Backcasts archive: Through Feb. 29, 2008
By Brett PaulyBlog calendar: Feb. 28 | Feb. 27 | Feb. 26 | Feb. 23
Anglers' alert: Even backcountry trout aren't immune to pollution's long arm
You ever read a headline and respond, "Oh, great"? Audibly? On the bus? And then have strangers look at you? Then look at you again?
Happened to me yesterday morning on the 7:36 into the Emerald City.
The words that prompted my oh-great moment: "'Pristine' parks tainted by pollution."
I can't really explain why those five words caught me off-guard. I should have seen it coming. But it was really the awful alliteration of pristine-parks-pollution that threw me. Even kids who play the Sesame Street word game "One of These Things is Not Like the Other Things" could pluck the offending term from that grouping.
I couldn't even kill the messenger. The Seattle Times was merely reporting the news – that a comprehensive study proves pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants have found their evil way to even the most remote corners of our national parks.
Here in the Evergreen State, according to the newspaper, the national parks of the Olympics, Mount Rainier and North Cascades contain pesticides, mercury and man-made industrial chemicals.
The six-year federal study released this week was coordinated by the National Park Service, and, the Associated Press reports from Billings, Mont., the findings revealed that some of the Earth's most pristine wilderness is still within reach of the toxic byproducts of the industrial age.
Ouch. So, yeah, those trout you caught in the backcountry of Rocky Mountain National Park and Glacier National Park and the farthest stretches of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks could well have been impacted by chemical pollution.
You probably weren't aware of it, but the male fish you landed could have had female ovary tissue in their testes. Fortunately, however, you likely aren't worse for wear; the National Park Service maintains there is minimal risk of anglers getting sick from eating contaminated fish, the Times reports …
Even if you ate brook trout that tested out at Olympic and Mount Rainier national parks to contain mercury at levels above the Environmental Protection Agency threshold. Even if you ate those same brook trout every day, for your entire life, you might have a one-in-100,000 chance of getting cancer from them.
But the bottom line is, you might – might enough that national parks are considering issuing warnings to anglers, and that sucks.
Who would have thunk Denali National Park in our Last Frontier could ever be touched by such pollutants?
"Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study, the AP reports.
Yep, depressing as it is, evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments is outlined in the $6 million study known as the Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project. Much of this pollution originates regionally on farms and in factories and from more-distant sources such as power plants, according to the Times.
Now we're the messenger, so don't kill Backcasts. Just be aware of the problem … and we'd like to suggest this is perhaps a better time than ever to practice catch and release!
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Imagine this senate-session photo, including the spears and animal skins
If you've ever had the occasion to call your local politicos ancient fossils, you'll get a kick out of this:
The senate of Ireland is going to trade one old relic of a chamber in need of repair with another dusty gathering place – a natural history museum filled with prehistoric woolly mammoths and spotted hyenas … and other dinosaurs who haven't made law since the Potato Famine.
We made up that last part, and of course we shouldn't make light of famine or potatoes. But passing legislation with pachyderms of the Pliocene period peering over their shoulders is a burden these senators will have to, er, well, shoulder.
We'd love to see the team photo from this session, including the spears and animal skins.
Indeed, the Leinster House, a Georgian mansion built in the 1740s and used by Ireland's houses of parliament since the 1920s, is undergoing a critical facelift and thus the 60-seat upper chamber is to be temporarily housed next door at the museum, Reuters reports from Dublin.
By the sounds of things, however, the senators actually are trading one problem for another.
According to the museum's director, the 150-year-old repository is itself in need of upgrades, could face additional damages with this new traffic and is generally ill-prepared for such guests, no matter how distinguished or their length of stay. Just last year a staircase in the museum collapsed and injured 11 people, according to Reuters.
What's more, some sens maintain it's the lower house of parliament that needs attention most.
"It's more like the Coliseum, it's more like a bear pit," Senator Joe O'Toole told Irish national radio, Reuters reports.
Welcome to the jungle, senator.
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How unusual, sports pros who go out of their way to talk to the press
God bless crazy America, writes Keith Elliott for the Web site of the British newspaper The Independent.
Elliott had just wrapped up his column, "Fishing Lines," on his findings covering this weekend's Bassmaster Classic from Greenville, S.C.
From the sounds of it, we weren't nearly crazy enough.
How refreshing!
That the 50 anglers competing in fishing's World Cup, as the UK writer dubbed the tournament, were so freely accessible to the media pretty much blew up the litmus test for athlete interviews right from the get-go.
Those monosyllabic Premier League greedmongers (and their managers, and their wives) could learn a lot from the Classic anglers and their entourages, Elliott leads the piece.
Translation: England's footballers (read: professional soccer players) have nothing on our pro bass fishermen when it comes to carrying themselves in front of the media … and everywhere else, it sounds like.
The writer seemed genuinely amazed the Classic competitors didn't retreat to swank hotel rooms or lock themselves into their homes on wheels. These guys gladly took time from their planning sessions on how best to target black bass on Lake Hartwell to chat up their quarry and the competition.
There were no pregame excuses lobbed about weather or drought.
As Elliott stated, I can't remember the last footballer I interviewed who said, "If there's anything else I can help you with, here's my mobile and home number. Thank you for your time," as did at least six of my interviewees.
And that the term WAGs (translation: the British tabloid press' label for wives and girlfriends of the England national football – remember, soccer – team) was even delivered at all in the column is quite humorous.
Indeed, there is no Victoria Beckham to any David Beckham in this tight-knit group of "athletes." Just the good, ol' gals of the good, ol' boys who arrive, many with families in tow, to cheer on their fellas in an honest pursuit of fish and income, and (we get the impression, anyhow) less likely fame and fortune.
God bless crazy Britain for sending Keith Elliott across the pond to provide a decidedly English look at our sport of sports. Hurrah!
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Antis spoil the party as feds prepare to pull endangered label off gray wolf
After 34 years and $27 million in federal recovery funding, the gray wolf is about to be booted off the endangered species list, the Associated Press reports out of Billings, Mont.
It's a sweet payoff to an extensive effort to replenish the numbers of the wild canine in the West from near extermination in the 1930s, when extensive poisoning of the beasts was mandated by a government eradication program.
Thanks to a 13-year restoration program, some 1,500 wolves now are padding the backcountry of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
"Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains are thriving and no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act," said Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett, according to the AP. "The wolf's recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains is a conservation success story."
Yes, sweet success.
But leave it to the antis to ruin a good thing.
Attorneys for Earthjustice, described by its Web site as a public interest law firm, are drawing up plans to sue over the delisting, apparently angered that some states are drawing up their own plans to thin the livestock-preying packs through hunting.
"The enduring hostility to wolves still exists," said Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold, who is preparing the lawsuit, according to the AP. "We're going to have hundreds of wolves killed under state management. It's a sad day for our wolves."
Guess we just can't win with the antis.
The bummer is, antis, you can't have it both ways.
You want the wolf's population to recover, and it has. But you don't want the number of wolves to be so entirely healthy that states begin managing them?
Tough!
That the population of wolves in the Lower 48 is so healthy we can legally hunt them is something we should rejoice in. That's the ultimate standard that completes a success story.
Nevermind, antis, that ranchers have complained for years they have taken livestock hits at the paws and maws of wolves.
Nevermind, antis, that despite more than 700 legal kills of problem wolves and a like number of poaching kills since the late 1980s the overall population has continued to grow, the AP reports, at a rate of 24 percent a year.
Nevermind, antis, that the wolf's Western territory has increased from just 200 square miles to an estimated 113,000 square miles over the last two decades.
Yep, permitted hunting of wolves is coming, as early as this fall in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Deal with it, antis.
About the author: Brett Pauly spent nearly six years editing and publishing ESPNOutdoors.com before moving on to produce the ESPN.com Sports Travel site. He is a national award-winning writer and editor with 14 years of experience in the newspaper trade, including stints at the Los Angeles Daily News and Seattle Times. The Evergreen State is where he now makes his home. Click here to email him.
