Backcasts archive: Through July 11, 2008
By Brett PaulyBlog calendar: July 11 | July 9 | July 8 | July 7
For helping bears in trouble, one man's a hero and one man's jailed
When bears make Backcasts, it's usually for mauling someone or an issue revolving around hunting or antis.
So it's the rare bear that makes our blog because it received help from a human. But such is the case – two recent cases, actually – as a couple of fine fellows have come to the rescue of our bruin friends (but with very disparate results for the good Samaritans, as you'll read).
A Florida biologist is being hailed as a hero for saving a 375-pound male black bear from drowning in the Gulf of Mexico.
Adam Warwick of the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was on hand near Alligator Point, Fla., when a bear thought to have been searching for food in a nearby neighborhood was shot with a tranquilizer dart, CBS and the Associated Press reports.
Imagine Warwick's surprise when instead of going down on terra firma, the blackie made off for the Panhandle's shallows, where it later became incapacitated from the drugs.
Surprise quickly turned to selflessness, as Warwick swam 25 yards offshore, grabbed the bear from behind its shoulder and neck and floated the buoyant beast to shore, according to the news agencies and a photo of the rescue.
Once safely on land again, the bear was trucked to Osceola National Forest for relocation.
Apart from cuts to his shoeless feet and a scratch on his foot from the bear, Warwick was otherwise uninjured in the feet, er, feat, which one witness likened to a lifeguard aiding a tired swimmer.
Except that this tired swimmer stood 6½-feet tall on its hind legs and would just as soon have eaten Warwick – and at one point appeared as if it would lunge at Warwick and climb on him, the biologist said, as if to keep from drowning.
Hats off to Adam Warwick for what is truly a compelling and intricate story with a happy ending.
Things turned out very differently on the other side of the world, where a member of the indigenous tribes that live in the forests of eastern India was jailed for bringing home an orphaned sloth bear and giving the hapless creature to his 6-year-old daughter as a way to help her cope with the death of her mother, the Associated Press reports from New Delhi.
If convicted for violating wildlife laws that forbid keeping wild animals, Ram Singh Munda, 35, a laborer from the village of Gahatagaon, faces up to three years in prison.
Now this is the epitome of a sad story:
Man finds motherless cub while gathering firewood last year. Man saves bear. Man gives bear to grieving daughter. Bear becomes cherished member of the family as it deals with the death of the man's wife. Local media report on bear and family. Man arrested.
Worse, as a result of the arrest, Munda's daughter was shipped off to state-run boarding school, the AP reports. And the bear – who was named Rani and, in the photo we're looking at, appears quite content riding on the back of a bike and hanging on to Munda – was sent to a zoo, where it refused to eat.
"They have sent me to jail. How will my daughter survive?" the AP quotes Munda as stating.
Sad, sad situation, indeed.
Curiously, animal-rights activists have taken up Munda's cause. One would think these folks would instead condemn the man for his bear-havior; bully for them for adjusting their convictions and standing up for Munda.
As the AP reports, "We strongly condemn the manner in which the forest department officials arrested the poor and illiterate man, who was not aware of the government's rules and regulations," said Jiban Ballav Das of People for Animals in India's Orissa state.
Here's to hoping man and daughter are reunited, with or without their bear.
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Even some of our most pristine national parks suffer from noise pollution
If you're planning a summer tour of national parks and looking forward to a little peace and quiet, skip the Everglades, cross Mount Rushmore off the list and forget about the Grand Canyon. They're all among the noisiest of our signature parks, according to the Associated Press.
Rushmore is flush with motorcycle traffic. The Everglades reverberate with revving boat engines. And the Grand Canyon is abuzz with helicopter sounds; it's no wonder, what with 86,000 commercial air tours whirring over that big hole in the ground each year.
"In many of the parks today, you can't get away from the noise," said Britt Mace, an associate professor of psychology at Southern Utah University, who has spent years studying the interaction between sounds and people in national parks, the AP reports.
"The engine sounds seem to be bothering people more than anything else."
The National Park Service even has a "natural sounds" office. The Fort Collins, Colo.-based facility is dedicated to preserving what are dubbed as "soundscapes" – chirping birds, bugling elk, ribbiting frogs, sputtering geysers and the sound of silence, all just as much a part of the park experience (and as worthy of saving, according to the NPS) as anything else.
Worse, noise from man-made machinery impacts the very wildlife these parks protect, psychologist Paul Bell, who works with the NPS sounds program, tells the AP. This includes amplified (get it?) stress levels, the muting of a predator's approach and even interruptions of bats' echolocation.
But the Park Service doesn't want to give the impression all noise is bad. Far from it. Apart from natural sounds (think waterfalls), booming battlefield artillery is appropriate and expected at some parks.
So, getting back to our original point about summer vacation plans, consider road-tripping to these national parks, deemed by the NPS among its quietest:
• Great Basin in Nevada
• Isle Royale in the middle of Lake Superior
• North Cascades in Washington state (yeah, North Cascades!)
• Big Hole National Battlefield in Montana
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Looking to impress students with new coursework? Enroll in Physh Ed
Here's a summer school program sportsmen can wholeheartedly get behind: Teaching teachers to teach their pupils how to fish.
Wow, does it get any better than that? Really?
Well, yes, it does: Along with lessons in casting and catching, a big chunk of time is dedicated to encouraging young people to think about angling conservation and ethics.
Who knows, maybe there are detractors? But considering grants for the teachers already are in place, it's a tantalizing opportunity that we'll bet adds a lot of fun to the learning process during the regular school year.
The summer program for educators is called Physh Ed and is being held this week in Traverse City, Mich., under the direction of the Future Fisherman Foundation – the angling education arm of the American Sportfishing Association.
Physh Ed is a grants program that provides teachers in schools across the nation with the funds and the training that will enable them to design and deliver fishing-related programming as part of their regular curriculum, the American Sportfishing Association states in a release.
"It is a win-win for everyone," said Pete Della Ratta, a 2003 Physh Ed grant recipient and guest instructor.
You could see that quote coming like sightfishing.
But the obvious can be overstated when appropriate, and this program, at least from the outside looking in, appears to have little downside.
Grants of up to $2,500 apiece have been doled out to teachers from 35 states attending this week's training at Northwestern Michigan College, where participants take workshops in flyfishing and spincasting instructions, conservation education and lesson planning.
The teaching teachers part also includes training on how to develop resources and build grassroots partnerships, according to the American Sportfishing Association, as well as techniques to evaluate the program's progress once it is established at the teacher's home school.
"I loved to fish and thought it was a great idea to get my students excited about science," Della Ratta said. "Our attendance improves, our behaviors are better and our students have become very aware of aquatic conservation issues."
It goes almost without saying (but we'll say it anyhow) that such a program gets students interested in wetting a line and helps groups such as the American Sportfishing Association help themselves – in terms of recruiting anglers and perhaps future members.
But there's more, according to Future Fisherman Foundation executive director Anne Danielski.
"Fishing can help children make the connection between the science text book and the real world," she said.
We like that, Anne. We like that a lot. In fact, in this case we like that "connection" (read: conservation) even more than the chance for a student to connect line's end with a trout's maw.
Whichever you feel holds more importance – curriculum or creek – it seems Physh Ed is something that will make an indelible impression on students, be they future anglers or not.
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Editor's note: My Back Pages recalls previous columns penned by the author.
My Back Pages: Border bass
Culture, history paired with fishing in the heartland and the Missouri River
SPRINGFIELD, S.D. — "There oughta be bass in here, fellers."
They were designed to be comforting words under less than ideal conditions, when the fish weren't biting and the sun was warming the humid air to 90 degrees and the boundary waters of Lewis and Clark Lake to 70 degrees.
Area angler Ron Livingston repeated the phrase several times as he maneuvered his boat through the cattails along this wide spot in the Missouri River that separates South Dakota and Nebraska.
The words did provide some solace in the long stretches between the four bass I hooked on the day using Texas-rigged plastic salamanders and hand-painted lime-green spinnerbaits that Livingston sells as a hobby for $1.50 apiece.
And they were prophetic when I landed my first-ever smallmouth bass – a bronze, 2-pound beauty that somersaulted through the air and didn't know when to stop fighting, even when I lipped it into the boat for release.
But highs and lows aside, this was more than a fishing trip. It was a learning experience about one of the nation's largest waterways and the folks who call its banks home.
Livingston and the Missouri River he fishes almost daily are gentle giants.
Carrying 300 pounds on a 6-foot-3 frame, with coveralls, a rolled-up, beat-up, sweated-up work shirt, chapped hide and a red neck, the 43-year-old bass angler is an imposing sight.
"Around here they seem to grow big fellows," said the third in our party, Ocean, N.J., attorney Bill Feinberg, after getting a good look at our navigator.
"Yeah, and we all got little boats," answered Livingston, a strong-armed road-grader for Bonhomme County.
But his mild demeanor and friendly manner befit the good-natured country attitude that prevails in the nation's interior.
The river also is large and tame. Dammed for flood control and hydroelectricity, the mighty Missouri is lined with reservoirs, including Lewis and Clark Lake, along which is found Livingston's home town of Springfield, here in southeast South Dakota.
Its upper stretches hardly resemble a lake or a river, however. A marshy delta has formed from the deposition of upstream sediments, causing a hodgepodge of islands, flats and sandbars cut by channels, shoots and backwater that are continually rearranged by the Missouri's varying current.
Livingston said he zigzags to his fishing holes "just like a mouse running through a maze." No need to worry about keeping a secret spot secret; even maps wouldn't help decipher this mess. First you would have to safely navigate the shallows that often are strewn with submerged stumps and other deadheads in a foot of water.
Only foolish anglers make this venture without spare propellers for their outboard engine and trolling motor.
"It's really getting to be a problem," Livingston said of the silt that is working its way down the lake. "It's hell on motors around here."
Oak-, elm- and ash-lined Lewis and Clark Lake is a creation of Gavins Point Dam, which was hailed as a "100-year dam" when completed in 1956.
"I don't think they gave much thought about what would happen after that," Livingston said.
"Once you start fiddling around with nature, it's never-ending," Feinberg observed.
Indeed, there are several theories and prospects drifting around South Dakota to extend the life of the reservoir, including routing sediments around it via pipelines. Yet the wide-ranging recommendations are expensive and have few time lines.
"It's a really difficult situation to solve," said Herb Bollig, manager of Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in nearby Yankton, S.D.
Because it has characteristics of a river and a lake, the Lewis and Clark impoundment attracts a diversity of fish – from smallmouth bass, catfish, sturgeon, sauger and the prehistoric-looking paddlefish that prefer running water to largemouth bass, walleye, Northern pike and a variety of panfish that love standing water.
"It's a real, real diverse type of situation, and it has a lot to do with water yield," said Gerald Wickstrom, a fishery biologist with the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department in Chamberlain.
"Like a fish aquarium almost, ain't it?" Livingston said.
To target its bass, one must be prolific at fishing fast water for smallmouths and slower flows for largemouths. Even then, there are no guarantees.
"There is so much habitat that it's often tough to find them," Wickstrom said.
Such was the case on this day, when only eight bass were boated by three fishermen. Other days it can be explosive.
"All these here reeds and stuff hold a lot of bass," Springfield's Richard Leasure said as we motored past his boat. "Usually we get a lot of luck, 40-, 50-, 60-bass days, you betcha."
"It does happen, believe me, boys," echoed Livingston, who got the bug to craft his own tackle while helping his granddad catch Missouri River catfish for commercial table fare using handmade willow hoop nets.
Last winter Livingston made 22,000 leadhead walleye jigs and painted 44,000 eyes in his 12-by-18 garage. Dotted with several impressive mounts, including an 18¼-pound Northern, the building is detached from the house on a half-block of property he purchased 15 years ago for $3,800. Now the place is worth a whopping $38,000 with the improvements he's made.
He's seen the river change dramatically from the days when his great-grandfather raised corn where waters now flow.
"The fishing's better than ever, now," Livingston said, offering as evidence the 7¼-pound largemouth he hooked a few weeks back.
But his comment came with more than a little trepidation over the future of his cherished Lewis and Clark Lake.
So, yeah, I did believe there was better fishing. But on this fine day in the heartland, there were more important matters than catching bass.
This article originally appeared July 1, 1999, in the Los Angeles Daily News
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.
