By Reid Collins on 3.6.02 @ 12:01AM
The cutthroat trout meets its match.
Fifteen or twenty years ago, the bestowal of that title wouldn't
have raised an eyebrow, but today we speak of fish, and it has
raised quite a few. For Ted Turner, of CNN fame, has been named
Angler of the Year by the prestigious "Fly Rod & Reel"
magazine, the "magazine for American fly-fishing." Turner now owns
more land than comprise some small nations, 1.7 million acres,
mostly in the western United States. His husbandry of it has irked
natives, thrilled environmentalists, and generally added to the
controversy his name evokes.
When Turner purchased the 113,000 acre Flying D Ranch south of
Bozeman, Montana, in 1989, he closed the several rights of way
natives had used for years to travel across it, easements that also
led some to Cherry Creek, a stream that flows through the place.
This change in status quo led some natives to declare that their
land was also closed to access "by Ted Turner." A license plate
sprung up declaring: "Not So Fonda Jane," a reference to his then
third wife, Jane Fonda.
Turner's occasional pronouncements on Christendom, his donation
of one billion dollars to the United Nations, an outfit as
cherished in the West as drought, and his insistence on banishing
cattle from his spreads and raising buffalo in their stead (better
for the land and particularly for streams) were only partially
offset by his generosity to conservation and environmental
projects. (He helped preserve a Buffalo jump in Montana and has
donated millions annually to conservation projects in connection
with the 14 ranches he owns in New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota,
Colorado, and Nebraska.)
So when he backed a Montana Fish and Game Department plan to
poison all the fish in Cherry Creek, and the mountain lake it flows
from, Turner animus ran amok.
The waters had been barren of fish until about a century ago
when they, like many western streams, were stocked with non-native
trout; browns, rainbows and brookies. The state's plan: kill all
those fish and re-stock the place with the endangered westslope
cutthroat. In its various forms the cutthroat is the only trout
native to these parts. If Lewis and Clark ate a trout in Montana,
it was a cutthroat. Turner has offered to pay nearly all the half a
million dollars the Cherry Creek project is estimated to cost.
Opposition has gathered like a thunderhead and the lawsuits are
rumbling through the courts. Why kill all the fish to stock a batch
of another kind that never lived there?
But who shows up on the cover of "Fly Rod & Reel" magazine's
inaugural 2002 issue? It is Ted Turner, named FR&R Angler of
the Year. He is at streamside, wearing hat, dark glasses, fishing
vest, pole in crook of arm and holding what looks to be not a
cutthroat but a big brown trout. Turner's quote, "fishing is good
for the soul," is repeated from the article announcing his award
and the magazine editor-in-chief Paul Guernsey predicts that "more
than a handful will disagree with Ted Turner's selection."
Guernsey was right. So many wrote in that he had to cancel one
department in April's issue in order to print what he thought would
be all the missives. A typical one begins, "I almost threw up when
I received..." Another quoted Turner's "all Christians are losers"
observation. Some suggested a pay-off. Several wanted subscriptions
canceled. Guernsey thought the flood had subsided until Turner made
his appearance at Brown University where he suggested that the
September 11 terrorists were brave and explained geo-economic
imbalance as the cause of the trouble. Like a late hatch, another
flurry of anti-Turner letters arrived in the Rod & Reel creel.
There was one more "Ted-is-a-good-guy-letter," says Guernsey, and
he's publishing that one in the June letters column.
Cancellations? Real ones? Guernsey quotes the circulation
department as saying there were about 30 over the award itself, and
then another half-dozen or so following the Brown remarks. Like
most fly fisherman, editor Guernsey is an optimist and says the
magazine gained more than 3,000 in circulation last year. Guernsey
says the award to Turner brought some "needed attention to the
plight of the westslope cutthroat trout, and that makes the
controversy worthwhile."
Oh, yes. That darned westslope cutthroat.
topics:
Environment, Law, United Nations
