As post WWII refugees from Latvia, my father grew up hunting rabbits for subsistence in Australia.  He passed that tradition on to me and taught me how to hunt and fish in America where, thankfully, we did so for sport rather than out of need.  Spending that time with him in the great outdoors is a major reason I ultimately found my passion in protecting them.

Earlier this month, I spent 5 days at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show.  The show is one of the largest of its kind in the country.  Oregon Wild shared a table with Tom Wolf and some great volunteers from Trout Unlimited.  We talked with sportsmen (and women) from around the Northwest. 

In particular, we talked with lots of folks about why protecting our roadless wildlands is so important.  Roadless wildlands are some of the best places to hunt and fish in Oregon.  As the Colorado Wildlife Federation points out, “If you only want to hunt whitetail deer, you can set up a tree stand under a New Jersey freeway exit.  If you want to hook a carp or plink starlings, roadless areas are not for you.”  However, if you want a challenge, if you want healthy abundant populations of big game and native predators alike, if you want wilderness and old growth, clean water, healthy salmon runs, and native trout, roadless areas are the place to go.  

Not everyone can afford to own their own piece of hunting land or access to an elite hunting ranch.  That’s why Teddy Roosevelt said “Preserve large tracks of wilderness…for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether or not he is a man of means”. 

At the Sportsmen’s show, we collected postcards from hunters and fisherman asking Senators Merkley and Wyden to protect our roadless wildlands.  Over 350 people signed a card, and while most did so on the merits of the message, it didn’t hurt that filling out a card also entered you into a raffle for a pair of binoculars generously donated by Leupold. 

Oregon Wild traces its origins to 1974 when 3 elk hunters gathered around a campfire and decided that something needed to be done to protect the places they loved.  Long before that, Tom McAllister was hunting and fishing in Oregon.  On his card he noted that he had hunted and fished in Oregon for over 70 years and "experienced a steady erosion of our wildland heritage.  This is", he wrote, "our last chance to save a solid remnant of the best."

We were pleased when we pulled Mr. McAllister’s name from a hat and were able to give him the binoculars, an Oregon Wild book, and renew his membership with Oregon Wild.  Mr. McAllister, pictured here, came to pick up his gifts earlier this week.  He shared with us stories of stocking trout in hundreds of Oregon high country lakes by mule pack string and of relocating sea otters from the Aleutian Islands in 1970 to Port Orford (one appeared recently at Depoe Bay).  His first wilderness campaign was with a Save The Minam group formed in 1960 to stop the U.S. Forest Service from roading and logging the Minam River in the Wallowa Mountains.  McAllister was outdoor editor at the Oregon Journal and The Oregonian for 40 years.  The past 15 years, he's cruised as a naturalist/historian for Lindblad Expeditions.

Especially out here in the West, it can be easy to take our big wild places for granted.  But if they are not defended by the people who love them, they can be lost.  One of my favorite quotes is from Sigurd Olson.  He said, “Without love of the land, conservation lacks meaning or purpose, for only in a deep and inherent feeling for the land can there be dedication in preserving it.”  It is crucial that those who do love the land and all that a relationship with it offers don’t sit idly by and watch it be destroyed.

I sometimes think of myself as a bit of a naturalist.  But getting to hear Mr. McAllister’s stories reminded me how much more there is to know.  How a sense of the land is accumulated over time.  Mr. McAllister has experienced Oregon’s wild places.  He has experienced what they have to offer.  He has seen what we stand to lose when they are destroyed, and he has done his part to protect them

I do have to admit that spending time with Mr. McAllister made me a bit nostalgic for the days when my grandfather and dad passed on to me the knowledge they accumulated over years of hunting and fishing and the love of the land that came out of it. If I ever have kids, I hope that there will be lots of big wild places left for me to share with them