 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Montana State University Library's Trout and Salmonet Lecture Series. My name's Kenning Arlich, I'm the dean of the library. Thanks for coming tonight, and thanks to our host, the Museum of the Rockies. I found an article today by Melinda Harrison that was published in the 2009 edition of Mountains and Lines. It was titled MSU is Trout U, and it described a number of centers and programs at or near Montana State University that justify the moniker of Trout U. Among these were the Montana Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit in MSU's Ecology Department, the Montana Water Center, the Bozeman Fish Technology Center of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Big Sky Institute, and the Northern Rocky Mountains Science Center of the US Geological Survey. And I would add one that's new as of 2011, the Institute on the Ecosystems. But topping the list in the article is the Bud Lilly Trout and Salmonet Initiative. Quote, the world's most dynamic collection of books and manuscripts devoted to trout and salmon is located in MSU's Rennie Library. Thanks to the vision and initiative of Bud Lilly and former dean of the library, Bruce Morton, the trout and salmonet collection has become a gem for fish researchers and fishermen everywhere. It documents our appreciation for a big part of our natural environment and for everything that fish mean to our culture. It documents what once was, what is now, and with proper care, this collection will communicate our world to the future. Tonight, we are honored to have Nathaniel Reed speak to us. That introduction, I will leave to Jim Thule, reference librarian and primary champion of the trout and salmonet collection. It is my honor to introduce visitor Nathaniel Reed as MSU Library's trout and salmonet 2013 guest lecturer. Mr. Reed has a long and distinguished career and is one of the leading conservationists of our era. His impact on the environmental protections we enjoy today cannot be underestimated. While serving as an assistant secretary of the environmental, I'm sorry, while serving as an assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish Wildlife and Parks in the Nixon and Ford administration, he created quite possibly the finest he ever assembled to advise the White House on environmental matters. Legislation like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act are direct results of his efforts. In addition, he is a lifelong fly fisher and a wonderful storyteller. He mentioned yesterday that his mother squares he came out of the womb with a fly rotted one hand. On that note, I am pleased and honored to introduce Mr. Nathaniel Reed. I'm actually delighted to be here and to see some old friends. Dean, you started something, got the ball rolling. That is something very, very special in the world of libraries. And Jim, thank you for taking such wonderful care of me. I needed it at all times of my days. My father, as each of his sons got to be after the war, got to be 12, 13, 14 years of age, he took them on individual trips. Some of them to see where his grandfather, his father, our grandfather had staked out claims that Cripple Creek had sold a great mind to the Anglo company, which gave him a grub stake that lasted for the rest of his life. And his son's life as well, and even his own, his grandson's. I got the trip of the century because he invited me to tour Yellowstone. And we started in Livingston, like those walls of those carved, the 14 size over the edge of numbers, but size, the size of those fish were really something. Well, I was enormously impressed by that shot. We continued on to the park, and we ended up to West Yellowstone, where Mr. Martinez owned the famous tackle shop at that time before Bob Lilly bought it from him. Now, Martinez is one of the great fly shops in the world. Along the way, he'd be guided by some really great young guys who enormously contributed to my ability to cast a fly rod. And on top of that, of course, a salesman in Bud Lilly's shop, you know, and Bill Martinez's shop, and the shop in Livingston, and above all, Bob Carmichael's shop in Moose, they made sure that I was completely re-outfitted with every bit of clothing that money could buy. My father was extremely generous to go along with us. Michael so much, despite his problems with alcohol, and of course, he had a breathing problem from being gassed in the First World War. But on his shop as a teenager, he finally asked me if I'd like to work three or four days a week for minimum pay, am I right? Experience in the real world. He didn't think I lived in that, but one of the great scenes every August would be a couple of other attractive young men who were assistants. We would be just fooling around the shop, and suddenly a Cadillac with Texas license plates would pull into the Carmichael Moose fishing tackle shop. And like a rocket, Bob was out of his chair, all men would walk to unsuspecting Texas saying, hey, we hear that this trout fishing is quite something. We sure like to take a crack at it. Well, if they got out of there for less than $1,000, we'd fail. There was nothing that we didn't sell. They had debts, they had to have a way to where we didn't sell them, but as we sold the boots, because we were scared to death that they'd drown. The fly rods were the finest, the reels were hardies, the lines were silk. Well, the leaders were silk gut, believe it or not, with the little round, the little boxes that you put the silk worm leaders in kept them wet so that they weren't stiff in the morning, clippers, creals, hats, bandanas, you name it, we sold it to them. After we got them underway, we'd always have a couple of guides go with them and get them, you know, it's not like you can just pick up a fly rod and begin to cast your flail, obviously. But the point I want to make about these three shops, and the influence they had, not only inside, the fishing inside Yellowstone National Park, that was in those days, non-parallel, is the impact that they made on the surrounding countryside, which was still dominated by worms, salmon eggs, and a vast variety of spools and flatfish and spinners. Fly fishing was what they lived for, what they believed in it, what they... This was the beginning of a change, a change that has manifest itself now into one of the biggest bonanzas, as rod companies, reel companies, line companies, every conceivable piece of equipment or catalogs that must cost a frigging fortune to the friggers. Hey, Jack, to page the fascinating things most of which you do not need, but nevertheless are attractively shown. I was very fortunate and unfortunate at the same time of being the one reed brother, I guess I was quiet, gentle, my two eldest and two younger were much more difficult. I was sent to live with my grandmother reed in Denver every August. August trips were as free from official duties, official duties being that she has something to do every day as one of the great philanthropists in Denver. Her chauffeur, Louis Wecker, had saved gas all during the week and we headed out to nearby ranches where we put up, I couldn't cast very well, but I caught my first trout with him and the excitement of fishing western rivers just grew on daily newspaper. I was fascinated by the pictures of strings of dead trout. And there was a store downtown Denver that I really assisted that my grandmother allow us to stop there on the way back to luncheon where they had a big freezer box outside the store where the three or four biggest trout caught the previous weekend or week were displayed. And I was looking at these absolute monsters with my eyes popping out. This is long before anybody considered the ethics of sport fishing. It was you caught fish to eat and you didn't put them back. The more fish that you caught, the greater angler you were considered to be more was better than fewer. Catch and release had never been heard of but probably have been considered heretical. A new generation of fly fishermen came along beginning in the 60s. And the western trout fishing really revolves around the abundance of wild trout and the three men who promoted the sport of fly fishing. Dan Baylor, Bob Carmichael and the only one and only buddler. I'm going to conclude my remarks about the possible threats to wonderful, the wonderful world of wild trout later in my remarks. First, my wife insisted that I tell you about my third day as assistant secretary of interior. I had let go of all the previous staff on day two. They were the sons of major campaign contributors. They were all crack shots and pretty good fishermen. They didn't know how to spell the word environment. And I had told the president that I was cleaning shop and I wanted to bring in the professionals from the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service until I could recruit my own staff. The first meeting with Nixon, I guess, is worth recounting. He looked across the desk in the Oval Office and said, you're quite famous in Florida, aren't you? I said, well, I'm either famous or infamous depending upon which side of the coin you want to look at my record. He said, I know all about you. That's why I have two appointed assistant secretary. Now I'm going to tell you something, Ray. I really don't give a damn about any environmental issue. All I want is a good record. And John Erichman is my aide to see that I get a good record. And you are to be in close contact with him. He was a former land use planning lawyer from Seattle and he has a very strong environmental ethic and he will be your contact in the White House. Now your secretary, Roger Morton, is an Easterner from Maryland. They don't know a damn thing except waterfowl, striped bass, but he's a jolly fellow who the Congress likes. And you are going to like it very much. So I've known him for years, Mr. President. I'm crazy about him and you're wrong. He's a very knowledgeable and wise man when it comes to animal management and the management of the national park system. Well, tell me what your first three priorities are going to be. I said, Mr. President, I'm going to form a team of experts and have a executive order written banning the use of 1080 in the western states forever. And that I will have an accompanying EIS that will withstand any legal challenge that the wool growers put up. There was a pause and he said, you know, I understand that it's a terrible pleasant. My wife has told me on numerous occasions that the coyote dies very slowly. And I said, it's not only the coyote, Mr. President, it's bears and wolverines and bobcats is anything that touches one of these baits loaded with 1080. It's a terrible chemical. It should never have been invented and now it should be banned and you're the man to do it. Well, he said, I don't have that many friends among the wool growers the hell with ban. He said, what's the second objective? I said, I will have another team working that will bring in, it'll take a little bit longer, a ban order plus a complete environmental impact statement banning DDT from any use in the United States. Oh, he said, that won't please John Ola very much. He's my biggest campaign supporter and he makes DDT. Gleaming back in the charity, he said, the more I think about it, the more I like it. He calls every day telling me how I should run the presidency. Screw it. Well, now what next, Mr. Reed and Nathaniel, maybe she said, and I said, well, I'm gonna put a team together and select the very, very best lands in Alaska. We're allowed to pick 85 to 88, maybe 90 million acres of land for permanent possession of the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Mr. President, this is a chance of a lifetime to emulate Petty Roosevelt. This is the last chance that a huge piece of federal land, Alaska, can be subdivided into national parks and national wildlife recognition and additions to the National Forest, which is a joke. And he said, that will take time. Tie up Alaska, you know that. May tie up some important minerals and may tie up some more oil. Second, only to Petty Roosevelt. How they're like that, I think. Well, they're very forward side desk. Today, the transfer of power to President James Earl Carter. And the reason President Ford didn't sign the withdrawal is that Donald Rumsfeld was chief of staff, told him it was not presidential authority, but it was the authority of the Congress. Of course, all the withdrawal order did was to give time for the Congress to make the difficult decisions. And all I can tell you is I had a group of young men working in an office adjacent to mine seven days a week for four and a half years with the greatest experts on Alaska. Not only in the federal government, but from Alaska who smuggled themselves in from the Sierra Club where Dr. Wehberg was an acknowledged expert on the Alaska ecosystems. But we had everybody who was really knowledgeable of fish wildlife, scenic values to come up with a master plan. And when Cecil Anders became, Jimmy Carter became, President Cecil Anders became secretary, he asked me to come back and work for him for two months for nothing. Didn't even get my room paid for it. And he said, I love Cecil Anders, he said, it's a great plan. Problem is, it's got to be Jimmy Carter and my plan. And so you've got to give me some names of experts because I've got to add about eight million more acres to the withdrawal. And with that, I can then say, it's ours, I said, fine, let's just get it done, Cecil. And so we pulled together some of the retiring members of the expert team and we added a million here, a half a million there, 250 there. And the president signed the withdrawal order. And to show you the incredible change in the American system of government, 30% of the sponsors in the Senate were Republicans. Now, I don't mean that they were Rocky Mountain Republicans, but they were from Maine to Connecticut to Delaware, Maryland, John Shachey and Rhode Island was the leader and we passed this monumental act. The likes of which will never be seen again. I always kid Cecil, he never mentions that all the work was done for him ahead of time, but that's all right, at a certain age, you don't remember your successes, you only remember your failures. As I was leaving the president's office, he said, I understand you made some kind of a deal with Rodgers, Morton and John Ehrlichman that you could pick your own stat. And I said, yes, that is the deal. I really didn't come to Washington to go on the cocktail circuit. I've got three young children, I'm a workaholic and I want to pick a stat with widespread expertise, unlike anything in interior or many of the other federal agencies I've ever seen. And I can do it, Mr. President, I can send out the word and I can interview, even if it takes 12, 14-hour days, I can be fully staffed in 30 days. There was a little son of a low-grown. And he said, John Ehrlichman, I'll bet he picks all Democrats. I persevered by the addition of two great young men, experienced in government, loyal, became my Japanese, and then we added the very, very best. I didn't want a big stat, I was allowed a big stat, I didn't want, I wanted a stat that worked so hard that they never fought over who got that issue. And it worked. Right away quit, we were confronted with a whole series of adventures that were going on in the administration quietly, and I had to get up to speed in her. These included the Alaska Land Act, the Clean Water Act, the Beginnings of Writing Clearly, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, numerous regulations on the discharge of sewage and industrial waste into the Great Lakes, just think of sewage alone. All sewage in Florida, from Palm Beach to the Keys, and from Tampa to Nichols, ran raw into the sea every day. Eight to 10 billion gallons. The health department maintained that dilution was the cure for pollution. The amazing thing about Nixon is that he decided that he really wanted to get ahead on the sewage program so that despite the continuing war in Vietnam, came up with a program through John Orkman and Russell Train that offered every town, every county, every state, 90% of the money needed to build new, highly, brilliantly designed sewage treatment funds. And the towns and cities and counties had only five years to begin to work and complete or the federal funds would dry up. And so it was a madhouse, but it was one of the most exciting periods for sewage control in our nation's history. Can you imagine that in the Great Lakes, Chicago was a culprit too, into Lake Michigan. You can't believe the gallonage of raw sewage that was being discharged San Francisco, but you name it, Los Angeles, but you name it, everywhere in this country, we had failed ourselves, our children, by releasing massive amounts of raw sewage that obviously had every kind of creepy bug in it that you could, I often used to say, out loud, always got good press, but got hateful letters. Everybody would join in the effort if they all of a sudden came down with red spots. Not popular, not popular statement. I had a great governor and he threatened all the communities that didn't want to play with me. Mouth feces, misfeasance, non-feasance, and slowly but surely, we caught up in Florida. Well, I had the most extraordinary experience, three days in office. I had known Ambassador Del Brannon of the Soviet Union for many years because he came to Jupiter Island as a guest of, senior moment, of a great, great man who I will come up with, April Harriman, and he was a keen, nutty bird. He had one of the greatest lifeless of birds you ever laid eyes on. And I took him out in my skiff and showed him at least five birds on the Indian River that he did not have. And then I took him to Lake Okeechobee where he picked up probably 12 birds that he didn't have, including the Everglades kite. And then another year, I took him into the Everglades, which was on an airboat. He was absolutely totally dumbfounded. I might add his security officer was sure that they were gonna be killed out in the middle of the Everglades. And I was very nervous and figured his Glock or whatever it was, most of the time. I got a call from the ambassador at 5.45 in the afternoon, asking me if I wouldn't mind stopping by the embassy at 6.15 the same evening. My wife had taken a suite at the old Jefferson hotel. I emolled the hotel at that time. Now, fancy is complete. I wanted to stay at the A Adams and she beat over that. And it was nearly across the street. I drove my own car up to the front of the embassy. A vast mansion on Connecticut. And the two large goons were there holding a parking place open. I pulled in, I was escorted to the front door, which opened magically with a very handsomely dressed butler who said, secretary Reed, the ambassador is looking forward to seeing and I walked in and it had a ceiling that was twice as high as this, covered with puto shooting arrows and anchors. And it had a golden staircase going up, curving up to an upper level where the ambassador stood saying, Nathaniel, how wonderful to see you. Congratulations on being appointed and confirmed. Come on upstairs. I couldn't, I said, Mr. Vaster, what in the holy hell is this building? He said, oh, it's Mr. Pullman's estate. The railroad car, man, you know, I said, well, there had to be some explanation like that. I said, but don't you feel a little bit embarrassed about being from the Soviet Union? Shouldn't you be living in slightly meager quarters? Hell no, I haven't given my life to the government without living in marvelous quarters such as this. He said, come on in, in the library we're gonna have a glass of vodka. You never go anywhere in Russia without having a glass of cold vodka. Down the glass, he said, now Nathaniel, I've got something very serious to talk to you about. They walked into the living room and they're spread out on the dining room table. We're three long photographs. And on the photographs was the picture of two airplanes on skis. Easily read the serial markings with a dead grizzly bear being, a polar bear being skinned. The Russian headlands were very visible in the background. I said, Mr. Ambassador, what's this all about? And he said, I'll tell you exactly what it's about, Nathaniel. Your guides had killed the polar bears off on your side of the divide between our countries and now they're coming over onto our side where we have stopped all polar bear hunting until the numbers recover and they're killing our bears. Unless you, Mr. Ambassador, I actually don't find it. The polar bear is on a no kill list in the US. How the hell are they getting the polar bear skins back into the country? He said, Nathaniel, that's your job, not mine. I want you to stop the killing of my bears. There was a pause and he said, I'm serious. Somebody's gonna have their ass shot. So I wrapped the photographs up, put them in my car, drove home, go to the Hitchhiker's and then went back to the office at seven o'clock in the morning and called the chief of enforcement of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the director to my office immediately and discussed how long this had been going on and what did we know? Who were the outfitters? Who were the gods? How did they advertise the killing of a polar bear? The ability to kill a polar bear. At about 8.15, my wonderful secretary came in and said, there are two gentlemen from the FBI who are looking forward to speaking to you. I said, ask them to come in. The two gentlemen came in and said, what were you doing in the Russian embassy last night? And I said, I was invited by Ambassador Dabrin to come and take a look at some photographs of polar bears that have been shot by American gunners, flown by American parlots, handled by American outfitter, a outfitter, being skinned on Russian ice. And they said, that's the most extraordinary story we've ever heard. And I said, well, that's what I was there for. Would you like to see the picture? So I had it on roll. And they said, thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Did you know that there's a rule that if you visit the Russian embassy, you should call this following number to let the FBI in Washington know what you were doing? I said, I never heard, nobody breathed me on that one. So I said to my secretary, isn't that extraordinary? I never heard of it. And 15 minutes later, the dramatic voice of Henry Kissinger comes on the line. Oh, man, what is going on with the Russians, with polar bears, what the hell is it all about? Henry, here is the situation. So I explained the situation. He was in the aid to come up with the president. And he said, well, this is very, very serious. And you must get a handle on it immediately and arrest all the people who are involved and stop anybody going out to Russian ice because somebody's ass might get shot off. I said, curious that you mentioned it that way. And he said, that's exactly what ambassador told Brinn and said. He said, get at it quickly and report to me. 30 minutes later, the telephone rang. Who could it be but the Secretary of State's office? Oh, god. Secretary of State was Bill Rogers. The Secretary said, the Secretary of State would be pleased to see you as rapidly as possible. I gathered up my three photographs and had a wonderful, wonderful black driver, drove me to the State Department. I was ushered in, taken upstairs to the Secretary's office, unfolded the things, explained the situation to Bill Rogers who was a prince among men. And he said, how long is it going to take you to get on top of this? I said, I don't know. Mr. Sartre, I've been in office three days. I'm not sure I even know who the head of the Enforcement Division of the Fish and Wildlife Service is. I don't know what my rights are. I'm going and making a federal arrest in Alaska. I don't know how I would organize it. And he said, well, there'll be a meeting at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's office in two hours. So I turned up at the FBI two hours late with representatives from State Department and from the Office of the President. And the FBI came to my rescue by saying, we will come up with a person who is a near-to-well, wealthy young man who loves to kill things. And when the outfitter checks him out, he would check out, complete with a bank account, a well-known bank. And he will unquestionably be able to convigil his way into this horrible situation where we have the potential of a serious diplomatic affair. Several weeks later, I met the non-anity. He looked the part, talked the good line, and we put him in touch with the outfitter, who immediately offered him a helicopter flight into the Crow Reservation to kill a major elk, which he did. The second test was whether he would go to Southern California and shoot one of the rare desert sheep. The only thing I told him was, choose the oldest, broken-down ram that you can possibly see at the watering hole, which he did. And so the pièce de lever's, this song's probably, these were, you know, about $10,000 and $15,000. He was offered the opportunity to kill a polar bear for $75,000 and accepted it on the spot, went to Alaska, was flown out on the Russian ice, killed a polar bear, marked it very carefully with black, black, a substance called black, something, and which cannot be seen by a naked eye but can be seen by a black lamb. And we followed that bear from Alaska and lost it in California. And it took finding an insider at the, at the outfitters, who was also one of the world's most famous taxidermists, three brothers, that the bear was there, the bear pelt was there. So I got a federal search warrant. I wanted to go, the secretary said that it could be really serious trouble and I said, you know, father of three children, you're not going. And anyway, they got into a secret room, that was the bear, plus, I'm sorry to tell you, my tiger, lepers, jaguars, oslas, the list was endless. They had the case, and I consider it one of those most extraordinary three days of my life. Can you imagine such a thing happen when you're three days? I wanted to mention that getting going with the two directors of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the director of the Park Service, both were great men, Spencer Smith at the Fish and Wildlife Service, and George Archdog had an enviable record at the National Parks. I was 38, they were much, much older. Spencer was closing in on retirement. They had had a series of assistant secretaries who were interested in photography and who traveled to reputations at National Parks and really weren't very interested in environmental issues. The key was that the prior assistant secretary by one was Dr. Stanley Cain of the University of Michigan. No finer man ever lived, great ecologist. And he came to Washington with the National Park advisory board headed by Starker Leopold who had spent three years coming up with a plan to make sure that good science was part of the management of all national parks. George didn't feel as strong when he was Starker. Starker and I had met, but only briefly. In a one hour meeting, our chemistry was such that we became blood brothers right then and there. And I had two pictures of him in my office and I ruled the day that he died much too young to this day. Anyway, Starker and I determined that all superintendents acted as if they were God in their own park. And the thought of having a scientist advise them on the location or the rebuilding of a road or rehabilitation of a stream or anything else was an anathema to the superintendents. They had risen through the ranks, they had arrived at their full glory of, especially at the 12 great national parks. So this was tough going. But whilst Starker and I were visiting daily and Stan King, Stan dropped the bombshell on him, which was he had ordered the closing of all the garbage dumps in Yellowstone two years before, and this was the first summer where it would take full effect. This of course led to the confrontation with the Craighead brothers. And probably produced the greatest amount of scar tissue that I've ever had to encounter. The personal attacks on me as a non-scientist who supported the decision to end the feeding of garbage to bears was as controversial as anything. The majority of the bears had been killed The majority of the bears had been feeding on garbage most of their lives. What most people did not know is that when Siles brought their cubs into the garbage dumps, the boars, the old boar males, killed at least 50% of the year's cubs. There were terrible battles between bears who got the better pieces. While I was there, I visited Yellowstone Lake, which I had fished, but the worst thing that ever happened to me when I was imaginable was Jack Anderson, the famous superintendent, began opening ash cans around the landing areas of the lake, lake camp, lake hotel, the landing site. And they were filled with dead cutthroat trout. They had been caught, killed for a photograph, and then dumped. That was the beginning of my strong feeling that in a national park anyway, catch and release was going to be mandatory. The destruction of over 130 bears caused me to cry on every occasion. It wasn't the old bears, 15, 16, 17, 18 years of age with no teeth that couldn't possibly survive without garbage. It was these young salves that had been brought up on garbage, who brought their cubs to the garbage, who all of a sudden now were asked, demanded to go and make it in the wild. The Craigheads very wisely said they can't make it in the wild, but have lived on garbage all their life. We've got to continue the garbage program until our research program is completed, and then we'll wean them off garbage. Leopold's response was classic Leopold. Once a grizzly bear tastes human garbage, it's just like a mainline shot from a hero. He will never forget the delightful taste of human garbage, and he will do everything in his power to get more of it. If that means breaking into a tent, breaking into an RV, going into lake cottage, or any of the other cottages spread around the lake, we're in for a very, very tough time. But out there in the wild, which the Craigheads will not agree to, is a stable population of wild, free, rolling bears. And if we eliminate the garbage bear, on which the Craighead research project was completely crafted around, it was not crafted around wild bears, it was crafted around garbage dump bears. But that was hard to explain in the New York Times or the Denver poster. It was extremely, the Craighead brothers were considered gods by the National Geographic Society and it was tough. But we made it. And yesterday I happened to read in the New York Times that the count is 587 grizzly bears in all sections of Yellowstone National Park and the National Park systems that are adjacent to it. Back to Washington. The enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act against the Court of the Bureau of Reclamation to make them, and the DOT, to make them honestly state in an EIS what the downside of the preferred option was, was the battle of the war and caused the most litigation and the most division between the Chief of the Court of Engineering and the head of the Bureau of Reclamation and myself and the person, because I would simply send their EIS over to the Justice Department and ask them whether it was sufficient. The Justice Department would send it right back saying it's not sufficient. It does not adequately address the downside of that action. And when they got one binding, they got sued by the Sierra Club or by the Wilderness Society and came back. But it was a period of intense problems between Interior, my office and the two dam builders, channelizers. And I want you to know we want to heckle a lot more than nobody had used the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act before we did, and we used it in figures. We forced the Court to tell us ahead of time what their plans were on the Mississippi or around the Sacramento Delta. It didn't matter where. And the meetings at OMB were close to fisticuffs as the Court maintained. We're not going to do what Secretary Reid says we're going to do. And my answer was it's not me. It's what the law says that you are going to do. And by God, you're going to do it. So those were sort of fun years. I would come home that night. Not always in the best humor. The Clean Order Act was really interesting. I'll tell you one side story. As we were finishing up the problem of nutrient pollution across the country was just beginning to be understood. We certainly did not understand it in Florida because I helped write the Water Quality Rulebook in Florida and I can't find any mention of nutrients. I can find all kinds of descriptions of what happens when a waste water hits native plant material if there's a significant change in the plant material. You're polluting. We're not sure what you're polluting with but you're polluting. Well George Schultz, believe it or not, was the head of ORB. No fine man ever lived. And Russ Trenton and I met with him with the final bill of which his staff had very carefully examined and said this one's going to be tough. It takes on every sewer treatment plant, every industrial waste in the country. The industrial waste stream didn't get any kind of governmental support to get cleaned up. They could ride it off their taxes but they got no governmental support. I've told you that for a sewer treatment plant the feds were willing to put up 90% only if the project was either finished or so far along that it was so close to be finished that the local agency only had to put up 10%. It allowed us to move ahead on sewer control at a rate unforeseen in American history. The Clean Air Act was tough because of the cold fire burning big plants, some of which the Department of Interior had supported on Indian lands, Native American lands that were sprouting all kinds of waste, acid rain all over the place. New England was actually being devastated by acid rain. Nova Scotia had all of their East Coast rivers so acidified that salmon no longer all of them were great salmon rivers. All of them were neutered. There were no living critters in those rivers. They were neutral. The Endangered Species Act was principally written by Calvin and myself and with a great deal of assistance from a series of great men from the Fish and Wildlife Service and from experts in the subject of Endangered Species that came from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Stanford, who came and spent a day with us, read the Act carefully, carefully, carefully suggested word changes and actually I changed the word the night before went to print. After we got authorized by the President to be presented to Congress none of us really knew the full impact. I'm going to be honest with you that the Endangered Species Act would have. E.O. Wilson has said publicly that the passage of the Endangered Species Act was the single finest piece of environmental legislation in the 20th century. Now let me tell you it wasn't the easiest act on Act 1 let me give you the first two critters where lawsuits were filed the little snail dart on the little Tennessee that was going to be extinguished by a dam that the senior senator of Tennessee had been promised. That lawsuit went on and on and the Congress turned against the act because they thought we owe this dam to our good friend, the senator who's voted the right way for all these years and I kept saying the little T is the most remarkable drought stream in these yes it comes out from underneath the dam and that's why it's cool it has the greatest amount of mountains and mayflies of any river in the east it's as big as a river as some of the western rivers it has one of the great outstanding self-reproducing brown trout fisheries in the east the dam is nonsense it's to provide second housing around a reservoir and it was costing millions to dam up this beautiful stretch of water anyway when I thought that I had a chance the snail dive was found in four or five creeks elsewhere in the low Tennessee valley so that was gone so within a month of that came a permit in the eastern desert of California for pumping several million gallons of water from the desert aquifer that was right in the heart of where a little marvelous little fish called the desert pupfish lives in a hole has lived there for a million years ignored only asking to be left alone and now we were going to pump it dry and somehow my Christian ethic came to the top and I said no, we're not we're not in these positions to be the determiner of life and death of any critter on the face of this earth if they go extinct on their own they go extinct but in the United States with the Endangered Species Act if we can save them by God let's try I saw the permit was denied and the little guys are still in a hole a lot of my congressional friends think I'm out of my mind worrying about a little critter that means nothing to them whatsoever but has in my mind just as much right to be on the face of this earth as we do toward the end of my tour or middle of my tour Frank Richards and the head of fishers came into my office and said I've got a really superlative idea I think we need the great battle over the preservation of wild trout in the west is that the zenith there's an extraordinary moment where many competent biologists in the game and fish commissions of the western states are opposed to continuing stocking good old dumb hatchery fish in wild trout rivers we can prove in many cases that the stocking hatchery raised fish actually displaced wild fish to do more damage than good furthermore, here we are we're in the new era of catching release why the heck should we put dumb hatchery trout in beautiful streams that are supporting wild fish so we started with darker little hole joining me we started wild trout one which produced a fantastic outpouring of trout unlimited the fly fishermen who came from all over the United States to talk about in a series of symposia the problems and the possibility of managing more rivers not only on the Rocky Mountain West but in the east and in the south in the mountains of the south as wild trout fisheries I'll just tell you one short story I promise to keep you short the first paper was given by a young very intelligent very ardent fisheries biologist from the Montana Game and Fish who urged an end of stocking especially on the Madison you wanted to prove that there were ample numbers of wild trout in the Madison and sitting in the front row on the right five members of the Montana Game and Fish Commission and they looked very doored and I sent it out to Leopold do you think he'll survive the night? not only did he survive he continued his efforts and many rivers now are no longer stocked wild trout 2 was highlighted this speech this essay which he spoke should never be lost it was a condemnation of mismanagement by the Forest Service of the Neural Reclamation as regard to stream management within the National Forest within the boundaries of the National Lands managed supposedly by the BLR cattle had knocked down the banks of the streams cattle manure was in the streams the streams were no longer deep enough they were shallowed out by the collapsing banks and he gave a rip toward condemnation and urged that cattle be restrained from getting to these marvelous streams by allowing them to have water trials and other even dug out areas where the stream would go in and stay and literally bob wired the side of the rivers bud lily and I I should just finish up by saying the wild trout supposings continue to this day they're a significant part of management Starker and I were very impressed with biologists and then my friendship with bud lily that on private ranches there were spring creeks that were also being totally obliterated by allowing cattle to drink anywhere they wanted to the banks had been knocked down the streams were being filled in with silk the foliage on the side of the river of these wonderful spring creeks were being decimated by herds of animals and we said let's get out the word that a spring creek is a jewel if it's on your land it's a jewel not worthy of being broken down by cattle and companies were formed in Montana and Colorado even Wyoming which is when something good happens in Wyoming not ready to think these companies designed stabilization of the banks re-vegetating the size of the creek so that the mayflies on hatching had some place to go rather than miles of open hay and the tribe began to come back into these magnificent little jewels of spring creeks and the ranches began to quickly figure out that they could earn between $50 and $100 a day from anglers who were nutty enough to want to cast over some of the most difficult trout in the West it's been a huge success there is a problem of course and that is great new wealth in America has come and bought hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres in Montana Wyoming, elsewhere and have closed those lands off to the general public to finish I'm staying out of that urban I want to make sure that the maximum amount of public water remains but I recognize the right of a landowner to spend a lot of money restoring a spring creek and enjoying it for himself or his friends but if he was wise he would set up a section of that spring creek where the general public could fish either for a fee or free but only a certain number of them per day now I suppose I really ought to go back to or attempt to go and discuss what I'm here for very very briefly because everybody in this room knows exactly what must be done if we're going to continue the great legacy of trout management in the United States we've got to be well aware of weather change of weather change it's changing and all of you know we've got to assist upon minimum water flows we should be very cautious on new weeds and of course a disease like whirling disease there's so much at stake I read the paper this morning that Montana had enjoyed a year last year of tourism, fishing, hunting that was worth billions you did live except for today yesterday when I landed in a snowstorm at this time of the year you live in God's country that's why you're here but you're also stewards God stewards we all are we owe an enormous responsibility of what we do and how we handle ourselves in our lifetimes oh sure I know for my children and my grandchildren but I feel the responsibility even in 80 years of age that our generation still has time to make significant changes about wildlife management whether it be wolves or grizzly bears or a caribou moose, you name it but above all the great legacy of trout fishing the library named for Bud the collection of 10,000 books making it one of maybe three libraries in the world the best the absolute best and every one of you in this room should be so proud of your university and your library for this great collection that continues to grow it is a tremendous credit to the people of Montana and I thank you for the opportunity of sharing a few old stories from an old man who remembers too many things and loves to tell stories I have enormously enjoyed your presence and I wish you all a good night and Godspeed ask me a question I'm so scarred up from years in front of testifying in front of congress I'm sure I can handle almost anyone maybe one or two I can think of that might be giving me some significant trouble right now over lake trout Yellowstone Lake I can see I'm among peaceful people any questions? alright, yes yes, good question that was part of the international discussions on national parks I'd share I'd share that committee and the American side was absolutely it was part of our American heritage was to fish in a national park the Europeans did not agree although I'd note that a number of national parks in Europe now allow sport fishing on a catch and release spaces if you read the act and the intent of the act if we leave it untrammeled like the wilderness act an even better condition than when we found it I don't see how sport fishing under the rules of catch and release is a tremendous deficit against the American concept of the national parks systems I've fished for giant catfish in rivers in the national parks in East Africa that's a great success catch and release I think I did serve going up to a crocodile, quite a large crocodile came and joined me and asked if I wouldn't mind sharing his large catfish that I had and I said Mr. Cockadal I'll tell you what I'm going to take 20 running steps as fast as I can go and my catfish is your dinner with my pleasure smash that was the end of that catfish yes why do you think Republican leaders are all against the environment ohhhh I'm a Republican in name and I'm registered because my county is a solid Republican county so I like to vote about all the primaries and I might add that our county beat the most hard right wing congressmen running for office this year in Florida he lost 900,000 votes in our county enough to for him to lose and we elected a very bright young Democrat and he has had a most remarkable start and it makes the Republican party in Florida look like a bunch of dinosaurs only a few of them from the Dade County, Miami area have ardently supported Everglades restoration the rest of them sit on their cans and worry about getting re-elected it's the most astonishing thing the change in Washington is so dramatic for my dad I can't honestly give you a description more than this in the 70s everybody lived in Washington they dined together even if they didn't like each other's points of view they saw each other can you imagine that? the Democrats have been in charge for years but they gave time equal time to the Republicans people like John Chafee and Mack Matthias take out 90% of what they wanted because they were respected Scoop Jackson from Washington made it a point to give the ranking Republican on the Senate Interior Committee more than equal time it began to slip as the Democrats this is not very nice as the Democrats got old in the South and they were the party of segregation and they were replaced by a very conservative Republican the party that I knew worked for, my mother was a state committee man woman from Connecticut father worked for Dwight E. Eisenhower without hope I don't recognize my party I can't tell you why we've lost the great conservation ethic that goes back to Teddy Roosevelt and even the worst critic of Nixon would have to agree that those years laid the fundamental basis for all environmental progress that we've made since the 70's I can't tell you Brown Raid was a channelled fellow when discussing the necessity of stopping upstream logging on Redwoods Creek where we had spent a fortune protecting the avenue of the tall trees he turned to me and he said well doesn't one Redwood tree really look like another tree? I spent a day with President Bush who was a great family friend trying to get him to sign off on the extruder, the TED the turtle extruder from the shrimp nets with the Republican senators from the South calling and saying we were going to put the shrimping business and the golf out of business if we put these trap doors on the shrimp nets to allow the turtles the new net had been designed by experts in the National Marine Fisheries Service we had tried them for three years we hadn't lost a turtle and hadn't lost the shrimp, the shrimp ball went right to the bottom of the net they didn't try to go out the trap door the president got out his tent three times to sign the bloody thing three times another senator would call in and he'd hold and I spent the whole spring day there into the night before he signed the order to run home I don't know where the enthusiasm is or the lack of enthusiasm which is so disappointing there's so many things to do I actually have been working on everybody's issues so long that I actually know what needs to be done it's just not that complicated it is not rocket science money and some new engineering I'm afraid that the core engineering at the moment is pathetic they've lost their senior engineers they've got a bunch of younger engineers who have never worked on flat land they haven't got a clue how the system works so we're going to be making some very definitely new proposals to the congress to get the day of thing going again but it's expensive and here's the moment here's the moment in my life when the cold war is finally over what do we do we go attack Iraq and Afghanistan I've been in Afghanistan it's not worth it every life loss there's not worth it we went to Iraq to get some oil to think I'm not even sure what we got we didn't get what we wanted we got Saddam Hussein so all the money one trillion dollars one trillion dollars of our tax money off budget off budget was spent in Afghanistan and Iraq one trillion dollars and it's going to cost close to five hundred million billion dollars to re-equip the army because so much of the equipment has been ruined by the sands of of the Iraq desert and the Afghan woods and so our country and our young people are in trouble because we've overspent and we don't know how to get out of the habit and we've passed a very very expensive healthcare bill all of us at my age are very concerned about affordable healthcare but it must be affordable for the taxpayers as well you can't get ten members of the senate to agree on anything and so we're in the most difficult political period probably since the 1850s leading up to the Civil War where the country was so bitterly divided we are bitterly divided and I don't hold out much promise that we will reunite because we must thank you for the privilege of addressing Freshman, Sadden, the atrium invite you to continue the conversation there, thanks