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Where skill, joy and service unite
By Chris Wood After I graduated college, my older brother, John, introduced me to a friend who was a Jesuit priest. At the time, I was a somewhat aimless bartender, ice cream maker and assistant high school football coach. One night after dinner and drinks, Father Donald asked me three questions: “Chris, what do you…
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The future offers hope
By Chris Wood Jake Marshall, whose Dad helped to organize TroutFest, a huge TU event in Texas that raises a lot of money for youth education through the Tomorrow Fund, said he was there “to help conserve our water s.” Laurel Smith, a graduate of the amazing Georgia Trout Camp, said she was there “to…
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Red light — Green light
By Chris Wood The other morning, my friend, Brent Fewell, an attorney who worked at the EPA under President George W. Bush, wrote: “Had dinner and a very encouraging conversation last evening with seven prominent GOP Senators who want to make the environment and conservation a greater priority for the GOP, a return to Teddy…
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Wild and Native: Rules of the River
Last week, Trout Unlimited posted a clip describing the proper way to de-bone a trout. Perhaps predictably, this was met by a few howls of outrage. “How can the organization that practically invented catch-and-release advocate eating a trout? Shame. Shame!” The fact is, however, that not all wild fish are equal, and whacking one can…
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New science promotes trout recovery
By Chris Wood Some define conservation as overseeing loss. Loss of wetlands; loss of open space; loss of water quality; loss of species. Aldo Leopold harkened to this when he wrote in the Sand County Almanac that “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.…
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Keeping up the fight for trout
By Chris Wood I went to see Art Neumann a few months before he passed away. As I left, he punched me on the leg, and asked, “What are you going to do to keep up the fight for trout?” He died later that year after nearly 100 years of life and almost 75 years…
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Sportsmen key to cleaning up abandoned mines
Trout Unlimited began organizing sportsmen and women in a coordinated manner in 2001–largely in response to my observation when I worked at the Forest Service that the voice of hunters and anglers was largely missing from the development of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule—an initiative that protected nearly 60 million acres of some of the…
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