people. . .sports persons. And they've looked at the things that we really 

 have of value in Montana. The wild fishery. Not everyone can come to 

 Montao^ and catch trout. I'm the best example of that. People think I 

 fish al'l the time. Since I've been involved with Trout Unlimited I barely 

 fish at all. I have a family there in Billings that seems quite hungry and 

 everytime I turn around they'd like something to eat too, so I earn my 

 living out of Montana. I take my living out of places like Gillette and 

 Rock Springs. . .excuse me, not Rock Springs yet. .. Gillette. Gillette, 

 Sheridan, but I travel to these places and I need fuel for my car. I'm 

 interested in energy conversion and whether or not I'm going to be able to 

 travel Montana. So I want to approach you as one of the consumers of 

 your information and the things that we need. When I travel nationally, 

 and I've been very fortunate through Trout Unlimited to do a lot of 

 national travel and meet people from areas of the country that some of you 

 probably represent. Some of the most dedicated people I know are in West 

 Virginia and New York and Pennsylvania. These are the people that are 

 at Trout Unlimited meetings on a national basis all the time. And they're 

 kind of at odds sometimes. We call them the eastern coalition versus the 

 western coalition. We're talking about the things that we have now. The 

 things that we're beginning to lose. Those people don't understand that 

 at all. I mean if you talk to someone in Atlanta, Georgia about fishing in 

 Montana, it's like talking about leaving for Australia fishing from here, or 

 Alaska. They think if your from Montana that you live in a wilderness 

 area that has fantastic fishing and they're interested in restoration. The 

 acid rainfall thing that we run into. The rock rolling. These people are 

 going out restoring little, tiny streams that are gone. 



Montana, unfortunately, and I think Wyoming too, have an awful lot 

 of people that are like myself. They've grown up here. They've been 

 here all their life and if something happens to their favorite stretch of the 

 Madison they move up ten miles. I mean after all, you know, we're 

 talking about a length of river that you can barely drive in one day. 

 People move around. If you come along and someone has done something 

 to a stream and the fishing is off in that portion of the stream then they 

 move over to Rock Creek or they move over to the Clark's Fork or they 

 go to all these streams that people read about and that you write about, 

 that people want to be on. And I think that the things that we get most 

 from our people here, the imput that we get most to help us remember, 

 are the things that we are losing. The little bits and pieces that we lose 

 all contribute to the overall downfall of our eventual situation and 

 hindsights always 20/20, but it's interesting to travel the other parts of 

 the nation and talk to these people that have been through it. 



Today I'd like to ask you to do something for us. The outdoor 

 writers. . .tell your readers. . .tell the average person... I know, you know 

 I'm not the type of person that picks up a newspaper or a magazine and 

 looks at an article as quickly about something about environmental issue as 

 I might about how to fish for a 30-pound brown trout at night. But we've 

 got to get that into your articles. Approach the fisherman. Approach the 

 sports person. We need preservation as the first of our water uses. You 

 know, we're so fortunate that we have what we do have left here and that 

 we have the ability to go ahead and try and restore some of the things 

 that we've lost. Again, I need to make my living here. When Willie and I 



