fly fishing, conservation and politics.
By Tom Sadler
Trout Unlimited applauds Federal Judge’s decision to prevent West Virginia mountaintop removal mining companies from filling valleys with mining waste. Here is TU’s Press Release.
This destructive practice has go on for far to long. Finally some much needed scrutiny and review is taking place.
By Tom Sadler
Two weeks ago, I had a chance to spend some time at the Western Virginia Sports Show. Mark Hanger, the producer and owner of the show impressed me with his commitment to conservation and getting families interested in the great outdoors.
When I caught up with Hanger at the show I asked him how the attendance was. He told me it was better than they expected given the economy, then he made an interesting observation.
“The only thing we can point to is they want to be happy for a while, they don’t want to hear any bad news. They want to be enlightened, entertained and come out and spend some time with their family at a reasonable cost and have some good entertainment,” he said.
In his show brochure Hanger said “on your next trip, take a young person with you and teach them to love, respect and enjoy God’s great outdoors.”
I asked him about getting kids into the outdoors.
“There is no doubt about it that that is the most important because it is our future. If we don’t get children in the outdoors, then our sports are going to diminish and be gone forever,” he said.
Hanger pointed out a number of educational elements at the show including the Bucks, Bows and Does, Outdoor Adventure archery education trailer and the show’s wild game display.
A great example of getting kids engaged in the outdoors was the Orange County High School Anglers Club. They are a 4-H and Junior B.A.S.S. Federation Nation club.
The club is made up of students ages 11 to 19 who love to bass fish competitively.
I spoke with Becky Gore, the club’s advisor. Gore is a teacher and a former coach. She is the power house behind the club and a joy to talk with. If every school in the Valley can find a Becky Gore, then fishing will have a very bright future.
Gore told me how she got the club started.
“In 1999, about ten years after my husband had died, I had just gotten my kids in college. I decided I wanted to start fishing again, so I went to the high school principal and said I would like to start a fishing club and she said ‘sure, go for it,’ ” Gore said. “We have three entities, we were first 4-H and the high school together, and then the B.A.S.S. Federation found out about me and they were trying to implement a youth program in Virginia. They called me up and asked me if would I be interested. I asked what they could do for my kids. They said they could advance to a world level. I said ‘Sure, let’s do it.’ Plus, they mentioned the word scholarship and I jumped on it.”
Gore told me what other high schools could do to get do to get the program started. She ticked these items.
“You’ve got to have someone who loves kids and loves being with kids and is willing to do it without getting compensated,” she said. “You’ve got to have some kids that are interested. Once those kids approach that principal and say ‘We want a bass club,’ then that principal may go out or tell those kids, ‘Well, you find a sponsor and then we will do it.’ ”
Gore told me the kids can receive their high school letter if they meet the criteria. She has developed that criteria and told me that all another coach or teacher needs to do is contact her and she would be happy to share it with them.
“And that is the other cool thing about this, it’s parents and kids working together,” she said. “And the other thing I have tried to do is give the kids an opportunity to be with their parents. Be with their dads or moms out on the water on a Saturday or Sunday.”
Gore credits the parents, students and her volunteers for making the program a success. She considers them all family.
Nothing is more important for the future of hunting and fishing than helping the next generation learn about the sports we love. Let’s all do a little more where we can.
By Tom Sadler
Valley hunters, anglers and outdoor recreationists of all forms need to take some time and pay attention to the George Washington National Forest’s Land and Resource Management Plan revision process. As the schedule now stands, the draft plan may be ready in late spring 2009.
According to their Web site, “The purpose of this land management plan is to provide broad guidance and information for project and activity decision making needed to manage the George Washington National Forest [GW].”
The forest’s planning staff has been holding public workshops on various aspects of the plan revisions since early 2007. Two more workshops are coming up with the subject: Forest Plan Components, fitting the workshops and other information together toward a Draft Plan.
There is a workshop today from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Rockbridge Co. High School in Lexington and another on Feb. 5 from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Peter Muhlenberg Middle School in Woodstock.
The U.S. Forest Service held seven public meetings last March to introduce people to the Forest Plan revision process. In July, five meetings were held to continue the discussions on changes needed and what to concentrate on in the Forest Plan revision process.
This fall workshops were held to discuss three different subjects, Vegetation Management, Road and Trail Access and Wilderness, Roadless and Potential Wilderness Areas.
These workshops are the most important ones for recreational users. The challenges surrounding access, timber harvesting, wilderness designations and off road vehicle use can really get people’s blood boiling.
Of special interest is the amount of Potential Wilderness Area and the impact that could have on hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation.
Let me be clear from the outset. Because land is included in a Potential Wilderness Area doesn’t change the way it is managed today. Only Congress has the authority to designate wilderness.
Today, 37 areas totaling 370,000 acres are identified as Potential Wilderness Areas in the George Washington National Forest. An additional 42,000 acres are designated Wilderness Area and 7,700 acres are National Scenic Areas. That represents just over 40 percent of the forest.
Don’t get me wrong Wilderness Areas are great. They provide a number of very important ecological and recreational benefits. They are some of my favorite places to fish and hunt.
Having more in the George Washington National Forest is a good idea. Where they are is going to be the challenge.
Most types of recreational uses are allowed in Wilderness Areas except those involving motorized equipment.
Wilderness Areas by federal law have significant restrictions, however. Timber harvesting, road building, clearing and waterhole development, and other wildlife management techniques cannot be performed in Wilderness Areas.
These activities, if done correctly, are important tools for enhancing recreational activities. If the land base available for wildlife habitat management is significantly reduced then hunting could suffer.
Over the years, the U.S. Forest Service, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries along with the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Ruffed Grouse Society have invested manpower and money developing and maintaining wildlife habitats.
Some of the lands identified for Potential Wilderness Area include many existing wildlife habitat developments, including clearings and waterholes. These wildlife clearings provide much-needed habitat. Designating all these areas as Wilderness could eliminate these clearings as natural succession returns them over time to a forested state.
Much of this area is popular with wildlife recreational users who depend on the George Washington National Forest for access to wildlife populations. Fishing for native Brook Trout takes place in some of these areas. Bear, deer, turkey, ruffed grouse, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel and other species are hunted in these areas. The wildlife habitat value of these lands has been enhanced by previous timber harvesting and wildlife habitat work.
So there needs to be a balance.
There is a lot of good information on the George Washington National Forest Plan Revision Web site at http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/gwj/forestplan/revision/index.shtml.
There you will find documents, schedules and how to make your views known.
I won’t kid you. This can be hard stuff to wade through. It takes time and effort to read all the information and comments. But our ability to enjoy our public lands requires engagement on our part.
Take some time to offer your thoughts to the Forest Service. Your ideas are just as important and count as much as the next guy’s, but only if you share them.
On a more personal note, thank you for the kind words about my friends Jim Range and Jean Ince. They were warmly appreciated.
Jim’s memorial service took place on Tuesday January 27, along the banks of the Potomac River at Fletchers Cove in Washington. More than 200 of his friends and colleagues joined with his family in celebrating his life and many accomplishments.
Mixed in with the copious tears were many moments of hearty laughter as those in attendance responded to tales and reflections of Range. His life was magic for all us and in celebrating his life we relived that magic.
You can go to JimRange.com to capture a glimpse of his remarkable life. The Web site, created to honor and memorialize his life, has a wonderful collection of stories, pictures and tributes to Range.
By Tom Sadler
There is a wonderful Web site in memory of Jim Range. It has pages and pages of tributes, stories and pictures about this remarkable, irrepressible, and irreplaceable human being.
By Tom Sadler
My tribute in this morning’s News Virginian:
There are some columns one would prefer never to write. This is one of them.
Please indulge me as I reflect on two people who are no longer with us. Not to mourn their loss so much as to celebrate their lives.
On Tuesday morning one of my very closest friends lost his battle with cancer.
He was like a brother to me. The best man in my wedding, a hunting and fishing partner of many years and the voice on the other end of the phone keeping me strong when trouble came. And oh, the whiskey we drank.
Many of you have never heard of James D. Range. But all of you have been touched by his work. He was a conservation hero. Embodying a conservation ethic on the scale of Roosevelt, Leopold, Muir and Pinchot.
One of my most cherished memories, from many years ago, is standing with him in my dining room one night. We got choked up looking out at the fields and woods where I lived.
He told me that not a lot of folks were willing to protect the things he, I and many of you love so much like fish, wildlife and the wild things of this earth. He said, “Tommy we have to protect the wild things. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done.”
Tears streamed down our faces. Big men do cry.
Range was a modern architect of natural resource conservation. A skilled bipartisan policy and political genius with an extraordinary network of friends and contacts.
Range had wonderful oratorical gifts, a way of always speaking from his heart, sometimes in language not fit for a family newspaper. You may not have liked what he said but you surely knew what he thought.
He was the personification of “if they don’t see the light, we can surely make them feel the heat.”
Range’s fingerprints are all over the nation’s conservation laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. His championing of conservation tax incentives earned him a profile in Time magazine.
He ably chaired the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s Board of Directors pouring his enormous energy into its resurrection.
He served with distinction and candor on the Board’s of Trout Unlimited, the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, the American Sportfishing Association, Ducks Unlimited, the American Bird Conservancy, the Pacific Forest Trust, the Valles Caldera Trust and the Yellowstone Park Foundation.
Range was an original board member of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, helping to chart the outstanding course it is on today. He also held presidential appointments to the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin and the Sportfishing and Boating Partnership Council.
In 2003, Range received the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Great Blue Heron Award, the highest honor given to an individual at the national level by the Department.
He was also awarded the 2003 Outdoor Life Magazine Conservationist of the Year Award and the Norville Prosser Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sportfishing Association.
Range’s greatest love was the outdoors. He fished and hunted all over the world. I suspect he was happiest however, at his place on the Missouri River near Craig, Mont.
Flyway Ranch was his sanctuary. A sanctuary, which, in typical Range fashion, he shared with friends and colleagues so they too could enjoy a respite from challenges both personal and professional.
Beside his multitude of friends and admirers, Range is survived by his father, Dr. James Range of Johnson City, Tenn., brothers John Neel, Harry and Peter, twin daughters Allison and Kimberly, and loyal bird dogs Plague, Tench and Sky.
Range may be gone but we will be telling stories about him for the rest of our lives.
The Valley lost another friend recently as well. She was one of Range’s favorite people and the mother of his girlfriend Anni.
Jean Marion Gregory Ince, died on Jan. 12 at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville. She and her husband Eugene St. Clair Ince, Jr. and her beloved golden retriever “Meg” were residents of Madison.
Like Range, Jean Ince was a giver. She and Meg, a certified therapy dog, worked with patients at the Kluge Children’s Rehabilitation Center in Charlottesville and at the Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville.
Anni told me her mom, like Range, loved the outdoors and animals, particularly horses and dogs. She said that love was passed on to her children and grandchildren as well.
Jean and Bud enjoyed a special relationship. They wrote about it in the December 1978 issue of GOURMET Magazine. An Evening at the Waldorf chronicles the evening of their engagement.
It is a wonderfully engaging story of a young couple, a special hotel, and a time when doing for others was a common practice.
I hope you will take a moment to read it. It is a gift that will make any day a better one.
You can find a copy of An Evening at the Waldorf at http://www.usna.org/family/waldorf.html.
Jim Range and Jean Ince have made our world a better place. Their friends and families miss them but their memories will warm our hearts forever.
NOTE: A website, JimRange.com has been created in his honor. You can learn more about Jim and see pictures and stories from his friends.