientific uncertainty in controversy over the Endangered Steller sea lion

Abstract

Political debate about the endangered Steller sea lion turns on uncertainty about the cause of decline and lack of recovery of this marine mammal of the North Pacific Ocean. To shift the political terrain, different groups tried to shift the scale at which problems are framed. US regulators focused on localised interactions, environmental organisations highlighted the entire fishery management regime and the fishing industry focused on natural climate change within the North Pacific region. Because debate is about supposedly objective, scientific realities, these practices of scale framing take on particular significance in this case. Scientific understandings of individual problems are not outside the frame of scale practices, but instead there is a politics of scale around science. This case shows that using scale as a framing device is a powerful political strategy for dealing with uncertainty, because focusing on a particular scale presupposes certain kinds of solutions while foreclosing others.

Notes

1. We refer to Greenpeace, the American Oceans Campaign, and the Sierra Club together as ‘environmental groups’ because as co-plaintiffs in the court cases they are represented together.

2. ‘Fisheries’ is a flexible term used to denote fishing activity at multiple scales, with different methods and of different species. For example, the North Pacific pollock fishery is a subset of North Pacific fisheries, and itself can be decomposed into more specific fisheries based on geographical region or fishing method.

3. There are exceptions to this process. Agencies can start by conducting informal consultations. If these find no impacts then a full, formal analysis is not needed.

4. Fishing is carried out by private interests, but is regulated and managed by NMFS and so becomes a federal action subject to ESA and NEPA requirements.

5. We treat the fishing industry as a single group because an array of people and organisations came together around the Steller issue. Groups that intervened in the court cases include the At-Sea Processors Association (representing factory trawlers), a coalition of shore-based processors, and the United Catcher Boats (representing independent fishers).

6. NMFS completed a final BiOp in 2003 and a Programmatic SEIS in 2004.