Conservation AND Access

A long lineage of conservationists did not distinguish between the need to conserve and protect natural resources and the need for the public to have access to natural resources. Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Ed Abbey, ... -- all realized a deeply integrated relationship between conservation and access.

How is it, then, that some modern groups can promote conservation and ignore access? The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is probably the most prominent among such groups. TNC, it seems, would be happy to tie up the entire natural world in conservation easements for wealthy landowners that preclude any and all public access. As TNC has increasingly gotten into bed with wealthy donors and landowners, it has also become embroiled in numerous ethical messes. Goldman Sachs' CEO Henry Paulsen became Chair of TNC and President Bush's Treasury Secretary. And never mind the other TNC scandals related to buying land and selling it at a profit, rigging land deals to benefit board members and corporate donors, or a TNC-Mobil Oil cooperative oil drilling venture that hammered an endangered species of prairie chicken...

What do these ethical problems share with the conservation/access divide?

These ethical problems all stem from the national board of a major conservation group being in bed with wealthy corporations and elite landowners. Often these are the same corporations and elite landowners that promote the privatization of nature. As a group moves toward a conservation mission that ignores public access, it will also make that group prone to other moral compromises regarding nature. Money can do that.

I am not arguing that wealth necessarily leads to bad environmental ethics. Many wealthy landowners and corporate blokes have a healthy respect for both the rights of nature and the rights of the unwashed masses. Wealth, like any other power, however, needs to be balanced. You know, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely..."

Within a conservation group, wealth needs to be balanced with an understanding of the role of nature in people's lives--ALL people's lives. My friend Mr. Kennedy (who owns 3,200 acres on the Ruby River) enjoys fishing that river no more or less than I, Butte pauper that I am. Mr. Kennedy and I share a zeal for Trout Unlimited's mission to conserve salmonids. For me to share this zeal, however, requires that I have access to the river that runs through both of our lives. My right to access that river is found in the Public Trust Doctrine (as well as the Montana Constitution). Only a free citizen who has the right to vote and the right to information about their government is likely to care about that government. This is why, for example, Napoleon's soldiers (and the American revolutionaries) fought for their cause and won battles (and the war) against vastly better equipped and trained armies.

So too public access. I can be a good soldier for Trout Unlimited and other groups only if I both (1) am respected as a member of a democratic organization; and (2) have access to the natural resources the group works to conserve.

Now, in the modern world, I realize that some people do not feel this way. They feel some guilt or some sentiment toward nature, even though it might not be an important part of their lives. They take a week to vacation in some overcrowded National Park, and that is about it. To salve their guilt or their sentiment, they send an annual donation to TNC or TU or one of a host of other conservation groups. They don't want to be involved, they don't want to participate in the group's work day to pick up litter at a public fishing access site etc.

Also, in the modern world, there is certainly a strong tendency toward specialization. TNC can focus on acquiring conservation easements on critical (private) properties, while a truly grassroots group such as Public Lands/Water Access Association, Inc. can focus on defending public access rights. Meanwhile, the board of directors at TNC can become more and more insulated from public issues, democratic participation and transparency, and the need to make nature a part of everyone's life.

This modern tendency is fed by Professional Staff. When a group's day-to-day operations are directed and effected by Professional Staff, the rank-and-file membership no longer need to care. The rank-and-file membership no longer need to do the heavy lifting of showing up to testify at public meetings, raising money to fund local projects, or writing articles for the monthly newsletter. Just send in your membership dues, and the Professional Staff will take care of everything.

As a modern organization that went down that road, consider John Muir's own Sierra Club. By the 1960s, the group was simply irrelevant to many of its rank-and-file members who sought a deep connection with nature. As the Sierra Club became increasingly bureaucratic and beholden to wealthy interests, it alienated activist, grassroots members such as David Brower and Ed Abbey--and thus EarthFirst! was born.

A group need not cave in to modernist tendencies that alienate grassroots members. It is very possible to combine grassroots involvment with a Professional Staff, national board of directors, and wealthy donors. To its credit as an organization, Trout Unlimited has been such an organization. To date, the national board has generally not made hasty decisions catering to wealthy donors without first working through the local chapters and grassroots memberships. Projects and initiatives emerge from both local chapters and from the national organization. There are and will be some tensions, to be sure, but the system has worked.

Trout Unlimited has formed an ad hoc committee that will study the Stream Access issue and make a recommendation to the national board before its September 2007 meeting. Let's hope that TU can retain the qualities that have made it a unique and successful blend of grassroots activists + big time modern organization.

Environmental Protection Agency declines Opportunity to rename a waste dump

Sadly, the EPA has refused to accept Anaconda-Deer Lodge County's name change for a huge toxic waste repository (see EcoRover 22.March.2007). Because the 4,000 acre toxic site is named the "Opportunity Ponds" after the nearby town of Opportunity, the county and town residents wanted the name changed to the "British Petroleum Ponds." British Petroleum is the parent company of ARCO and the responsible party under Superfund law.

What's in a name? Well, Opportunity Ponds sounds an awful lot like Opportunity-the-town. Whereas British Petroleum Ponds sounds an awful lot like British Petroleum-ARCO the corporation responsible for the toxic waste near the town of Opportunity.

Charlie Coleman of the EPA thought it would be too difficult to accept the name change, given all the documents and maps that are filed under the current name. Coleman also stressed that the EPA was focused on clean-up: “We [EPA] hope we’re able to remove that stigma [of contamination] for the community.”

But that's the whole point, isn't it, Charlie? The British Petroleum Ponds are a permanent waste repository. The contamination, and the stigma, are a permanent feature of Opportunity's backyard. If they are to be a monument in perpetuity, why not have them commemorate British Petroleum and not the town?

Cf. "EPA won't rename sites," 24.March.2007, The Montana Standard newspaper, http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/24/anaconda/hjjcjghfjihghh.txt.

National Trout Unlimited Backs Off on Stream Access

Experienced anglers know when they are getting into water that is too deep and need to back off.

This common sense approach prevailed with the National Trout Unlimited board of directors when, late last week, they decided to rescind a proposed resolution* that would have prohibited state and local TU chapters from engaging in stream access issues.

Wise choice: given the hue and cry from rank-and-file TU members, a "stream access is out-of-bounds" stance would have seriously harmed grassroots support for TU in Montana.

National TU will form an ad hoc committee to consider the issue and take into account the views of grassroots members before making a recommendation to the full board for its meeting next September.

* See EcoRover blogspot entries for 13.March.2007 and 21.March.2007.

Cf. Perry Backus, "National Trout Unlimited retreats from access stance," 27.March.2007 issue of The Missoulian newspaper, http://www.missoulian.com/.

Big Hole SpringCampout

The blue birds have returned, so it was time for a spring campout. For the past several years, Dave, RTD, and I have headed to The Notch for a few days each spring. We wait for a weekend with good weather, throw the gear in the truck, and head for the lower Big Hole. This is desert country, receiving only about 10 inches or less of annual precipitation. There are antelope and mule deer, but they are rather scarce as you get a mile or two from the river. This year, we camped across the river from our usual spots near Block Mountain, and settled into a little dale nestled between The Hogback and a smaller parallel ridge, several miles south of the Big Hole River. View of camp:

The Hogback is a ridge several miles long. The land slopes rather gradually upward from the west to the spine. The spine is topped with craggy rock that drops into many sheer cliffs on the east side. View along the top of The Hogback:

The Hogback creates a mini-rain shadow across the dale for the weather blowing in from the west. You can map the annual precipitation through the vegetation. The top of The Hogback is lush with mountain mahogany; a hundred feet or so down on the east side this transitions into a strip of sagebrush; from there on down to the floor of the dale it is prickly pear cactus; but then the floor of the dale becomes a swale lush with bunchgrass, which continues up the small parallel ridge until it transitions into a narrow swath of cactus topped with mountain mahogany.

We camped on the floor of the dale, and although the area is exposed to wind from the south the prevailing west wind is blocked by The Hogback.

Because the dale is so lush as to be a swale, we dared not build our fire in the dry grass there. Instead, we moved a few hundred feet up the little ridge to our east and built a nice fireplace in the rock. There was lots of dead mountain mahogany close at hand--a wonderful, clean, and long-burning hardwood. View of Dave, turning the deer steaks once to bloody rare perfection:

Saturday morning we loaded our knapsacks, found a moderately easy route up The Hogback, and hiked north toward the Big Hole River. From the top, there are good views to the Highland Mtns (incl. Red & Table Mtns); Block Mountain makes a good local landmark (dark mass on right edge of photo); you can also see an abandoned mine (red area) in the foreground:

There are also great views to the Tobacco Roots:

Because The Hogback's ridge is so rugged and thick with mountain mahogany, we moved down the western flank and hiked the grassland. There are numerous small mines along this route, marked on the map only as "soda mines." Some of the waste rock is very beautiful (we're not sure what the soda pay dirt looks like):

There was a horse skeleton near one of the mines. The immediate cause of death seems to have been that bullet hole between the eyes. No broken legs that we could see, and the teeth looked pretty good:

Oh well, the cycle of life and all that jazz. The coyotes must have been very happy with a horse carcass. And there's nothing prettier than a coyote turd full of horse hair:

RTD had a bad time withe the prickly pear cactus; no wonder this little plant gave the Lewis & Clark expedition such a bad time as they portaged their canoes around the Great Falls of the Missouri River:

Prickly pear cactus are eaten by packrats. The cactus gives the"woodrats" needed moisture, and these rodents also make a good home defense, as shown in this photograph of cactus piled up around a packrat's den in some old mine timbers:

Sentinel Rock marks one of the few passes over the northern portion of The Hogback:

Making our way through the rocky pass, we found numerous signs of old fox trapper's sets: bits of mylar attractor, waxed paper that had been placed under the traps' pans, wire that had anchored traps, etc. Here, we found an old rabbit carcass that had been used to bait the trap, along with the forgotten trap itself (a nice "soft set" with rubber-padded jaws and a spring on the trap's chain):

Back to camp and time for a nap. The warm (c. 75 deg F) day cooled as a front blew in from the south. After a very windy night we awoke to cloudy skies, cooler (c. 60 deg F) but still pleasant weather. We drove home leisurely along the frontage road, through Glen and past the flanks of Mt Fleecer. It's hard to be in a hurry after even a day or two on nature's time.

An Opportunity for Arsenic Reduction

[adapted from KUFM/Montana Public Radio commentary aired 22.March.2007, see http://www.mtpr.net/commentaries.html]

In the Superfund process (as in life itself), the naming of things is tremendously important. Some might argue that naming is an arbitrary matter. Take cats, for instance. What’s the difference if I name my cat Gumbie, Rumpelteazer, or Gus? Well, as T.S. Eliot taught us, “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter…” After all, like Adam in Genesis, we construct our world through the act of naming. Names create the roadmap for reality.

I think it was Joseph Kinsey Howard who first referred to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company as Montana’s Cheshire Cat: long after the cat was gone, it’s malevolent grin lingered in the Montana Power Company, the Plum Creek Timber Company, and of course ARCO and now British Petroleum-ARCO.

The little town of Opportunity between Anaconda and the Clark Fork River is inscribed with the Cheshire Cat’s grin; Opportunity residents are especially sensitive to the act of naming. For many years an area near their town was a toxic waste dump for the Anaconda Company. After the Company merged with ARCO and ARCO began Superfund clean up, this area became the toxic waste repository for other Operable Units—including Silver Bow Creek and Milltown Dam. Unfortunately for Opportunity residents, the ACM’s big cat box was named after their town.

Opportunity residents now ask that this waste repository be renamed the British Petroleum Ponds. The county’s chief executive Rebecca Guay says, “We’re just asking that whoever owns the ponds take ownership of them.” As Opportunity resident George Niland explains, “When people type in ‘Opportunity’ on Google we’d rather have them go to Opportunity, Montana, than the Opportunity Ponds.” [See the Montana Standard article, http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/20/anaconda/hjjcjghjjijjgg.txt]

Renaming the ponds is a reasonable request. British Petroleum should take ownership of its own toxic waste—both through the Superfund process and through the name of its repository. We hope that British Petroleum-ARCO and the Environmental Protection Agency listen.

As another act of naming, consider the safe human exposure limit for arsenic. In Anaconda and Opportunity, the so-called “safe” residential arsenic level is 250 parts per million.

Recently, epidemiologists have proven arsenic far more harmful to human health than previously thought. In the well-known Dartmouth study that helped reduce arsenic limits for drinking water, scientists called arsenic a vitamin that promoted cancer growth. Recently, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County government has hired technical advisor Jim Kuipers. We hope that local residents can use this sound technical advice and pressure the Environmental Protection Agency to be more protective of human health. Since Opportunity residents rely on well water, it is especially important that they take advantage of the ground water testing program recently implemented for their town.

Anaconda’s residential arsenic levels were set in a study performed nearly two decades ago. Some environmental toxicology classes use Anaconda as an example of a poor human health study. According to environmental engineer Stacie Barry, who also worked on an EPA-funded study of arsenic in family pets, the Anaconda study routinely underestimated the bioavailability of arsenic through the gastrointestinal tract, skin, and inhalation. Arsenic in attic dust was ignored. Long-term residential exposure was based on a two-week study of six newborn piglets eating yard soil. The piglet study neglected the long-term accumulation of arsenic in the bones and livers of real, human children.

When one compares Anaconda with the nation, the situation looks far, far worse. Nationally, Anaconda’s arsenic levels are an order of magnitude – ten times higher – than other sites. A review of state-by-state cleanup levels for soil arsenic in residential areas shows that many are in the 10 to 20 parts per million range. This makes sense, given the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent reduction of the arsenic limit in drinking water from 50 to 10 parts per billion.

Most all of the arsenic in the Clark Fork Superfund Megasite came from Anaconda Company smelting operations. One would think that with this common source – and with the same agency now cleaning up the sites – arsenic exposure limits would be the same throughout the Megasite.

Not so: along the Clark Fork River, the safe limit for soil arsenic levels is 150 parts per million; at Milltown, sediments are considered “highly contaminated” and will be removed when arsenic levels exceed 100 parts per million; however, in Anaconda and Opportunity, soil arsenic levels are set far higher—at 250 parts per million.

What the heck is going on here? Why are Anaconda residential arsenic levels set twice as high as those at other Clark Fork sites? Far more people are exposed to arsenic in Anaconda than along the river or at Milltown.

This appears to be a serious case of social injustice. Is it OK to increase the cancer risk for Anaconda kids in comparison with Milltown kids? Or for Montana kids vs. New York kids?

For more news about the British Petroleum Ponds, Opportunity, and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink www.cfrtac.org.

White-tailed Deer in southwest Montana

I read an article in the Montana Standard newspaper last week. While interesting, Nick Gevock’s article about white-tailed deer “taking over” contains serious historical inaccuracies and omissions. [See http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/22/outdoors_top/20070322_outdoors_top.txt]
White-tailed deer are not “recent migrants” to southwest and western Montana. Think of Deer Lodge, Montana, a town along the Clark Fork River just downstream of Butte. Deer Lodge got its name from, and was historically referred to by Native Americans as, “the lodge of the white-tailed deer.”

When Lewis and Clark led their infamous expedition through what is now southwest Montana, they saw many, many white-tailed deer—and relatively few mule deer. For example, consider Meriwether Lewis’ journal entry from 14 August 1805, made at the Three Forks of the Missouri River: “We have killed no mule deer since we lay here, they are all of the longtailed red deer [i.e. white-tailed deer] which appear quite as large as those of the United States.” The preponderance of white-tailed deer over mule deer continued as the expedition made its way up the Beaverhead River and over the Continental Divide to the Salmon River valley.

We must keep in mind that Lewis and Clark traveled primarily along rivers, and that white-tailed deer favor riparian habitat.

So why do old-timers tell us that white-tailed deer were scarce in southwest Montana until recently? It is because white-tailed deer were exterminated on the Montana frontier of the late nineteenth century. Ranchers’ cattle overgrazed the river bottoms, while miners and homesteaders shot everything in sight for food. For example, by 1871 Granville Stuart (located at what is now the Grant-Kohrs historic ranch near Deer Lodge) was outraged by the widespread slaughter of white-tailed deer and other native species, and he introduced legislation aimed at conserving wildlife. Despite Stuart’s efforts, the slaughter continued. By the 1890s, sportsmen’s groups petitioned the legislature to set hunting seasons and halt the sale of wild game. By 1900, there were virtually no deer or other game left in southwest Montana.

By the late1930s, thanks to the activism of groups such as the Montana Wildlife Federation and professional Fish & Game biologists, white-tailed deer and other game began to recover. Today, the alfalfa, wheat, and grass hay fields of our river bottoms provide abundant forage for white-tailed deer. Combined with the dearth of predators and the reluctance of some landowners to allow public hunting, this assures that the overpopulation of white-tails will continue—at least until something like Chronic Wasting Disease finds its way from game farms into our wild herds.

The article is an example of our tendency to see the world at the moment as if that is the way it has always been--irrespective of the huge changes that we have wrought even over very short time periods of a few human generations.

James Kennedy: Millionaire Media Mogul challenges Montana Stream Access

Atlanta, Georgia, based media millionaire James Cox Kennedy is at it again, trying to halt public stream access at county roads & bridges that pass through his property on the Ruby River in southwest Montana.

This time, Kennedy has filed a legal suit against Madison County and Public Lands Access Association, Inc. (PLAAI). Kennedy alleges that Madison County is failing to stop the public from accessing the river at the county bridges, thus violating his property rights. PLAAI is an organization of concerned anglers, sporstmen and -women, and others who are concerned over the public being locked out of traditional access to public land and water. For the story on Kennedy's latest lawsuit, see the article by Nick Gevock of the Montana Standard at http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/21/state_top/20070321_state_top.prt .

Kennedy's efforts to block public access on the Ruby River extend back at least to 2003. At that time, Kennedy began stringing electric fences and erecting other imassable barriers at the county bridges along Seylor and Lewis Lanes. Generally, Madison County has been gutless in this issue--trying to duck both the fanatical private property rights claims of James Kennedy and the demands to uphold the law by PLAAI.

The law is clear on this issue, as reified in a statement by Montana Attorney General Joe Mazurek in May 2000. Mazurek ruled that (Backus 2004):

• Use of county road right-of-way to access streams and rivers is consistent with and reasonably incidental to the public's right to travel on county roads.
• A bridge and its abutments are a part of the public right highway, and are subject to the same public easement of passage as the highway to which they are attached. Therefore, recreationists can access streams and rivers by using the bridge, its right-of-way, and its abutments.
• A recreationist must stay within the road and bridge easement to access streams and rivers. Absent definition in the easement or deed to the contrary, the width of the bridge right-of-way easement is the same as the public highway to which it is attached.
• Access to streams and rivers from county roads and bridges is subject to the exercise of the county commission's police power. However, this power is not without limitation.
• Access to streams and rivers from county roads and bridges created by prescription is dependent upon the uses of the road during prescriptive period.

Neither the law nor public rights seem to matter to James Kennedy and certain other wealthy landowners in Montana. It must be noted that Kennedy-types are the exception: most Montana landowners, whether newcomers or traditional family ranchers, respect the law and public rights. Furthermore, most Montana landowners are incredibly generous about granting public trespass by permission for hunting, fishing, and other recreational activities.

For those who care about public access to the streams and river of Montana, please please please support PLAAI in this David vs. Goliath battle. Go to http://plwa.org/.

So who is this James Cox Kennedy?

Well, to begin with, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Today, he is chair and CEO of the privated media corporation Cox Enterprises, Inc. His grandfather was James M. Cox, a three term Ohio governor, 1920 presidential candidate, and newspaper owner. James M. Cox had two daughters--Anne Cox Chambers and Barbara Cox Anthony. The sisters are still alive, each have a net worth of #12.5 billion, and share ownership of the vast Cox empire. Both are major players in the Democratic party.

"Jimmy," as James Cox Kennedy was known as a boy, grew up in Hawaii. Here's a brief resume of his life:

• 1972 graduate of the University of Denver at age 24
• following college, spent several years racing motorcycles--apparently uninterested in the family business
• 1979 named president of Grand Junction Newspapers, a family owned business
• 1985 named vice-president of Cox Newspapers in Atlanta
• under Jimmy's direction, the Atlanta Journal Constitution's reputation went downhill because of budget cuts and newsroom staff cuts; this has continued with Cox's purge of over-55 year old employees (Sugg 2007)
• 1988 named chair of Cox Enterprises
• national board member of Ducks Unlimited
• president of Wetlands America Trust, Inc.

No one can alledge that Kennedy is not a conservationist. But supporting wildlife conservation does not necessarily coincide with respecting the law, acknowledging public rights, or getting along with your neighbors under the Montana Big Sky.

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To float the river through James Cox Kennedy's land:

"Put in at Seyler Lane Bridge, drive through Twin Bridges to Seyler or Tash lane, then turn right and drive 1.75 miles to the bridge. For a longer float, drive to Sheridan, turn right at the IGA store and follow to an intersection known as Four Corners. Follow the foliage line for four miles to the river. Both floats end in Jesson Park in Twin Bridges across from the Madison County Fairgrounds. " (Billings Outpost 2005)

Sources

Backus, Perry (2004). "Fishing access battle continues," Montana Standard newspaper, 12.Jan.2004.

Billings Outpost (2005). Twin Bridges news item, Billings Outpost weekly newspaper, 17.July.2005. Available at http://www.billingsnews.com/story?storyid=17653&issue=270.

"Cox Empire Seeks Growth (on Its Own Terms)" (2002). New York Times, 14.April.2002.

Forbes 400 (2005). Entries for Anned Cox Chambers and Barbara Cox Anthony, at http://forbes.com/lists/2005/54/.

Mack Robinson College of Business (2004). "Twentieth Annual Business Hall of Fame Celebration," at http://robinson.gsu.edu/corporate/hof/2004/Kennedy.html.

Sugg, John F. (2007). "Why did Cox employees in Ohio get a better buyout deal than those in Atlanta? One word: union." 13.March.2007 at JohnSugg.com http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/johnsugg/.

Spring Hike: reading the book of nature

Nature is eloquent, speaking to us in various signs. We read these signs much as we read or decode spoken language and other social forms of semiotics. In terms of human understanding, there need not be a wide gulf or sharp division between the human and non-human world.

Leaving the truck at the S-curves near the top of a pass on the Continental Divide, I read the first signs of spring--pussywillows along the road.

Climbing up a finger ridge that runs down from the Divide, I thought how much I love this area. Though it is like a child or friend recovering from some horribly destructive habit like meth or heroin, there is beauty in this recovering landscape ravaged a century ago by the Anaconda Copper Company's clear cutting and then smelter pollution. Usually, I see it while elk hunting the area once or twice a year; but it's also a pleasant early spring hike. Though I carried snowshoes to ease crossing the deep drifts between ridges, for the most part the wind blows hard and constant down from the Divide, sweeping the snow from the ridgetops and west facing ridge sides. The ridges are studded with the earth's vertebrae--marvelous limestone outcrops; they stand amid the earth's shed hair--trees a century dead.

An old mining claim marked with a Christian's cross. What were they prospecting in this limestone? Was this perhaps a contact zone between limestone and lava? I don't know. My skill at reading the language of geology is limited.

Bears roam these ridges and this valley. They leave their mark on aspens as a sign to other bears, or to humans who read a bit of ursinese.

Wind and water claw the land the way bears claw trees. Here, the claw marks of running water on a low ridge across a glen. We can read this as erosion caused by the deforestation and subsequent poisoning of vegetation by the Anaconda Copper Mining company.

Here, some patterned ground--the language of wind riffled snow, pebbles, and vegetation.

RTD and I pause for lunch. Although a pleasantly warm and sometimes sunny morning, the nagging wind has made me cold. It feels good to hunker down over a fire on the lee side of the ridge.

Spring is a time of life. The "bull" mice travel long distances to find mates. This little deer mouse, tucked in amid the Oregon grape and lichen, was a mysterious victim of winter. RTD's found it, her nose reads the signs of smell the way my eyes read elk tracks.

There is a slash in the earth, a crevice like Gaia's vagina. Here there is life: the rich green color of watercress leaps to the eye like the cries of a new born child. The water flows warm (60 deg F or so) year round, ice free, and mineral-fat from its limestone birth. In a month or so, there will be westslope cutthroat trout swirling and spawning in this rich water.

For me, today, it is the source of a pound or so of watercress to flavor a big potful of boiling corned beef. As my hands pick over the watercress I am like a hungry man reading Braille. My mouth waters as I recite the story.

Stream Access: Who to Contact at Trout Unlimited

If you want to complain about National TU's proposed policy against stream access, here are some Board of Trustees members you can contact. Thanks to Steve Luebeck at George Grant TU for this list.

cgauvin@tu.org
kirkoteytu@mindspring.com
jwelter@ameritech.net
slatermw@yahoo.com
lalbright2@earthlink.net
jallardt@optonline.net
stlance@comcast.net
dryfly@adelphia.net
rteufel@aol.com
squeaksmith@earthlink.net
stewartg@pbworld.com
rlmurphree@ftb.com

As Steve suggests, address your email to Charles Gauvin and copy the others. Gauvin is President of TU National.

Springtime in the Rockies

Signs of spring are everywhere, from nesting birds to the budding aspen trees to the breakup of rural roads--churned ice by night and muddy quagmire by day. Who is peeking out of the nesting box on my neighbor's house?

Around the house, the snow is largely gone and the melt is gradually creeping up the flanks of the mountains, as you can see on the East Ridge (of the Continental Divide) east of Butte in the background of this photo of daughter Emily & RTD.

The only snow left is on the big cornice that builds up at the southwest corner of the ballfield near our house. What college girl home for spring break could resist one good slide?
It's that time of year when you can have a good ski and good trout fishing in the same day.

Woke up to snow yesterday and had to take advantage of it: RTD & I headed over to Mill Cr pass and hit the trails near Sugarloaf. The skiing wasn't great, but the new inch of snow had bonded to the ice enough that it made for good control. We did a run up Little California, around Spire, and skied off piste in the Spire area. Nice view to the Pintler across the Deep Creek valley.

RTD fell through the snow here and there, so I didn't venture too far from the trail. We went into the backcountry near Sugarloaf earlier this week, and by the time we came out at 10:30 am it was over 50 deg F and we were falling through even on a snowmachine track. Early spring, this.

One afternoon Jan, AJ, Emily, boyfriend Sam, RTD, and I made a picnic and did a little fishing along the Jefferson River near Lewis & Clark caverns. This is a beautiful, scenic area and we caught a few fish too. It was also VERY windy--sometimes raising whitecaps on the river and I had to chase my hat down the river once. Yes, that's Emily holding a trout--we killed one for a little Montana surf'n'turf (trout & elk steak) dinner.

In a few days it will be St Paddy's day madness in Butte. Here's to the Irish. As my family poem recited by Gramps over the holiday meal goes (wish I could remember it all),

He drank like a fish and he ate like a savage

The only thing he didn't like was corned beef & cabbage.