Heroes of Conservation: 2006 Finalist

Ronnie Luster, The Crab Man
Insurance broker, Houston, Texas

Luster started a movement through the Coastal Conservation Association that has mobilized 1,600 volunteers to remove over 20,000 abandoned crab traps. Other states along the length of the Gulf are following his lead.

My dad had a bait camp and marina near Port O'Connor when I was 2, so I grew up fishing and duck hunting this water. There weren't any abandoned traps back then. But over the years, the state opened commercial crabbing to the point where anybody could get a license, and just about everybody did. One day in 2000, I counted 1,800 abandoned traps in a 7-mile stretch along the Intercoastal Waterway. And I said, "This is too much." Biologists reckon the average abandoned trap kills between two and four dozen crabs a year. They also kill flounder, redfish, saltwater catfish, diamondback turtles, and birds. The last thing that dies inside a trap lures the next creature in. It's a cycle of death. But at that time, not just anybody could go picking up the traps, because the law considered them private property. The first thing we had to do was get the state to close the crabbing season briefly so we could do a cleanup. Then we went out with some volunteers and game wardens who could certify the traps as illegal. From there, the whole thing took off. We had people offering disposal sites on their land, people with airboats volunteering. And let me tell you, it's hard, nasty work pulling a trap encrusted with oysters out of the muck. The program was so successful that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are all either doing it or studying it. I'm just the guy who kicked the first rock that started the landslide. We should've started it 10 years earlier. My sons do the heavy work now. These days, I'm the old, fat guy driving the boat.

-- Bill Heavy

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Finalists Paul Morrow Jim Cummins Jeff Olson Ronnie Luster Steve Simmons Chris Tompkins Previous Months September August July June May April March February January