Let me tell you about a little... a quick, brief bit about Trout 

 Unlimited. Trout philosophy is that the preservation and enhancement of 

 cold water fishery resources is paramount. And Trout Unlimited is a 

 national organization. The unlimited part makes a lot of people think that 

 it's similar to Ducks Unlimited. The similarity probably is in name only. 

 I'm also very active in Ducks Unlimited. I'm a regional vice president and 

 handle a lot of the Ducks Unlimited activity in eastern Montana. Ducks 

 Unlimited is easy to sell. Ducks... we can all look up in the air, we can 

 tell whether we have more wildlife or not. Trout Unlimited has gotten a 

 reputation, especially locally in Montana and some of the areas of some of 

 the municipalities in Montana as being environmentalists that get into every 

 issue. And we possibly have been into issues at times that get a little bit 

 off from that philosophy, but if you think about that philosophy it's a 

 very, very hard one to defend. Clean, cold water habitat, and we don't 

 have very many problems. I know a lot of you in this room are Fish, 

 Wildlife and Park people that we work with on our local levels and are 

 absolutely outstanding and there are several of them here. And we just 

 can't say enough about the imput that we get. We try and stay in those 

 issues. Try and stay with the things that will take care of the trout and 

 it's habitat. We're not fly fisherman necessarily. There is a federation of 

 fly fishermen. We're not all bait fishermen. We're not dynamiters. But if 

 you look in the ranks of Trout Unlimited, and I think there are a lot of 

 people that never have realized this, there are a tremendous number of 

 business people. There are a tremendous number of professional people. 

 There are a tremendous number of blue-collar workers. Trout Unlimited is 

 growing drastically in Montana. There are a lot of people that have lived 

 in Montana three years and feel, "I've been there all my life," and that's 

 great. They're the people we need. 



And the thing that I want to appeal to you as outdoor writers and 

 also to the department people here, we need to contact that segment of 

 society that lives here, that travels here, that uses the resource, and 

 wake them up to what Montana has. To what we have at the moment, to 

 what we've lost, what we're losing right now. Not only the large things. 

 Not only the possibility of an Allenspur Dam on the Yellowstone River, 

 which is the last free-flowing, major river in the 48 continental United 

 States. There are some small diversion dams on the Yellowstone, but 

 basically there's not an impoundment on the Yellowstone. And we not only 

 need an awakening and awareness of the people that read your articles and 

 that you reach through the media of this sort of thing, but also the small 

 things that we're losing every day. The small little feeder creek that 

 comes into an even smaller stream and then into a more major stream 

 where, through thoughtless, nonrealization of what might be happening to 

 the environment, something happens to that stream bed. Or something 

 happens to the bank and we end up with problems--siltation and so on. 



I think it's very tempting to talk about the favorite fishing place in 

 Montana or the four or five-pound trout that got away. They're the 

 things that automatically bring people's eyes to the headline. To the 

 article that your reading... to your livelihood. Montana. . .it's now 

 Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks... I always have to catch myself because 

 for some many years it's been Montana Fish and Game... has changed, I 

 think, in their approach and in their contact with the sports 



