In light of the Wild Steelhead regulations and the issues we face with our native fish in the NW I suggest reading A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Probably the best book ever written by an outdoorsman on conservation and the Huter/fishermans role in Conservation.


A few Excerpts from the Works of Aldo Leopold
Death of a Species
Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [Passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industy bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?
It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of the species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-ceatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.
Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man, while captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of whistling in the dark.
These things, I say, should have come to us. I fear they have not come to many.
For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. The Cro-Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks. The sportsman who shot the last [Passenger] pigeon thought only of his prowess. The sailor who clubbed the last auck thought of nothing at all. But we, who have lost our pigeons, mourn the loss. Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us. In this fact, rather than in Mr. DuPont's nylons or Mr. Vannevar Bush's bombs, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts.
Land Ethic
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.
Conservation
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and co-operate with each other. The competitions are as much a part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can regulate them--cautiously--but not abolish them.
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
Profit Motive
When one considers the prodigious achievements of the profit motive in wrecking land, one hesitates to reject it as a vehicle for restoring land. I incline to believe we have overestimated the scope of the profit motive. Is it profitable for the individual to build a beautiful home? To give his children a higher education? No, it is seldom profitable, yet we do both. These are, in fact, ethical and aesthetic premises which underlie the economic system. Once accepted, economic forces tend to align the smaller details of social organization into harmony with them.
No such ethical and aesthetic premise yet exists for the condition of the land these children must live in. Our children are our signature to the roster of history; our land is merely the place our money was made. There is as yet no social stigma in the possession of a gullied farm, a wrecked forest, or a polluted stream, provided the dividends suffice to send the youngsters to college. Whatever ails the land, the government will fix it.
Ecological Education
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
The government tells us we need flood control and comes to straighten the creek in our pasture. The engineer on the job tells us the creek is now able to carry off more flood water, but in the process we lost our old willows where the cows switched flies in the noon shade, and where the owl hooted on a winter night. We lost the little marshy spot where our fringed gentians bloomed.
Some engineers are beginning to have a feeling in their bones that the meanderings of a creek not only improve the landscape but are a necessary part of the hydrologic functioning. The ecologist sees clearly that for similar reasons we can get along with less channel improvement on Round River.
Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa, on January 11, 1887. As a boy he developed a lively interest in field ornithology and natural history, and after schooling in Burlington, at Lawrenceville Prep in New Jersey, and the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, he enrolled in the Yale forestry school, the first graduate school of forestry in the United States. Graduating with a masters in 1909, he joined the U.S. Forest Service, by 1912 was supervisor of the million-acre Carson National Forest, and in 1924 accepted the position of Associate Director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, the principal research institution of the Forest Service at that time. In 1933 he was appointed to the newly created chair in Game Management at the University of Wisconsin, a position he held until his death.
Leopold was throughout his life at the forefront of the conservation movement--indeed, he is widely acknowledged as the father of wildlife conservation in America. Though perhaps best known for A Sand County Almanac, he was also an internationally respected scientist, authored the classic text Game Management, which is still in use today, wrote over 350 articles, most on scientific and policy matters, and was an advisor on conservation to the United Nations. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1948 while helping his neighbors fight a grass fire. He has subsequently been named to the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame, and in 1978, the John Burroughs Memorial Association awarded him the John Burroughs Medal for his lifework and, in particular, for A Sand County Almanac.

Nice Post!

Great time for some thoughtful reflection for all of us.

I leafed through some of my Roderick Haig-Brown material and came up with some interesting points from a more Northwest perspective:


"In addition to contributing at least something to the maintenance of his sport, the fisherman needs to direct his attention far more closely to the qualities that make it a sport. He should be aware of his fish and their needs and so be ready to protect them. He should examine his sport closely and seek ways of refining it to give him greater pleasure...

Both steelhead and salmon fishermen should give serious consideration to the pleasures- and they are very real pleasures- of catch and release fishing. It is reasonable enough to take half a dozen, or even a dozen sizeable fish a season for the freezer, but few people can want more than that.There is no pleasure in knocking a fish in the head.There is a very real pleasure in carefully unhooking him, preferably while he is still in the water, gently nursing his strength back if neccessary, then watching him swim away. If the job is well-done he will recover completely. A fish can be hooked and released several times in a season by different fishermen and still go up his river to spawn in due time.

Catch and release is of particular importance to the steelhead fisherman. Quite a number of steelheaders release all, or nearly all, their fish now and if the practice becomes more general one will be reasonably assured of fish holding over in the pools throughout the season."

Circa 1972.


"We have been far too slow to appreciate the outstanding qualities of the steelhead as a game fish, much too willing to meet the difficulties he presents with crude and unsatisfactory solutions. There are signs of change in this. We have been slow, also, in investigating the variety and complexity of life history patterns that make the steelhead runs, and unimaginative in our limited attempts at management. The steelhead stocks of the North Pacific make up the world's only major population of a true sea-ranging trout. This is a precious inheritance. It needs cool, clean waters and good gravel beds to come home to; it needs stable stream flows and productive stream beds to nurse it through the freshwater years until it is ready to go to sea; it may need protection in the ocean years as well- if not now, at some later date. All these things can be provided in good quantity by wise planning.

The angler, for his part, should respect the fish by accepting the challenges he offers instead of insisting on easy solutions. And he should be satisfied to limit his kill closely until natural stocks repopulate every square yard of suitable spawning area, whether man-made or natural. Those great bars of muscle, steel-grey and silver, square-tailed and heavy-shouldered, have more important duties than filling freezers or posing for post-humous pictures."

Circa 1970.

gsiegl -

Also a nice post!

JK