Messing Around With Worley

The 2010 spring steelhead season is in full swing up on the Salmon River and East Idaho is experiencing the positive financial effects throughout the plain. Local sporting goods merchants are enjoying much needed sales revenue, the Idaho State Liquor Dispensary is approving its biggest restock order since the New Year’s Eve rush, Fish & Game is seeing an influx of funds from licenses and tags, and the emergency room in Salmon is looking forward to another season of drunken mishaps that make Johnny Knoxvilles’ Jackass antics pale by comparison. Anything short of a compound fractured femur is in the noise for Salmon ER professionals, they’ve seen it all.

Steelheading has been an East Idaho tradition since the first pioneer wife attempted to get her cabin-bound husband to start a winter improvement project and the first pioneer husband countered her request by pointing out that as the man it was his duty to provide food for the family. “Jedediah, shore would be nice if you could see your way clear to build me a chair so’s I don’t have to set on this here dirt floor”… “Laws no woman, I gotta catch me some fish to feed these young’uns”. And so the tradition is carried on today; on the home front, it doesn’t matter if the roof leaks or the pipes are frozen or the furnace is on the fritz. It’s February, the ice is off the river, and we’re all going fishing.

GUEST COMMENTARY

I read the guest column by Liew Jones, Republican representative for north central Montana. This is my common sense response.

This land belongs to millions of Americans, not to a small cadre of motorized users. The history of misuse and abuse of public lands by ATV and off-road vehicles is rampant and is exponentially increasing with development of bigger and bigger ATV’s and motorbikes. My guess is most of these motorized users have never even read the management plans for the Badger-Two Medicine or the Rocky Mountain Front. 

NATIONAL PARKS AS SAFE, IF NOT SAFER

As widely reported, an epic political victory for the gun lobby hit the ground on Monday, February 22. The National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) must now, in accordance with applicable state laws, allow visitors to carry guns into most national parks and wildlife refuges, including loaded firearms and concealed weapons with a proper permit.

For the first time in decades, anybody who can legally carry a firearm in a state can also carry it into national parks and wildlife refuges in that state, but not into most “federal facilities” such as visitor centers and administrative buildings, and federal law still prohibits the use of firearms in most national parks.

GUEST COMMENTARY

The current public wrangling about Senator Jon Tester’s jobs and wilderness legislation heralds the many opinions about land use and protection policies. Perhaps somewhat disguised at the moment, but in a very real way, this heated debate represents a celebration of the passion we Montanans hold for the land and waters.

To us the landscape is not an abstraction, a Kodachrome; for millions of others the land exists only as images on a flickering screen or colors on a canvas. Out here the land is real. We work, play, and live on it. The land’s sustenance and provisions have created within us a visceral regard for place--this place.

RMEF, NRA OPPOSE 1-161

UPDATED: 7 pm, February 25: I just received a press release from Safari Club International, also in opposition to I-161.

A proposed ballot measure in Montana to eliminate guaranteed big game licenses for commercial outfitters, I-161, just picked up some serious opposition.

Proponents of I-161 are currently gathering signatures, so it’s still uncertain whether it will actually be on the ballot this November 2. Nonetheless, in separate press releases, the Missoula-based Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) strongly opposed the ballot initiative. 

ONLY TWO STATES NOT INTERESTED

There’s no such thing as “too big to fail” at the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA).

Formed back on America’s Bicentennial in 1976, the Missoula-based nonprofit has long ago become the nation’s leader in providing advice, maps and detailed route information for long-distance cyclists, including the development of an extensive system of signature bicycle routes for both self-contained riders and those who like a hot shower and soft bed every night.

Now, energized by its past success and undaunted by dwindling government budgets or the sheer massiveness of its new project, ACA has started, in partnership with state transportation agencies, planning and coordinating the U.S. Bicycle Route System (USBRS). 

A short list (below) describing the Obama Administration’s short list of potential new national monuments was leaked to the media this week.  I had heard rumors that this was being considered as early as November when I had a private conversation with a top BLM administrator, so I was not surprised by the “announcement.”

At one time or another I have visited nearly all the proposed national monuments and each has its special values that make them worthy of protection. Let’s hope the Obama administration follows through on designation of these areas, and even adds a few of the runner up proposals like Bristol Bay, Alaska and Wyoming’s Red Desert.

The areas under consideration for new national monument status subject to public support and other considerations include the following lands, Owyhee Canyons, Montana Plains, Otero Mesa, San Rafael Swell, Northern Sonoran Desert, Cascades Siskiyou, Vermillion Basin, Lesser Prairie Chicken, Berrysessa-Snow Mountain, Heart of the Great Basin, Bodie Hills, Modoc Plateau, Cedar Mesa, and San Juan Islands. 

CAN ANYTHING MOVE SLOWER THAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

Lately, it seems, I’ve been doing a lot of bemoaning about our inept political system, but alas, sometimes it does work.

Back on November 5, I devoted my column to pushing the USDA to fund a new hunting access program called Open Fields that Congress passed as part of the 2008 Farm Bill.

FORMER MONTANA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION COUNCIL MEMBERS BOLT

UPDATED, 10 am, 2-18-10: After seeing this article, two more former MWA council members, Susan Colvin and Dan Heinz (past vice-president) have joined the list and signed the letter opposing Tester’s bill, bringing the total to 18.

Anybody who has followed the torturous, eight-month path of Senator Jon Tester’s (D-MT) Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, S. 1470, already knows the bill has caused a split among conservationists. But that split just got a lot more more serious.

Perspective gained on a missed Olympic Games

Since the morning of January 27th I have felt an immense amount of disappointment.  As many of you may know I recently became an alternate for the speed events at the Olympics in Vancouver. I have never in my life felt so crushed and defeated. For an entire week I dreaded coming home to Big Sky feeling like I let down the community that has stuck with me through injuries, success and failure.

I thought tirelessly about what I would say to my fellow Montanans, my family and my friends. How would they react to my failure? I sat in my room for four days feeling sorry for myself, sleeping, eating and crying. I felt too ashamed to show my face in public. It’s a hard bit of information to swallow; however, I tell you this because honestly it is what I did and how I felt. I’ve got nothing to hide. I felt distraught and hopeless. I wanted nothing to do with the sport that has always been my passion. As you can clearly see, I had zero perspective on the situation.