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The decade of recovery
I often think of my life in decade intervals. The first ten years was the goofball phase; 11-20 years old involved anything with a ball; 21-30 was consumed by conservation—you get the idea. If we are lucky, we will get eight or nine of these opportunities to think about the new decade in front of…
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Mark and his dad
Mark looks different, but the same. Twin swatches of grey hair above his ears. Still fit, his full mane of hair—something he, his Dad, and older brother, David, share—maybe thinning just a tad. His eyes are red. Mark was maybe my best friend in college. He was a tight-end. I was a wide receiver. We…
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Connecting science and conservation
At a recent gathering of our scientists and other staff at Trout Unlimited, I recounted how one of my happiest days was when I was hired as a fisheries biologist—for three days—by the Bureau of Land Management. My vision of being a fisheries biologist was informed by the John Steinbeck novel, Cannery Row. Even more…
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We fish here so you can fish there
“We fish here so you can fish there.” So read the note that I sent to all of TU’s staff on Christmas Eve several years ago. The note included two photographs. One showed my colleague, Keith Curley, standing on a shopping cart and casting into a tributary of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.; another…
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Companies that give back
I am 20 years old; sitting cross-legged on the floor of my dorm room. The words on the page are so freaking clear, but their application remains elusive. “Fly casting makes it possible to deliver a relatively weightless lure or imitation of a living creature on a target, using line weight to develop momentum.” After…
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The Clean Water Act: An American success story
Editor's note: This column was originally published in the Washington Post on Sept. 23, 2019 The announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency was scrapping Obama-era rules designed to protect small streams and wetlands made me recall a misty morning this spring on the Potomac River above Georgetown. I brought a striped bass, locally known as…
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The Amazon forest isn’t the only one in peril
Editor's note: This first appeared in the Los Angeles Times. By Mike Dombeck and Chris Wood In the faraway Amazon, politics and commercial exploitation are fueling fires that threaten the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Closer to home, in Alaska, the Tongass National Forest, which represents the largest intact temperate rainforest, is facing a serious threat…
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