The first thing I thought of when I read the story about Iowa’s Lake Delhi dam break was how interesting it would be to see what monster fish were stranded in those shallow waters between the mud flats…but I know this was a tragedy for those who had (and lost) homes around the lake and for those who loved to fish it.

As I read the story, though, it occurred to me just how many of these “record rain events” and “catastrophic floods” we have been experiencing across the US.  Why so many, and why are the costs- for just one example, the Nashville floods in May this year have cost an estimated $1  billion- going through the roof?

An answer can be found in the Associated Press story about the Delhi Lake dam break:
"More water came down than ever had been planned before," he said. "Things were different when it was built, the watersheds were different, field drainage was different, we're working with a situation that the designers of the dam couldn't have foreseen." End Quote

Indeed we are, and not just at Lake Delhi. In the US today, we are filling wetlands, clearing forests along creeks, channelizing creeks, building dikes along rivers, entombing thousands upon thousands of acres under impermeable surfaces - concrete, asphalt, the parking lot at the new super-store, etc. These projects are killing off our wildlife, ruining our fishing, poisoning our waters with run-off, flooding our homes, sucking away billions of taxpayer dollars, and strangling our economy with ever increasing insurance costs. In essence, you and I are paying to destroy our own fishing and hunting and water quality, and then paying again when those projects result in catastrophic floods that should have never happened.  And it will get worse, much worse, if we continue on the path we are on now, forever reacting to the consequences of our ignorance, and never trying to create a proactive solution.

It is not as if there are no answers. In 1998, after years of research following the disastrous Midwest floods of 1993, a team from the National Wildlife Federation released a study called Higher Ground which concluded that one-time, voluntary buyouts of properties that have been flooded over and over would be a more cost-effective means of dealing with flooding than the continued diking, damming and channelizing that make the problem worse, and cost more billions every year in insurance costs and federal and state disaster funds (some of them spent to rebuild the homes and businesses in the bull’s eye floodplain that took them in the first place).

Simply put: you take the money you would have spent killing our watersheds and the public money used to rebuild wrecked homes in places where they will soon be wrecked again, and you offer the people living and working in those floodplains a market-value price for their property. It’s a voluntary plan- no one in the floodplain has to sell unless they want to.  The goal is to create a buffer zone- restore the natural floodplains- along our creeks and rivers. You protect the waters from run-off that way, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, and you increase public access to fishing and hunting and open spaces. You save billions in disaster relief and insurance payouts in the future. You protect drinking water supplies and prevent increasing flood damage downstream. For those who would cry “socialism!” I ask this: which is more socialistic: to offer taxpayer money to landowners in a willing buyer-willing seller relationship, one time, saving taxpayer money for generations to come, or continue to use billions in taxpayer money, year after year to subsidize the destruction of our rivers, and to pay for development that will have to be replaced, at taxpayer expense, over and over?     

It is a mystery to me why our country has not embraced this plan wholeheartedly. It is as if we simply cannot accomplish the things that are most important, while we quibble endlessly and energetically about the useless and the inane. There is a price for that failure. I’d rather my children did not have to pay it.  --Hal Herring

No news was good news for Louisiana's estuaries last weekend when Tropical Storm Bonnie fell apart.

Instead of evaluating the worst-case scenario feared since the beginning of BP's oil disaster - a storm surge pushing oil deep into coastal wetlands - sportsmen Monday were getting back to fishing. And fishing has been great.

Flying out to the Deepwater Horizon site Sunday I spotted only tiny patches of weathered oil. There was thin sheen in some places, but the Gulf from the drilling sight from the delta of the Mississippi River looked like it always does after a weekend of windy weather.

But nervous times are far from over. We may have dodged another bullet, but the opposition has plenty of ammo left. We're only just approaching the peak of hurricane season. Water temperature in the Gulf is above the average, hitting about 85 degrees, which means there's plenty of raw material for storm development. And two unusual atmospheric events that have kept storms at bay probably won't last much longer, meteorologists say.

The first is an upper level low pressure system that has been sheering the tops off thunderstorms in the Gulf; this is what turned Bonnie into a nice lady. The other is the positioning of a high pressure cell - the so-called Bermuda High - a little farther west than is normal.

So it's back to catching specks and reds, flounder and drum, and preparing for teal season -- until the next scare. Because with more than 150 million gallons of oil released into the Gulf over the last four months, no one is sure what to expect when that first storm surge rolls in.

In the late 90’s I was working as a forestry subcontractor, planting trees on clearcut paper company and National Forest lands in Montana and Idaho. My last full season (April-June), my work partner and I were the only native English-speakers on the thirty-or-so man crew. It was a good season, and we made good money. Also, I got to know a bunch of Mexican treeplanters who became my friends, and I learned something about what it is like to come from a country whose government has failed, in almost every measurable way, to govern on behalf of its people.

The guys I worked with were mostly legal, and most of them were from rural Mexico, where intense physical labor like treeplanting is the norm, and the ability to bust out the work from can’t see to can’t see is the measure of a man. Almost all of them were interested in hunting and fishing, and in the wildlife that we saw every day at work. Mule deer were ‘buras,’ whitetails were ‘cola-blancas,’ trout were ‘truchas’ and admired for their beauty. Bighorns- ‘borregos’ – were much respected, and the tracks that followed them- of the puma were studied with fascination. Where these men came from, hunting was the sole province of rich sports with guides who hunted protected private lands. Owning a big game rifle- even possessing ammo- was prohibited, and there was hardly any game, anyway, since a hungry nation thinks of the soup pot first – just as we did during the Great Depression. Fishing in Mexico, other than in the saltwater, has much declined due to pollution, overfishing, lack of resource protection. These were country people, though, and their connections to the landscape and the weather, and the essentials, clean water, open spaces, fertile ground, were strong.

In forty years, a low estimate of the US population will be 438 million. 29% of those people- one out of three- will be of Hispanic origin. Of the 117 million new Americans, 67 million will be immigrants, and fifty million will be the children of those immigrants. These will be people who come from nations where conservation is basically unknown. Where environmental protection is mostly a sham, or unknown. Where hunting and fishing are no longer a part of the culture.

My friends on the treeplanting crew had no idea why there were herds of mule deer on the Idaho hillsides. Why there were elk in the high country, or trout in rivers that ran almost as clear as they did in the days of Lewis and Clark. They had no idea why you could fill up your Gott cooler from the pump in the campground or the tap at the hotel, and drink your fill. For that matter, they had no idea why US policemen did not stop them, drag them from their cars and demand they pay a fine of all they had, for an invented infraction. The people who will share America with us have no idea how we got all the things they have come here to enjoy. Why our country is not like the one they fled. Unless we reach out to them, recruit them into hunting and fishing, they will never learn. Even if some of them become environmentalists here, sharing our awe of the rivers and forests and wildlife, they will never have the deep connections to, and understanding of, wildlife and fish that hunters and fishermen have.

We need a Spanish language Field and Stream, a Spanish-speaking Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a Spanish language Trout Unlimited, BASS, National Trapper’s Association, and on and on. State agencies need to publish hunting and fishing regulations and information in Spanish. Do I believe that every immigrant should adopt English as their primary language? Yes. But my belief does not change the reality that many of those who would buy hunting and fishing licenses, who could become invested in conservation, speak Spanish. And reality is what we are here to discuss.

So far, the trend has gone the other way. Only Texas has a Spanish language version of its hunting and fishing regs, and that one is only available online. Arizona had its regs in Spanish until 2006, when the expense of producing a translated copy of regs that change every year was deemed too much. Now, Arizona has a law that state agencies will produce their documents only in English- a seemingly reasonable law that will backfire (as so many laws based in how we wish the world would be, rather than as it is, tend to do). California has no Spanish language hunting and fishing regs, and its bilingual information specialist now works elsewhere. New Mexico has no Spanish version of its hunting and fishing regs. All bemoan the lack of recruitment of hunters and anglers, the declining license revenues that are, in all states but Missouri and Arkansas, (more on this later) the sole support for fish and wildlife programs and habitat in our country.

We can fight illegal immigration, and we must. We can demand that immigrants speak English, and we must. But we cannot crawl down the rabbithole of prejudice. We cannot fail to widen the tent of hunter and angler conservationists, or we will watch the tent and all it has sheltered, blow away. We will become like the places that our newest citizen fled.

While we are at it, let’s print 12 million US Constitutions in Spanish, too, and in Urdu, Pashto, Arabic- whatever it takes. There is no time to waste.