February/March 2017 Archives - Outdoor Writers Association of America

Welcome to OWAA

OWAA Developer — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:30:29 +0000

Will Cooper was born and raised near the sandy beaches of Southern California. At a young age he developed a passion for exploration — from hiking into storm tunnels as a child to running 100-mile mountain races around the world. Cooper earned his bachelor’s degree from American University’s School of International Service. He is the CEO of a national real estate company and serves as board member for several trade organizations dealing with legislation and federal policy affecting the environment. An avid runner and writer, he has completed over 30 ultra-marathons, including the Grand Slam of ultra-running — four 100-mile races over the course of one summer. He narrates his journey as an ultra-runner and outdoorsman in his unabashed running blog, willrunlonger.com. Cooper’s work has been published in print and digital media and includes inspirational articles, interviews with best-selling authors and his candid opinion on all things running and beyond.
Keith Crowley is a full-time outdoor writer and photographer based in western Wisconsin. He travels extensively each year and you’re as likely to find him on an Alaskan salmon stream as you are a mountainside in Wyoming, or in a mangrove swamp in Florida. You can find his work in Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Sporting Classics, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited magazine, Bugle, Petersen’s Hunting, American Hunter, Defenders of Wildlife magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Newsweek, the London Times, Paris Match, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Daily Register and many other national and international publications. He has authored two books: the award-winning “Gordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duck Hunter” and “Wildlife in the Badlands.” His work is also in several anthologies, including “A Passion for Grouse.” His primary website is http://www.lodgetrail.com.
Joel M. Herrling is a freelance writer and lifelong outdoorsman, from upstate New York. He got his start writing about college lacrosse for a school paper in 2002. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, he went into sportswriting at a local newspaper. Recently, he rediscovered his passion for writing and has been focusing on the outdoors and writing ever since. His articles have appeared in North American Whitetail, American Waterfowler and other magazines. He also enjoys composing poetry about waterfowl hunting. When he isn’t writing or working, he is teaching his young children about the importance of agriculture and respect for the outdoors. Herrling is completing his debut novel, which he hopes to have published in 2017.
Bruce Ingram of Troutville, Virginia, has been an outdoor writer and photographer since 1983. Ingram regularly writes for Turkey Country, Quality Whitetails, Whitetail Times, Virginia Wildlife, Game and Fish publications, Wildlife in North Carolina and other publications. Ingram and his wife Elaine also have a cooking column, celebrating venison, for Whitetail Times. Besides hunting and fishing stories, Ingram often writes about conservation, wildlife habitat and destinations. Ingram has written seven books, including four on floating and fishing such rivers as the James, New, Shenandoah, Rappahannock and Potomac, as well as a how-to book on fly and spin fishing for river smallmouths, and his latest book, co-written with his wife, “Living the Locavore Lifestyle.” His seventh book, “Ninth Grade Blues,” is young adult story that will debut in September. Ingram is also a high school English teacher. For more information, https://sites.google.com/site/bruceingramoutdoors.
Mark Lassagne, from San Ramon, California, is a popular professional bass angler, former United States Marine, outdoor writer, guide, promoter and top competitor. He is also the editor-in-chief of Bass Angler Magazine. Throughout his career as an angler, he’s qualified for numerous regional and national events and won several. Lassagne has published articles on websites and in numerous magazines, including Game & Fish magazines, BassWestUSA, Bassin’, American Bass Angler magazine, FLW Outdoors, Rabid Angler, Fish Sniffer, Field & Stream, Western Bass, Tackle Tour and others.
Lukas Leaf is an avid, passionate outdoorsman and chef born and raised in Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2005 with a bachelor’s of science in graphic design. Leaf was formerly executive chef at Al Vento restaurant in south Minneapolis and is now the chef for Modern Carnivore and a board member of the Minnesota Chapter for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. His father first introduced him to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness when Leaf was 13. Since that first trip he has had the privilege to introduce many people to the beauty of the Boundary Waters through numerous camping and fishing trips. He spends his free time fishing, foraging, hunting, camping and cooking his way through the great Minnesota outdoors. Leaf now works as the sporting outreach coordinator for Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters and has appeared in its two films, “Fish Out of Water” and “Flush in the Wild.”
Mark Neuzil is a professor of communication and journalism at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including “Canoes: A Natural History in North America” and a frequent writer and speaker on environmental themes. He has worked as a reporter for the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Associated Press and several daily newspapers. A former summer state park ranger and licensed U.S. Forest Service guide, he has reported from across the globe, including Cuba, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Costa Rica. He lives in St. Paul.
Omelets and ducks — those were the two staples every winter for Garrett Turner growing up in Osceola, Missouri. His father taught him the importance of hunting waterfowl, and folded eggs. That passion grew and branched out to all things outdoors. Turner now resides in Roanoke, Virginia where he is an anchor and reporter for WDBJ-TV. His “work” takes him into the Appalachian Mountains covering hunting, fishing and hiking. Before coming to Virginia, he was in Alaska for three years, a wild place where, among other things, Turner worked on the Iditarod Race and witnessed the largest caribou migration in North America in a small cabin in the middle of the Arctic Circle. Turner is always up for an adventure, especially if it’s wife and dog friendly.

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Return of rice on the St. Louis River

OWAA Developer — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:25:10 +0000

BY JOHN MYERS
Tom Howes explained in Anishinaabe, then in English, why restoring wild rice to the St. Louis River is so important to the Fond du Lac Indian people.
It’s here, along the 26-mile estuary just upstream of Lake Superior that his ancestors settled after a long journey from the east. There was plentiful food — especially manoomin, wild rice, which they believe is a sacred gift from the creator who led them here.
Fond du Lac, he noted, is the French phrase for his people’s location at the end of waters, or end of Lake Superior.
“This is a very important place to us as Fond du Lac people. And this rice is a very important resource,” said Howes, the Fond du Lac band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s natural resources program manager. “That’s why we’re doing this.”
The band is playing a key role in the first major wild rice restoration project now underway on the St. Louis River estuary. The project is one of many aimed at cleaning up the St. Louis River, one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “areas of concern,” degraded by development and pollution along the Great Lakes. Because of rice’s cultural importance and its value as a food for humans and wildlife, restoring rice beds is a key element of the larger St. Louis River estuary restoration effort.
For the past 125 years, the river’s rice was neglected. Minnesota’s great north woods loggers used the St. Louis as a log flume in the late 1800s, floating trees in the water that thrashed wild rice beds.
Then in the early 1900s, harborside industry — sawmills, steel mills and factories, along with docks and dredged slips for grain elevators and iron ore loading facilities — destroyed habitat Meanwhile, upstream paper mills fouled the water to the point rice (and many fish) couldn’t thrive.
By the end of the 20th century only a few pockets of wild rice remained in the 12,000-acre estuary that spills into Lake Superior at Duluth-Superior.
“This was at one time the single largest wild rice area in the region,” said Daryl Peterson of the Minnesota Land Trust, which is coordinating a wild rice restoration project on the river. “Nobody really knows, but we think there were probably about 3,000 acres of wild rice in the estuary before it was degraded. … We think we can bring back maybe a third of that. Maybe 1,000 acres is realistic.”
Howes and Peterson are helping oversee the $200,000 effort. Work began in 2015 with a giant weed-harvesting machine chewing away at lily pads, reeds, sedges and other plants that have filled in where rice once thrived.
Wild rice planting occurred last year and earlier this year. The band will try to use rice harvested from nearby areas, said Terry Perrault, a Fond du Lac Natural Resources Program technician.
“It’s a lot of work. It might take three or four seedings to get it going,” Perrault said, noting the tribe has done similar rice restoration efforts on several lakes within the Fond du Lac Reservation.
In addition to the nonprofit land trust and the Fond du Lac band, the Wisconsin and Minnesota Departments of Natural Resources, the 1854 Treaty Authority and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission are helping the effort to bring back the rice. Funding comes from the Minnesota Outdoor Heritage Fund, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Sustain Our Great Lakes and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Congress has been appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to pay for the cleanups, under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Progress has already been made. Giant, prehistoric sturgeon have returned to spawn for the first time in decades. Walleyes, musky, pike, smallmouth bass and crappies continue to thrive in the river estuary, offering excellent angling for local residents and tourists alike.
Canoe and kayak landings are being developed for better access.
The wild rice effort is just one of 60 specific projects either completed, underway or planned for the St. Louis River estuary-Duluth harbor area with the goal of getting the estuary off the areas of concern list by 2020.
— John Myers reports on the environment, natural resources, mining and other outdoor news for the Duluth News Tribune newspaper (duluthnews.com) He’s been an OWAA member since 1985. He can be reached at jmyers@duluthnews.com.

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From steel to stoke

OWAA Developer — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:12:07 +0000

How Duluth became a recreation Mecca

BY HANSI JOHNSON
There is down on your knees and then there is kicked while you are down on your knees.
Picture this: a city so down on its luck, so down on its self-image, that even the people who lived there believed the stereotypes the outside world had branded it with.
This isn’t the Duluth, Minnesota, you think of now. Visitors come to ride mountain bikes and explore the miles of city trails. It’s a regional recreation destination, with its national prominence growing steadily. People think of Duluth and they think biking, hiking and skiing. But that wasn’t always Duluth’s reputation. It once was a king of industry and then a busted, forgotten wasteland until the people of Duluth changed the narrative and their city.
Duluth was once a place the native Sioux and Chippewa considered the land of milk and honey. The St. Louis River, which flows through the city and is one of North America’s only freshwater estuaries, was also one of the largest continuous beds of wild rice in the country which fed waterfowl and fish like walleye, smallmouth bass and the legendary Lake Superior sturgeon, which grew to more than 6 feet in length.
The estuary fed into Lake Superior with its own flourishing ecosystem. The hilly forest surrounding all of this was dense in ancient white pine and oak savanna.
Within 100 years of European settlement that had all changed. They displaced the Chippewa. They harvested the timber. And they used the St. Louis River as a highway to move millions of feet to lumber mills, destroying nearly all the wild rice.
Heavy industry followed, taking ore from the Iron Range to the river to create ships and steel.
World War II and its lust for machinery soon sucked the range dry of its pure ore, and by the 1970s the whole mad cycle came crashing to a halt. The river and the lake had provided for people for thousands of years but could no longer sustain it.
Duluth went from a hero of industry to an industrial graveyard nearly overnight.
The community of Duluth, once one of the wealthiest in North America, if not the world, became the story of the Rust Belt. The outside world called Duluth busted, an industrial wasteland and an Arctic no-go zone full of polka and hockey.
So how long does an epic hangover of this magnitude last?
Until the good people who are part of the community stand up and shake it off.
I have lived in Duluth on and off since the late 1980s. In that time frame I witnessed the massive change in Duluth. People look at a city now known as an outdoor recreation paradise and often ask how it happened.
People expect answers like the number of dollars invested or other technical or strategic information, but the reason Duluth has rebounded is because Duluth finally started valuing what it has versus what it doesn’t.
Much like the child in Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” holding the last truffula tree seed, local Duluthians have gone back to what has been left of the land of milk and honey and started to revitalize and restore it.
Duluth’s once explosive growth dictated its city limits should be set 27 miles wide. When growth halted, the city was left with more than 11,000 acres of open space, much of it continuous and hilly.
A segment of the Duluth population always understood Duluth’s natural amenities. These are hardcore paddlers, cyclists, climbers and skiers. While the rest of the community lamented the failing industrial infrastructure and the voids it was leaving, these people surfed the waves at Stoney Point and climbed the ice at the abandoned quarry in the city. Historically these recreation enthusiasts were disparate groups, more concerned with catching the next wave than entering the noisy political discourse surrounding community revitalization. But local cyclists and biking groups sparked a change.
Through vision, planning and good old-fashioned sweat, the local Duluth mountain bike community came up with an idea for a 100-mile trail system interconnecting those thousands of acres of parks and open space along with nearly every neighborhood of the city. Efforts for what would be called the Duluth Traverse started in about 2008. To date this project has raised over $1.5 million and constructed more than 70 miles of purpose-built, professionally designed single track. This effort has been so successful that Duluth was recently awarded the International Mountain Biking Association Gold-Level Ride Center designation, the only one in the Midwest and one of five in the world.
As this effort gained success and worldwide accolades, the leadership in Duluth took notice. Soon Don Ness, mayor at the time, realized that this project was building a new sense of pride in the city and because of that, in about 2009, he decided not only to invest city funds and staff time into it, he also decided to invest in other destination-quality outdoor recreational projects as well. He saw outdoor recreation as another means or revitalization for the community.
That effort has borne fruit in the fact that Duluth was given Outside Magazine’s Best Outdoor Town in 2014. More importantly, the suite of outdoor experiences the user groups envisioned were so powerful that the City of Duluth, by a unanimous vote of the City Council, decided to bond $20 million to implement them.
Now in addition to the Duluth Traverse there is an effort at creating a new park with ice climbing in the once abandoned quarry, as well as a new Nordic center with state-of-the-art snowmaking and lights. A National Water Trail is also planned on the now rebounding St. Louis River and more hiking loops are being added to the legendary Superior Hiking Trail.
Today, along with the rise in craft beer (Duluth has 10 breweries in a city of 95,000) and what by all accounts is a booming economy, the community of Duluth, instead of apologizing for its lack of steel production, is seeing the export of “stoke” as one the main reasons people choose to live and spend their tourism dollars here.
— Hansi Johnson was one of the International Mountain Biking Association’s first regional directors. He worked in that position for five and half years in the Upper Midwest Region. Johnson was recently hired by the Minnesota Land Trust to serve as its director of recreational lands. He consults with the city of Duluth, Minnesota, to increase its quality of life and tourism economy through destination quality outdoor recreation. He lives in Thomson, Minnesota, with his wife Margaret and 8-year-old son Tae.

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Rinella named conference keynote

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:58:03 +0000

Acclaimed outdoor writer and television personality Steven Rinella will open the 90th annual Outdoor Writers Association of America conference in Duluth, Minnesota. Rinella will open conference with a keynote presentation the morning of June 24. He will talk about finding common ground for conservation between hunters, anglers and nonconsumptive users of America’s public lands. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is sponsoring the event. Rinella is well-known for translating America’s hunter-conservationist traditions to a wide variety of audiences.
Rinella is author of “The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine,” “American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon,” and most recently, “Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter.” He is a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and his features, essays and reporting have appeared in many other publication including The New York Times, the New Yorker, Men’s Journal, Field & Stream, Salon.com, O the Oprah Magazine, Petersen’s Hunting, Fly Fisherman, Bowhunter, and the anthologies “Best American Travel Writing” (2003 and 2010) and “Best Food Writing” (2005). He has spoken about hunting on multiple occasions to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” as well as CNN’s “American Morning” and the Sunday broadcast “Fox and Friends” on Fox News.
Rinella also hosts the top-rated television series “MeatEater” on The Sportsman Channel and a popular podcast by the same name. He is a highly respected, well-spoken and bold advocate for hunting and conservation who has addressed a wide range of audiences about his life as a modern-day hunter-gatherer. He uses both humor and irreverence to talk about the hunting lifestyle, wild game, the ethics of hunting and the spiritual need for wilderness.

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Public lands in jeopardy

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:57:47 +0000

BY JIM LOW
I spent last Father’s Day visiting my son, David, who works as an interpretive ranger at a state park just outside Las Vegas. I was excited when he and his girlfriend, Jenn, suggested we hike at Gold Butte, a 350,000-acre cultural heritage site administered by the Bureau of Land Management. I worried a little about midsummer hiking in the desert, without suspecting that I was entering landscape embroiled in one of the hottest public-lands debates of my lifetime.
My first clue came when we pulled over for a selfie at the gates of Cliven Bundy’s ranch. The man himself was in jail, awaiting trial in connection with his 2014 standoff with federal officials over illegal cattle grazing. But his aura hung in the air above the ugly compound, and it did nothing to make me feel safer.
A few miles down a gravel road and a bit farther down a rugged two-track brought us to a parking lot within sight of a modest rock outcropping. I thought, “We came all this way into a godforsaken landscape for this?” But I trusted David had brought me here for a reason, so I loaded my lumbar pack with camera gear and lots of water.
Scrambling over slick rock with natural bridges and pinnacles was fun, but I could have done something similar within two hours of home in Missouri. Things grew more interesting as we worked our way farther into the area, where the sandstone bore fantastic designs in burgundy, mauve, apricot and other, indescribable, colors. The Midwest had nothing to compare with this.
Then the petroglyphs began appearing. A few at first, a smattering that might have been Neolithic graffiti. Then a sentence here, a paragraph there, and finally, whole chapters of Southern Paiute history, unintelligible yet eloquent in its variety and visual ingenuity. I was enthralled. “Come on,” David urged, “The best is yet to come.”
Down into a gulch and back up the other side we hiked. At the foot of an 80-foot sandstone overhang, carved into desert varnish on a small rock facet hung a human figure, suspended in perpetual free-fall — Falling Man. Disarmingly simple, yet powerfully evocative, this gestural masterpiece ranks in my mind with the cave paintings of Lascaux. I was momentarily stunned, then captivated.
How would you assign a monetary value to this treasure trove of human and natural artworks? In a way, the United States has already done so. If you believe that actions speak louder than words, they you would be forced to conclude that Americans consider these
things worthless.
Gold Butte’s 350,000 acres, along with the similar but more spectacular treasures in the Bears Ears area of southeastern Utah, were unprotected until President Barack Obama set aside 1.65 million acres as national monuments on Dec. 28.
Gold Butte is an area of critical environmental concern because it harbors the endangered desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep, not to mention historic mining sites and pioneer-era artifacts, while the Bears Ears’ 1.9 million acres house tens of thousands of cliff dwellings, granaries, ceremonial kivas and other ancient structures.
Despite strong support from Indian tribes and the non-Indian public for protecting the Bears Ears area, Republican lawmakers did all they could to discourage President Obama from designating the area a national monument. Republican lawmakers already are agitating for President Elect Donald Trump to reverse this and other similar protections extended to select federally owned lands under the 1906 Antiquities Act going back two decades.
Even more concerning are pronouncements by President Elect Donald Trump and a plank in the Republican Party’s national platform calling for privatization of public lands.
Trump suggested paying off the national debt, partly by selling off $16 trillion in federal assets. The Washington Post’s fact checker called Trump’s proposal “nonsensical,” and gave it his worst rating — “Four Pinocchios.” According to the Government Accountability Office, even if the federal government sold off all its landholdings (including military bases, national parks and national forests) the proceeds would be $3 trillion, a fraction of the national debt. But senior Trump campaign advisor Barry Bennett was unimpressed by these facts and stuck by the lie that selling federal assets could erase the national debt.
“Oh, my goodness,” Bennett said in a Washington Post interview. “Do you know how much land we have? You know how much oil is off shore? And in government lands? Easily.”
Thanks to these types of lies Americans have come to accept several ridiculous notions about federal lands, including the notion that federal agencies are depriving American taxpayers of their birthright by holding onto public-trust lands. The suggested remedy is turning these lands over to the states.
There are several things wrong with this idea. First, federal ownership is the only thing preserving Americans’ right to use their public lands. Assume for a moment that states came into possession of the 435 million acres owned by the BLM and the Forest Service. Since states already lack the resources needed to administer their own meager landholdings, and since states don’t have the luxury of running budgetary deficits year after year, they would be forced to sell or lease these lands to the highest bidders. Overall, Western states have sold 31 million acres of their original public lands.
A report in Salon noted the two-pronged approach that the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Prosperity use to run this confidence game on America’s public landowners — you and me. First they lobby Congress to pass bills, often written by the council and other groups backed by the Koch brothers to enable them to get their hands on federal lands. Then they generate mountains of disinformation about how the federal government is violating their right to land owned by the American people.
Here is an excerpt from the Americans for Prosperity brochure on federal land management:
“Obviously, federal agencies need sufficient land to exercise their constitutional functions, like military bases for national security and interstate highways for commerce. However, the vast majority of this land is not used for such purposes, but rather sits idle with little access given to American citizens. Washington’s hoarding of inactive federal lands is legally questionable and economically destructive, necessitating these lands to be speedily transferred to their rightful owners, We the People.”
The American Legislative Exchange apparently considers national forests and land administered by the BLM — the infrastructure for $656 billion-dollar-a-year outdoor recreation industry — idle. Add to this figure the value of timber and minerals extracted from Forest Service and BLM and and you have a more than $1 trillion annual boost to America’s economy and 9.4 million jobs. Idle? It would be laughable if it weren’t so outrageous.
You have to give the land grabbers credit for the boldness of their lies, though. Telling gullible Americans like Amon and Ryan Bundy that they must take back land they already own so it can be pillaged by extractive industries in the guise of “We the People” is a stroke of propaganda genius that Machiavelli would admire.
Idaho has sold or traded away 41 percent of the federal land it received when it became a state. Nevada’s record is even worse. It has jettisoned 99 percent of its original landholdings. In the bidding way, that would ensue if more federal lands were given to states, extractive industries would be able to pay the highest prices, and our treasured national parks, forests and other wild lands would quickly be replaced by vast scars on the landscape.
A few pieces of prime federal land might end up as nature-based theme parks and luxury resorts where well-heeled visitors could spend the night in the Tower House at Mesa Verde National Park, enjoy zip-lining from the top of Half Dome or take log-flume rides in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Think of all the geothermal energy we could tap if we sold Yellowstone National Park to Exxon. Whatever else happens if federal lands go on the auction block, you can be sure that the Koch brothers and other millionaires will snap up the choicest tracts of national forest and turn them into hunting, fishing and golf resorts for themselves and their cronies.
These prospects would cause Teddy Roosevelt to spin in his grave and should be repugnant to anyone who has ever hunted, fished, hiked, camped or simply watched
Nature Channel shows filmed on public lands. It should be similarly horrifying to outdoor communicators whose stock in trade is working on and communicating about these lands. Yet, the Republican Party’s national platform proposes removing unspecified federal lands from federal protection. In a masterpiece of hiding malign intent in fuzzy language, the platform says that “certain” federally controlled lands should be given to states. It doesn’t specify which lands, nor does it say that states could not sell, give away or develop the newly severed federal lands however they choose. President Elect Trump denied wanting to sell or give away federal lands, but he did not oppose the Republican platform plank proposing the raid on federal lands. Given the many policy reversals Trump has made
since his election, it’s impossible to say what he might do in this regard.
Before President Obama protected Bears Ears, Utah’s representatives designed legislation to undermine the designation.
Situations like this are exactly why Congress created the Antiquities Act. This is why nearly every president of both parties since 1906 has used the act when Congress failed do to its job.
So far, President Obama has granted federal protection to more than 260,000 acres of land and water.
Will President Elect Trump break with precedent and negate this and other previous presidential actions protecting public lands? Was Trump’s proposal to sell off federal land only a campaign talking point, or did he mean it?
I can’t answer these questions, so I will pose another one. Can we afford to wait and see? To me, it seems the prudent thing to do is to tell our local, state and federal elected officials not to sell our public lands.
Eighteenth-century philosopher Joseph de Maistre said that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve.
If you think that you don’t deserve to keep your public-land birthright, your choice is easy. Do nothing at all.
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Jim Low has worked as a photographic officer in the army, reporter for the West Plains Daily Quill, editor of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio Game & Fish magazines and public information officer for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

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Acidification threatens oceans

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:26:54 +0000

BY PAULA DEL GIUDICE
Most of the news surrounding too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is aimed at our changing climate. But there’s another issue when it comes to carbon in the atmosphere that threatens to harm the oceans and disrupt the food chain. It’s ocean acidification.
The oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. They act as huge “sinks” for carbon dioxide, but when carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater, chemical reactions occur that reduce the potential for hydrogen, carbonate ion concentration and the saturation state of biologically important calcium carbonate minerals which are essential for forming shells and bones for many ocean organisms. This is ocean acidification.
Our oceans are 30 percent more acidic since the Industrial Revolution began. If trends continue, by the end of this century our oceans will be 100-150 percent more acidic, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That will create a chemical imbalance the oceans haven’t experienced in 20 million years.
Some plants in the ocean, such as algae and seagrasses, can make use of that extra carbon dioxide to accomplish photosynthesis, similar to plants on land.
However, the dramatic effect increasing acidity can have on calcifying organisms, such as oysters, clams, sea urchins, corals, calcareous plankton and pteropods is devastating.
Pteropods are tiny mollusks that are eaten by a wide variety of ocean creatures from krill to whales. They are a major source of food for Pacific salmon. When placed in ocean water with the predicted acidity for the year 2100, their shells dissolve after 45 days. According to Richard Feely, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory a 10 percent decrease in pteropod production leads to a 20 percent drop in mature salmon body weight.
No one knows the evolving situation of ocean acidification better than Bill Dewey, director of public affairs for Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton, Washington. In 2006, oyster seed hatcheries on the West Coast began experiencing massive die-offs of their stock.
In 2009, Taylor Shellfish had a major die-off of the wild oyster larvae in its facility. Down in Netarts, Oregon, a major die-off occurred at the Whiskey Creek Hatchery the previous year. It was at first, attributed to larvae-eating bacterium called Vibrio tubiashii raging through their tanks, but the die-offs continued, even when Vibrio tubiashii wasn’t present any longer.
The shellfish industry is responsible for a combined $110 million of income to the states of California, Oregon and Washington. In some places, shellfish aquaculture is the No. 1 employer.
Oyster farmers throughout the country depend on seed stocks from hatcheries to begin their growing cycle. With this massive die-off, not only were seed farmers and their businesses devastated, but so were the hundreds of farms they supply. While this was happening scientists noticed that the water entering the hatcheries was more acidic than normal. A strong ocean upwelling was the culprit.
Upwelling is when more carbon dioxide fills the air and it is absorbed by phytoplankton on the surface.
As those phytoplankton die and begin to decompose, they release carbon dioxide into the water column. This is when the carbonic acid develops. Cold water can hold more carbon dioxide so it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. It might not be so bad if the carbon dioxide-filled water remained at the bottom of the ocean, but it doesn’t. Particularly along the West Coast it rolls back to the surface. The water that wells up from the bottom of the ocean today was actually absorbed about 30 to 50 years ago, when increased industrialization began pushing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Just think about what will happen in 30 to 50 years from now since we’ve pushed past 400 parts of carbon dioxide per million in the atmosphere.
In 2007, Feely and an international team of scientists conducted the first large-scale carbon dioxide survey of waters along the West Coast from Canada to Mexico. Their work showed what occurs when the winds blow from the north causing the upwelling of cold, carbon dioxide-laden waters to reach very near the shore.
Those studies allowed hatchery managers, who operate in controlled environments, to experiment with adaptive management strategies.
At Taylor Shellfish, when they see the weather shifting to more northerly winds, staff hurries to fill their tanks and then shut off the intake. They know they have about 24 hours before the upwelling brings acidic waters through their intake pipes.
They also wait to fill the tanks until the afternoon when the phytoplankton and eel grasses have had a chance to complete photosynthesis, pulling some of the carbon out of the water. Taylor Shellfish is experimenting with growing seagrass refuges near the hatchery to pull additional carbon out of the water.
The company also injects calcium carbonate into the hatchery water system to assist in reducing the acidity. Some of the seed production has been shifted to Hawaii where production is easier during the winter and waters are not impacted by upwelling.
While adaptive management strategies can assist the production of shellfish in controlled situations short-term, they do little to address the long-term health of our oceans.
“Ocean acidification is a big deal,” Dewey said. “Sea water chemistry is going to change in dramatic ways in our lifetime. We are going to watch all the organisms shift in the ocean in ways we can’t fully understand.”
— Circle of Chiefs articles are written by those who have received the Circle of Chiefs Award for conservation reporting and coverage. The Circle of Chiefs are considered OWAA’s conservation council. The article reflects the opinion of the author. If you’d like to add to the discussion, please send a letter to the editor.
— Paula J. Del Giudice is the executive director of the nonprofit Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center. Her articles have appeared On GreenBiz.com. She has been a member of OWAA since 1980 and is a member of OWAA’s Circle of Chiefs.

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Mountain bikes in wilderness?

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:17:50 +0000

Proposed bill changes management of wild places

BY KATIE MCKALIP
A new Congress and a new presidential administration may be underway, but heated debates over natural resources management in America continue.
Some things never change.
Outdoor recreationists of all stripes, however, are keeping a close eye on legislation introduced last year in the 114th Congress that could drastically change public access to, and the use of, federally designated wilderness, among the nation’s most important public lands.
The Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act, sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah, would open wilderness areas to mountain biking by leaving this decision in the hands of individual land managers. Following its introduction the bill elicited a negative response from many public-lands users, even those who enjoy mountain biking and advocate on its behalf, due to precedents it would set and the potential impacts of unleashing millions of bikers on these special landscapes.
Under the 1964 Wilderness Act, bikes and other forms of “mechanical transport” are explicitly banned in wilderness areas, which are set aside to preserve their pristine waters, fish and wildlife habitat and opportunities for solitude. Today, hikers, anglers and hunters on foot and with traditional pack stock treasure wilderness areas for those same values.
Access opportunities to both private and publicly owned lands are a critical issue for recreationists in the United States. Inadequate public access has emerged as a defining factor in our ability — or inability — to enjoy the outdoors, and sportsmen cite declining public access as the No. 1 reason why we stop pursuing our passions.
Given the priority many of us place on expanding access to our lands and waters, why shouldn’t we support an effort that would introduce a degree of flexibility in the ability of managers to open up places currently designated off limits to “mechanical” recreation?
It’s worth considering the relative rarity of our wilderness lands. Designated wilderness in the Lower 48 encompasses less than 3 percent of our land mass. Yet it comprises the last bastions of pristine fish and wildlife habitat in the United States. These areas are highly vulnerable to human disturbance and encroachment, and bikes can affect fish and wildlife habitat in ways that are by no means insignificant. Numerous studies, for example, demonstrate the outsize impact of mountain bikes on areas frequented by big game.
“Mountain biking is an increasingly popular form of quiet and healthy recreation — one that has a place on public lands,” said Jay Banta, a sportsman and biologist from St. George, Utah, who serves on the national board of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, which focuses on public-lands issues. “But wilderness designations work well as currently stipulated in the Wilderness Act. “Furthermore, wilderness encompasses some of our rarest, most precious lands and waters. Their existence prevents the fragmentation of irreplaceable areas of fish and wildlife habitat.”
Mountain biking has a large and growing following, and it can be enjoyed in appropriate places that often can be easily accessed by members of the public. Wilderness management should minimize the impacts of mountain biking and other growing recreational demands. Opening our wilderness areas to bikes would disrespect the very tradition of wilderness.
While the Hatch-Lee bill failed to gain traction in the last Congress, those of us who care about the responsible management of public lands must be alert to future attempts to dilute the spirit of the Wilderness Act. We should carefully consider the motives and values of a bill’s proponents. While Sens. Hatch and Lee insist that they introduced their legislation simply to open up more public lands for enjoyment by Americans, we can’t ignore the fact that their decisions are frequently influenced by special interests such as the oil and gas industry. How would this segment benefit from increased access to and permissiveness in the management of lands that have traditionally been strictly off limits to development?
From Alaska to Florida, wilderness areas provide us with unmatched backcountry adventures that are part of the fabric of the American experience. While a range of interests, including the mountain biking community, energy companies and non-motorized users such as hikers and hunters, deserves to have a voice in helping determine and shape future wilderness area proposals, the bottom line is that bikes and wilderness don’t really go together.
Luckily we have plenty of public lands that are open to mountain bikes —and to motorized use, industrial development and other uses, both competing and complementary. This gives all us of places to experience and enjoy the outdoors. Ultimately, however, management of our wilderness areas should be closely guarded and rigorously defended. The spirit and letter of the Wilderness Act as currently drafted must be upheld.
— Katie McKalip is national communications director of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. BHA, a national sportsmen’s group focused on conservation, access and fair chase issues, is committed to defending traditional use of wilderness areas. Visit www.backcountryhunters.org.

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Making the most of media trips

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:13:05 +0000

BY JOHN KRUSE
One of the great things about working in outdoor media is that from time to time, you are invited to go on some really great trips where the travel, food and lodging are all taken care of. There are usually some great adventures in store for you as well during these familiarization trips, commonly called FAMs, including summits, camps or conferences. However, as much fun as they are, it is important to remember you are invited to attend because you are expected to provide coverage of the event, place, sponsor or organization.
I’ve been on trips where attendees had so much fun enjoying themselves that they forgot the real reason they were there. Others have failed to generate much or anything out of these events except for expenses for their hosts. These members of the media generally don’t get invited back and may even see their invitations to these events dry up as word gets around the industry about their inability to produce. Don’t be that person. You want to establish the reputation of someone who is going to give your host an excellent return on their investment into you. Here’s a few ways you can do that:
BEFORE YOU GO
Find out from the host exactly what they want promoted. You may be surprised by the answer. I recently attended a FAM trip to a resort in Baja, Mexico, on the Sea of Cortez. This beautiful resort offered miles of hiking trails, a great beach and chances to kayak in a secluded bay full of tropical fish. An added bonus was the stingrays that jumped out of the water around your kayak as you paddled along.
That, however, was not what the organizers wanted us to cover. They wanted coverage of their first annual dorado fishing tournament and the top-notch golf course. Knowing this allowed me to prioritize my time to cover these two areas (though I did manage to kayak among the stingrays for a quick hour getaway).
Be honest with your host about what you can produce. At the resort, I told them I would produce a radio show and podcast while there. If you are a freelancer, obtain assignments before you go. If you have a web and social media presence, let organizers know how you can promote them or sponsors through those channels.
ONCE YOU ARE THERE
Enjoy the food, the sights and sounds. Get to know your fellow media members and develop relationships that can benefit both of you. But don’t get lost in the adventures.
A case in point is a long-running opportunity that takes place in the Columbia River Gorge, bordering Washington and Oregon, every September. It’s called Fish Camp and promoter Ed Iman brings together members of the outdoors media, a number of tournament anglers and guides with boats, and sponsors who pay for the free camping, food and trips you enjoy on the water. It is really easy to lose yourself in the great fishing here. On any given day you can catch Chinook salmon, cast for summer steelhead, reel in dozens of smallmouth bass, jig for walleye or tussle with a sturgeon measuring up to 11 feet.
However, the way to get invited back to Fish Camp isn’t to nab the most fish, it’s to arrange interviews with the sponsors who are paying the bill. Many of these sponsors are fishing rod companies, fishing tackle manufacturers and sporting goods retailers. All of them are there because they have a story they want told. Some of these stories can be told while you are fishing. Do an on-the-water interview with a field recorder, snap some pictures of their rods or lures in action, but also plan to find a quiet place to talk after the fishing is done for the day to record that interview.
Don’t forget the primary reason you are there. Going back to the Baja, Mexico trip, I knew that building a show around the fishing tournament would be more exciting if we could be at the daily weigh-ins, talk to the tournament coordinator and anglers and share that building excitement on the air — culminating with the awards ceremony.
However, the itinerary laid out for media was for half of us to fish and go to the weigh-in on one day, while the other half went golfing and then enjoyed lunch and a tequila tasting the other day of the tournament. Knowing in advance what the resort really wanted covered (the tournament and the golfing), that’s what I focused on. I arranged to get on a shuttle bus on day two of the tournament to the weigh-in location and covered that instead of partaking in the tequila tasting the resort was providing for the rest of my group. (Yes, sometimes sacrifices have to be made on a media trip.)
When you aren’t reporting, take photos and share them on social media. This can create buzz for your piece, but also the sponsors or hosts.
Be gracious to your hosts, compliment them on the wonderful things they offer and don’t complain. If there is a chance to get your host on the air or to tag them through social media when you post, make it a point to do so.
AFTER THE TRIP
Once you get home you’ll have some fine memories of your latest adventure and you should also have photos or videos and audio if you need it.
Start producing as soon as you can, while everything is fresh. The great thing about radio and podcasting is how fast we can get something on the air. I can record and produce a show that can air in less than two weeks after I return.
I further promote the trip, the hosts and the sponsors through my website, previewing the show and do the same on my radio show’s Facebook page. I also make it a point through all three venues to promote the host or sponsor multiple times. Most importantly, I
share what I have done with the people who invited and hosted me. If you have a podcast or broadcast, deliver it in a form so they can share it and use it for promotional purposes (SoundCloud and YouTube are both great platforms for this). You might offer organizers great coverage, but they won’t know it unless you tell them.
Media trips are fun and allow you to do things you probably couldn’t afford to do otherwise. Do it right, and you’ll probably be seeing invitations coming your way.
[box size=”large” border=”full”]Want to attend Fish Camp?
Promoter Ed Iman is always looking for new members of the outdoor media to attend Fish Camp in the Columbia River Gorge. It takes place every year from Sunday through Thursday in the middle of September. If you are interest – ed in attending call Iman, let him know you are an OWAA member and tell him how you can help share the stories of Fish Camp and its sponsors. Call 541-298-3753.[/box]
— John Kruse is host and producer of two weekly radio shows, Northwestern Outdoors Radio and America Outdoors Radio. He is also an outdoor writer and the author of “Great Places Washington,” published by Wilderness Adventures Press. He has attended a number of media FAM trips and summits or events put on by conservation organizations.

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When, how to tag on social media

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 23:08:15 +0000

BY TAYLOR WYLLIE
It used to be that all it took to maximize social media was knowing how and when to post something. Since then we have entered an era where mastering social media is a profession within itself. Posts likely show up in your feed that have been carefully crafted in phrasing, timing and subject matter.
And they can look complex too — with seemingly random highlighted names of both people and companies.
This is tagging. It’s impactful, will keep you relevant and is surprisingly easy to master.
Think of tagging as bringing relevant people or companies into a conversation, like cc’ing someone on an e-mail that concerns them, or talking about someone while they’re in the room.
To get into specifics, you should absolutely tag:
When you mention a person, or company.
Don’t overthink social media. When you have a main subject that’s tagable, tag them! But don’t be too liberal — aim for one main subject and one tag in any given post. As journalists, you already know to keep your writing as concise and simple as possible. The same applies to social media.
When you’re citing your source.
Think of this as the social media form of attribution. Tag someone if you quote or
paraphrase them in any way.
When you want to grow your social media account.
Any person or business you tag will see your post in their notifications. There’s a good possibility they will retweet or favorite that post, which makes it available to all of their followers. The more people exposed to your account, the more replies, followers, comments and likes you’ll receive.
This becomes truer when the person you tag has a large following. That’s often why people choose to tag businesses or companies with a substantial fan base.
When you are being paid to.
There are people who are paid to promote products or brands. Usually it’s apparent when a post is sponsored. There will be a coupon code, a glowing review or other obvious indicators. These people, too, are usually professionals or semi-professionals in their fields: athletes, models or social media personalities.
How to tag:

On Facebook:
Tagging people on Facebook is as straightforward as social media gets. Start typing in the name of whoever it is you would like to tag. Their account will pop up in a little gray box beneath your cursor. Click on the pop-up or hit enter and you’re done.
On Twitter, Instagram and most other social media:
Type in the @ sign and their handle. Voilà, they’re tagged.Know the difference between a reply and a mention:
Twitter has very specific lingo. In the Twitterverse, a mention is when you tag someone in the body of your Tweet (after at least one character, whether it be a space, period, letter or word). It’s called a reply if you tag someone at the beginning of a tweet. A reply is directed specifically toward that person or business. Essentially it’s a digital conversation between two people. Only the sender, recipient and people who follow both accounts will be able to see a reply.
The same applies on Instagram.
If a person doesn’t have a social media account on the platform you’re
using:
You have two options. You can turn their name into a hashtag or use their name
without a tag.Not everything concerning the digital age has to be complicated. So go forth and tag away. Then maybe we can talk about analytics.

— Taylor Wyllie was an OWAA intern and is a student at the University of Montana, studying journalism and environmental studies. She’s worked for the independent student newspaper, The Montana Kaimin and her work has appeared on Montana PBS, Montana Public Radio and in the Missoulian.

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As the trade winds blow

OWAA Developer — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 22:59:52 +0000

Is attending industry shows worth the cost?

BY LOU DZIERZAK
The trade winds start blowing at the start of the year. With the new year, January brings the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake city and the SnowSports Industries America Show in Denver. These not only kick off the trade show season, but are considered must-attend events for freelance writers focusing on outdoor recreation. But as soon as the shows finish, many freelancers start thinking about next year and wondering if attending is worth it.
Commitment to the show circuit can keep you away from home for weeks and even for savvy travelers, rack up thousands of dollars in travel expenses.
Freelance pay rates are low and no one is covering your travel expenses. Access to key brand executives is limited even for those who schedule interviews in advance. If a brand’s public relations agency contact can send the latest press releases and images, why endure the hassle of missed flights, excess baggage fees and catching the guaranteed 10-day cold that follows spending hours indoors with 5,000 other travelers. (Seems like half the people you talk to apologize for their runny noses and rumbling coughs. No one ever comes home virus-free.)
So travel is expensive, you don’t great access to sources and you’ll likely come home sick? It seems like an easy decision to stay home. But let’s take a look at the other side of the ledger before making the final decision.
For Aspen, Colorado, freelancer Allison Patillo, trade shows are one of the few times she’s able to leave the isolated world of working on her own. It’s a way to connect with colleagues, as well as industry leaders and editors, she said.
Most freelance writers have experienced the frustration of sending a well-thought-out, finely crafted article query to a magazine editor. Sadly, too many of those queries never reach the intended audience. Most editors aren’t rude folk who care little about freelancers. They are just overworked journalists constantly surrounded by fire-breathing deadline dragons.
Attend one of the many media events hosted by major brands at any of the big shows, and you may find yourself sitting next to that elusive editor. After introductions, the conversations often turn to looking for opportunities. Editors are always looking for new content, and freelance writers never fail to jump in with an idea.
“Trade shows are one of the most important parts of my year,” said Aaron Bible, a
freelance writer from Nederland, Colorado. “It’s a networking opportunity with my peers and my existing clients and dozens of potential clients. Every meeting, every interaction, every dinner is a potential interview and opportunity for getting new work, embarking on new creative projects, looking for contracts and full-time work, and meeting other writers and photographers who may expand your network and become valuable resources in the short and long term. I’ve met editors and gotten assignments just by hanging out in the press room and going up and talking to people.”
Perhaps one of the freelance writers with whom you shared a beer goes home and finds themselves with a new job at a publication looking for contributors. They start thinking of the writers they know—and you are on the list.
Editors from established publications aren’t the only source of assignments. In this crazy world of content marketing, startup businesses and ever-expanding outdoor-oriented websites, you might find work with a brand or company with an in-person introduction.
Regular attendance at trade shows also builds credibility in the industry. Despite the crowds, trade shows are actually small communities. Writers who attend show after show, year after year, are often recognized as industry experts.
“Connecting in person is the best way to understand the vision and goals of gear manufacturers and travel companies,” said James Dziezynski, an author and freelancer from Boulder, Colorado. “For veteran show attendees, those relationships morph into a sort of institutional knowledge that creates excellent working relationships based on an understanding of where all these brands want to live in a competitive outdoors market.”
Remember how you wondered if you couldn’t just get the same information you glean from the exhibit floor, from a press release in your email? Don’t forget 100 other media contacts received the same information. It’s hard to find a story angle from your house that will resonate with an editor who likely received the same email press release.
Networking is a buzzword, but it works. The relationships, friendships and nuggets of information found from roaming a trade show flow can lead to consistent assignments and steady income.
“Trade shows are going to have the best-connected people in the industry en masse and the aspiring professional would be foolish to pass up such the opportunity to engage with them,” said Dziezynski.
So confirm those flights, pack your bags and hit the road. Trade shows are definitely worth the investment.
— Lou Dzierzak has been a freelance writer since 1997. His trip to the 2017 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market will mark his 39th consecutive visit to the bi-annual Outdoor Retailer Show.

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