Government plans to abolish municipalities’ authority for harvesting outside fishing period in Norway

The authority for municipalities to grant exceptions for harvesting outside the designated fishing period will soon be removed.

When the regulation was amended in 2020, most stakeholders recommended against any harvesting outside the defined fishing period, which runs from March 15 to October 15. However, the regulation was changed to allow municipalities to issue exceptions for harvesting outside this timeframe.

The Ministry of Environment now intends to abolish this authority, stating that harvesting outside the fishing period has a detrimental impact. “The fishing should not occur when the earth cannot adequately support it,” they remarked.

A proposal for this change is scheduled for public consultation tomorrow, July 26.

Since the regulation was established in 2020, a few exceptions have been granted to allow harvesting beyond October 15, particularly because there was a need related to aquaculture practices. Currently, harvesting is permitted outside the fishing period if there are “significant considerations for other activities,” as stated in the existing regulation.

However, Minister of Environment Ingilín Strøm has noted that municipalities, acting as oversight authorities, frequently grant exceptions without citing the required “significant considerations for other activities.”

The Ministry of Environment asserts that the interpretation of “significant considerations for other activities” has largely been mismanaged. Therefore, they plan to remove this provision.