Stand up and tell 'em! 📣
A gentle nudge to find your voice in conservation and activism.
CFS brethren and sistren: How are you? I'm writing today from the back porch, where it's a balmy 55 with torrential rains. Every so often I like to close my eyes, take a big whiff, and image I'm in Hawaii. That's where these rains were a few hours ago, yeah? Same thing, sorta? Well, OK. Close enough for me. ☀️ 🌈 🌴
1️⃣ Spring is almost here.
It's nearly time for Spring Term registrations. You can check them out dates on the Classes page. The go-live date for classes is Wednesday, March 5th at 07:00 PST. Tell a buddy, bring a friend.
2️⃣ Plan for Maupin this spring!
Here's your reminder that we'll be gathering this spring in Maupin, OR, for Trout Fest, and to fish the salmonflies. Our camp sites with the group chunk are spoken for, but make plans to come out. Let me know if you're interested, and I'll include you in the details as they come together. And let me know if you have any suggestions.
Stand up and tell 'em 📣
I was born in Detroit, Michigan in the '80s. I can't remember how old I was when I learned my hometown was the butt of a national joke. Now, Detroit is cool. But, back then? It was used as a symbol for all that was wrong in America.
Of all things, it was a TV news promo that helped young me see things differently. "Stand up and tell 'em you're from Detroit." A small, pride-building thing for a young boy.
It made me curious to learn more about the city. I started to feel confident to indeed "stand up and tell 'em." Coney dogs! The Tigers! Tell you what: I didn't always have the courage, but I had the song.
As it turns out, hundreds of towns across the country had the same song. An enterprising jingle guru named Frank Gari sold and produced packages across the US using the same tune, with slightly localized words.
Something like "stand up and tell 'em you're from Nashville" or "El Paso" or "Chatanooga's great" just doesn't have that swing. And I'd like to think Gari, then of Cleveland, had that Ohio outsider's appreciation for all that the crown jewel of the Midwest had to offer. Here's a playlist of 40-something slight variations.
Ira Glass broke the news about a similar Gari jingle to one Calgarian in 2014 on This American Life with an excellent supercut of a bunch of versions. Surprisingly, I hadn't heard this episode prior to composing this note to you, or ever heard the "Say nice things about Detroit" slogan Glass mentions.
Here's the point: Even if none of these were isolated or locally unique experiences for people who listened to them, they still mattered.
It works for everyone across the country because there's an emotional resonance underneath the places and scenes. "It's the same," Gari says. "It might be snowing in one area and 80 degrees in another, but people are people and they're going through the same." We're all attuned to the same emotionally-resonant undercurrent.
It's your turn to tell 'em.
We are arriving at a critical time in protecting the wild places critical to fly-fishing and recreating outdoors. These places, chiefly public lands, and the people who care for them, are under attack.
There's a very deliberate attempt underway—a set of tactics I'd describe as "deregulate and degrade"—to deprive us of our valuable shared property. You've probably seen in the news evidence of these attempts.
Deregulating allows for unconstrained business activity, for instance extractive industries like mining, oil and gas production, and logging. Accelerated permitting means shortened environmental review windows. Hobbled regulators means a lack of enforcement when rules are ignored.
Degrading consists of reducing or removing the individuals and groups responsible for the massive amount of caretaking that happens on federally-owned public lands. For instance, fire suppression and protection. Or, cutting biologists who can identify and thwart threats to endangered birds on Kauai. Ultimately disrepair will be used as rationale to offload those lands, and transfer them out of public ownership. First, they'll go to states, for pennies on the dollar. Then, the states will claim inability to manage them, and sell them to private industry.
Make no mistake: This is the playbook.
Foundational aspects of conservation, those my generation has taken for granted since the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, are now being reappraised at every level of government. This will impact things that are held in trust for all of us. This land is your land, so they say.
There's an awful lot happening, but I'll continue to call attention to important issues here, primarily in a couple zones: public land access, national parks and wilderness areas, fish passage and habitat, and preventing despoiling and desecration through extractive industry. These are the things that, as an angler, I feel most qualified to speak out on. I'll try to keep everything in balance, with fishing info as a priority.
We all need to make a choice. What is most important to you? Figure it out. Find allies. And, stand up and tell 'em.
What to tell, and how to say it
This weekend I attended the annual Deschutes River Alliance auction and gala, where a couple hundred people who love the river stood up for it, and donated, to support the group standing up for them.
John Hazel, who, along with his wife Amy, owns the Deschutes Angler fly shop, has stood up for the river for over forty years.
Even without a mic, John's voice carries. His normal speaking voice is just shy of a roar. When he and Amy were honored with a lifetime achievement award, he put it simply, in a structure he's used over the years:
"First, I wanted to catch a fish."
"Then, I wanted to catch a big fish."
"Then, I wanted to make sure everyone else could catch a fish too."
It's a great formula:
- Say it simple.
- Say it loud.
- Say it again and again
Sometimes, it's best said with a great documentary. You can join the thousands of people who have watched The Last 100 Miles, the DRA's documentary about the state of the Deschutes, by watching it here:
More ways to save a river
Sometimes you don't even need a whole documentary. OARS, which has been in the river-saving business for decades now, released this primer in A Guide to Fighting for Wild Rivers. Here's the cheat-sheet:
- Be proactive
- Team up
- Connect decision makers to the river
- Build a movement
Step three cannot be understated. Arch-conservative, then-senator Barry Goldwater was instrumental in expanding the reach of Grand Canyon National Park and the greatest land grant to a Native American tribe in the carve-out of the park for the Havasupai in the 1970s, in part because he'd taken a river trip.
And, dang, this looks fun:
Models for persistence
Subscriber Andrew shared this vivid scene, of chum salmon making use of high water to cross a Washington highway. The entire salmonid lifecycle is a model of persistence. The latest to enter this set of trials are a clutch of salmon eggs planted in the upper Yuba river in California this October, which have successfully become fry and begun their outmigration to the mighty Pacific. Be brave, little salmon!
Sam Mauhay-Moore
Pressure on dams
If you've been up the Willamette beyond Eugene, you know how impounded it gets. Miles of highway run along two big, stagnant reservoirs, Dexter and Lookout Point Lake. In other ignoring-Congressional-orders news, a report on how those dams are impacting the salmon and steelhead population in the Willamette is way beyond "dog ate my homework" overdue.
Melanie Henshaw
In Memoriam: Dickson Despommier
Last, and certainly not least, we just lost someone who knew how to get the word out: Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist, infectious disease specialist, and relentless advocate for feeding the world through vertical farming.
What the NYT obit doesn't mention is Dickson—an old-school polymath—was also a dogged trout angler, and passionate ecologist who turned his education on the trout stream into a great resource. Here's how he describes The Living River, a collection of his insights around ecology for the trout angler:
Four of us formed an education group and developed a 13-week survey course on stream ecology for adult learners. We called the course “We All Live Downstream”. We offered it in multiple places over a six-year period during the 1970s. I never lost interest in the subject and began to take pictures each time I went out on the stream. Many of them are part of this website. I also began collecting published scientific studies on subjects related to various aspects of trout stream ecology. I have distilled this literature into the summaries for each section, serving as the foundation for The Living River website...It is my hope that the information contained within the body of The Living River website will inspire others to become involved in the stewardship of their home waters.
A few weeks ago I was referencing The Living River for the umpteenth time and something started nagging at me...I recognized this Despommier guy somehow...neurons fired ...hmm, vertical farming...an old pal's stepdad was into vertical farming...could it be him? I sent an email, and it could. It was. And Dickson had passed earlier that weekend.
Give the site a look. It's an invaluable resource for angling ecology, and a small part of the testament of a man who knew the power of an idea, and optimism.
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