State health and wildlife officials released a new round of fish consumption advisory warnings Tuesday morning. Look for a more detailed story in the paper edition of the Tribune Wednesday and on the home page. There are not a lot of surprises here. As the state gets better at sampling and finds more money for testing, the number of warnings will undoubtedly climb. Click here for more information on fish consumption advisories in Utah.

Here are new advisories:
Jordanelle Reservoir (Wasatch County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Smallmouth Bass. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.
Porcupine Reservoir (Cache County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Brown Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to one 8-ounce meal per month.
Sand Hollow Reservoir (Washington County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Largemouth Bass. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.
Rock Creek, below Upper Stillwater Reservoir (Duchesne County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Brown Trout 12-inches and larger. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.
East Fork Sevier River, between Otter Creek and Piute Reservoirs (Piute County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Brown Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.
Pine Creek (Garfield County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Brown Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.

Here are waters that have revision on the warnings:
Joe’s Valley Reservoir (Emery County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Splake Trout that are 12 inches and larger. Adults should limit their consumption to one 8-ounce meal per month.
Newcastle Reservoir (Iron County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Rainbow Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to one 8-ounce meal per month.
Upper Enterprise Reservoir (Washington County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Rainbow Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to one 8-ounce meal per month.
Weber River near Morgan (Morgan County) - Pregnant women and children should not eat Brown Trout. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8- ounce meals per month.
Calf Creek (Garfield County) - Pregnant women and children should limit their consumption of Brown Trout to two 4-ounce meals per month. Adults should limit their consumption to two 8-ounce meals per month.
— Brett

Made a trip to Snowbird with the family Sunday afternoon to check out the colors and pick up some German food at the 36th Annual Oktoberfest. The colors were great and this could be the peak time for Wasatch Front canyons. Oktoberfest was packed, but fun, as usual. This is the last weekend to get up to Snowbird and hear the Alpenhorns.

— Brett

The Utah State Legislature handled the budget deficit by announcing Friday a series of cuts throughout the various state agencies. Utah State Parks and the Division of Wildlife Resources each took hits.

The DWR met the requests to reduce its budget by 3 percent by cutting back on planned turkey transplants, reduced the money used to manage the Range Creek Wildlife Management Area and cutting money to buy seed to benefit wildlife on private land. The cut equaled $244,000 in funds to the DWR. Officials say the cut will not have a significant impact on operations.

State Parks was also asked to submit a 3% cut, which totaled around $370,000. The cuts will reduce in-state and out-of-state travel, the marketing budget and reduce the hiring of seasonal employees.

— Brett

One reason Rep. Jim Matheson keeps getting re-elected as Utah's lone Democrat in Congress is the poor quality of the Republicans running against him. Outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists may get upset with Matheson's support of issues such as opening the state to oil shale development or privatizing public lands, but they continue to vote for him because the alternatives are so much worse.

This year, the Republicans are running a relatively unknown named Bill Dew against Matheson. Listening to one of Dew's first
radio advertisements was enough to confirm that as bad as Matheson is on some of these issues, Dew would be far worse. The radio ad shows Dew is still fighting over the designation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and wants it rescinded so its coal reserves can be developed. That's just great. We're going to ruin one of the most beautiful places on earth and one that contributes millions of dollars in tourist money to Utah's economy to strip mine coal to contribute to global warming. Even most of the locals have got beyond the designation and have accepted the monument. Is this the best the Republicans have got?
— Tom

Rep. Jim Matheson’s all-out support of oil shale development in eastern Utah is disappointing. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an oil company that already owns a lease actually prove that the technology to turn rock into oil is economically viable before opening up even more land to potentially damaging mining? And where do oil shale supporters think the massive amounts of water needed to free the oil from shale is going to come from in the already over-allocated Colorado River Basin?
Since much of this mining activity would take place in the Book Cliffs where hunting groups have worked for years to protect big game habitat, hunters would do well to be asking Utah’s lone Democratic congressman some serious questions about how such development will be mitigated.
Given his support of selling off public lands in Washington County, Matheson certainly doesn’t look like much of a friend to outdoor enthusiasts or sportsmen.
— Tom

It may not look like much now, but Division of Wildlife Resources fishery staff turned the water on Friday at the new warmwater fish hatchery at the Lee Kay Center in West Valley City. Warmwater fisheries cooridnator Drew Cushing has been working hard to get the hatchery operational and to secure disease-free muskies. The muskies are scheduled to arrive in a month and the DWR will soon be at Recapture Reservoir near Blanding catching pike to cross with them to create tiger muskies for Utah anglers.

The Utah Bass Federation, Rocky Mountain Anglers and Blue Ribbons Fisheries Council have also been major players in the hatchery. Here's a link to a story I did on the hatchery in July.

As reported in this blog last week, Trout Unlimited made an announcement asking the fishing industry to stop making felt-bottom waders to help control the spread of aquatic nuisance species and fish disease.

Simms announced Wednesday at the FlyFishing Retailer Expo in Denver that it would no longer use felt effective with the 2010 line of boots. TU had asked for the industry to be felt-free by 2011, so kudos to Simms for making it happen earlier.

“We know felt is not the only material that has spread invasive species and disease,” Simms president K.C. Walsh Walsh said in a news release. “But felt is surely part of the problem. At Simms, we’ve decided to be part of the solution.”

Simms also announced at the show that they will be using Vibrom-soled boots with "Clean Stream" technology, built from material that make it harder for micoorganisms to attach to wading gear.

— Brett

I took a little Sunday drive with the family this past weekend and was surprised, I'm not sure why, to see some fall colors emerging. One of our favorite spots is the area around Wasatch Mountain State Park in Midway. We stopped in Heber to grab some lunch and then had a picnic next to the lake before driving a bit up the Guardsman Pass Road. I've also heard that Sardine Canyon is approaching its peak of fall colors. Here's a link to Tom's story "Autumn Splendor" in Sunday's Away section.

Brett

After two scares at the two largest reservoirs in the state it appears that the much-dreaded mussel invasion has officially landed at three waters in the Uintah Basin. Preliminary results show the presence of mussel larvae in Pelican Lake, Red Fleet Reservoir and at Midview (sometimes called Boreham Reservoir) on the Ute Tribal Lands.

Read my story here.

Brett

Yellowstone National Park officials sent out a new release Friday warning visitors to the park to stay clear of elk. The release reads "The aggressive behavior of these animals brings with it a threat to people and property. Visitors viewing elk frequently get too close for their own safety. Several vehicles are damaged by elk every year [during mating season each fall], and on occasion people who are charged by bulls are injured."

Anyone who has visited Yellowstone in the fall, especially in the Mammoth area, has seen the stupidity of people getting much too close to aggressive bull elk. Yellowstone officials also want to remind visitors that they can be handed a citation and fined for not staying at least 25 yards away from wildlife.

For proof that some people don't read the warnings handed out at the Yellowstone entrance stations click here. Park officials say they have created a new elk viewing safety video and that it will be posted here as soon as possible.

Brett

The Division of Wildlife Resources probably has better things to spend money on than repairing the leaky fish tanks in the 99-year-old Utah State Fair wildlife building. That said, I really missed seeing the fish and some of the other wild critters that have been on display in this building over the years.

It might have been a good idea to feature all of the divisions in the Department of Natural Resources at the fair this year instead of just wildlife, but the displays were pretty lame and not near as interesting as the old wildlife exhibits.

Call me a traditionalist, but I say bring back the live fish for the 100th anniversary of the building next year.
Tom

Some of the best outdoor experiences I have had in my life have involved adventures in southern Utah’s famous “slot canyons.” Few places in the world are as beautiful. And there is a real sense of adventure involved in exploring them, especially if you have to use ropes or webbing to access them as I have done with hiking buddy Steve Lewis on a few occasions.

Yet, there is also an element of danger to them as was sadly discovered this week when a California couple died in Egypt 3 in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Flash floods like the one that drowned 60-year-old Kathy and Gordon Chapple of Walnut Creek, Calif., can come from nowhere and put people in trouble quickly.

Most of the time I avoid hiking slot canyons in August or September though I did hike the Subway and the Zion Narrows this time of year but not without a good weather report and going with friends who were savy canyoneers and really knew what they were doing. That said, the drownings remind us all just how quickly a fun adventure can turn deadly, and sometimes we are just vulnerable to the elements.

On Labor Day, for example, I was playing golf with my brother, nephew and brother-in-law at Meadowbrook when a lightning storm hit suddenly. There we were, carting around golf clubs (lightning rods?) when bolts of lightning began to hit way too close for my comfort. We scrambled for shelter but I have to admit I was more than a little frightened.

My chances of getting run over by a car crossing a city street, being killed in an auto accident or getting nailed on my motor
scooter (which has happened, actually) are far greater than getting hit by lightning, killed in a slot canyon by a flash flood or being mauled by a bear. Yet I take that chance every day.

I guess I’m a bit of a fatalist. I try not to do anything stupid like be on a golf course during a lightning storm or in a slot canyon during the monsoon season, but when your time is up, sometimes there isn’t a whole lot you can do.
Tom

Nearly everyone remembers what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. My experience had a somewhat outdoor element to it.

I flew into Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., late on the evening of Sept. 10 and rented a car to drive to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s beautiful training center in Sheperdstown, W.V. the next morning to give a speech to that agency’s public affairs specialists from around the U.S.

Listening to the radio while making the drive, I heard a sketchy report about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. As I checked into a room at the compound, a second plane hit and I noticed federal security personnel getting increasingly nervous. I didn’t know it at the time, but the training center was a “safe” area in case of a national emergency for the Secret Service and the Department of Interior.

By the time I got to my room, the Pentagon -- not all that far away -- had been hit and the other hijacked plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The full scope of what had happened was starting to sink in.

I had an early lunch and watched a big screen television in the sprawling complex. The group of close to a hundred people was called into the main auditorium early in the afternoon and told that we would have to leave in a couple of hours because our rooms would be needed. Since no planes were flying out, most hotel rooms in the area were already packed. There was lots of discussion about what we were going to do and where we would stay.

Organizers asked me to give my speech on how the public affairs officers could best deal with the media. As a thank you for coming, I received a small desk clock with the date of the conference on it that still sits on my desk. It was one of the most difficult speeches I ever had to give and I’m sure no one there remembers a word of it.

One of my sons worked for Starwood Hotels and got me one of the last rooms at a Sheraton in Tysons Corner, Va., where I stayed until the planes started to fly again on Friday. It was a weird travel experience. I went to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12 and the place was almost abandoned. I could park anywhere on the mall.

For some reason, I went to the National Art Gallery to see some Jackson Pollock modern art, the only time the drip paintings ever made some sense to me.

The next day, I got an assignment to try to interview Utah’s Congressional staff. All but Orrin Hatch agreed to meet with me and I had some interesting conversations, the most cordial being with Chris Cannon. I remember Jim Hansen coming out of a meeting in the basement of the Capitol, pulling a little Swiss Army knife out of sport coat pocket and realizing that he wouldn’t be allowed to take it on a plane with him.

As I left, there was a bomb scare and most of Capitol Hill was evacacuated. I got stuck for about two hours in a huge traffic jam on Pennsylvania Ave. near the White House and simply listened to what was happening, realizing life would never be the same again.

-- Tom

More than 250 Trout Unlimited officials have gathered at Snowbird this week. There will be numerous seminars and discussions, but the big news expected to come from Little Cottonwood Canyon is that the non-profit conservation organization has asked the fishing industry to do away with felt-bottomed wading boots because they can act like sponges, moving exotic and troublesome species like New Zealand mudsnails and the whirling disease parasite. Both have wreaked havoc on the trout populations in North America and across the world.


New Zealand apparently has banned felt altogther. Word is that most of the major industry officials have agreed to do go felt free by 2011. This is great news, but many of the companies already have alternatives to felt on the market. It would be great to see it happen earlier.


See my column on the ills of felt here.

Brett

The ruling Tuesday that Bonneville cutthroat trout would not be warranted a listing as a threatened or endangered species may seem like a negative to Utah state biologists, but in reality many see it as a victory. Their job, after all, is to protect wildlife and that includes keeping species from ending up on the list.

The Bonneville cutthroat has been petitioned several times for listing, but federal officials feel the population of Utah's state fish is doing well enough that the threatened label can be avoided; at least for now. Utah Division of Wildlife officials also prefer to keep the fish from being listed because it allows them to work on restoration efforts without the red tape that gets thick with federal involvement.

Here's a recent story on the recovery of the Bonneville cutthroat.

Brett

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision Tuesday to not list the Bonneville cutthroat — Utah’s state fish — as endangered did not sit well with everyone. Noah Greenwald, the Science Director for the Portland-based Center for Biological Diversity, was particularly unhappy with the decision for three different reasons. He said it reflected the Bush Administration’s new policy to only consider a species’ current range and not its traditional range, a fact that met the agency looked at only 65 percent of the trout’s traditional range.

Greenwald also said the agency only looks at isolated pockets of healthy fish without examing the species on a cumulative basis that might take into consideration problems such as competition with non-native trout, habitat degradation, and the number of secure populations. He said that, when the Southwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Rio Grande Cutthroat, which is similiar to the Bonneville, as endangered, it took those factors into the equation.

Finally, the scientist complained that the agency in only looking 20 years ahead ignores the long-term effects of climate change. Since the Bonneville cutthroat often inhabit small streams that can be affected negatively by drought and warming water temperatures, he said that could be a critical mistake.

Tom

There is an excellent new website offering an updated fall color report for southwestern Utah visitors. You can learn about autumn leaf displays in areas such as Brian Head, Panguitch Lake, Cedar Breaks, Duck Creek, Cedar City, Parowan Canyon, Kolob/Zion and other places in southwestern Utah.
Tom

The selfishness of modern society and lack of willingness to contribute to the common good always amazes me. That thought struck home last week when I covered the 75th anniversary celebration honoring the Civilian Conservation Corps. See the story here.

The program, funded in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, employeed 3,463,766 men who built 125,000 miles of road, 13,100 miles of food trails, did erosion control on 40 million acres, revegetated 814,000 acres of range, developed 900 state parks, worked on 52,000 acres of public campgrounds, and planted between two and three billion trees.

With unemployment increasing in the U.S. and much of the infrastructure of national parks and public land trails and campgrounds deterioating plus much of the West needing revegetation after devastating wildfires, why wouldn’t it be a good time to create a smaller, modern version of the CCC or perhaps a Student Conservation Corps where high school and college age students could be given summer jobs?

“I’d like to see things like that in this dayk and age with some of the crisis we face,” said Julie King, a district forest ranger for
the Heber and Kamas districts, two of the most used recreational areas in Utah if not the U.S.

I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that Americans would rather see their taxes cut than to have any beneficial government programs funded. After all, we funded the Iraq War on the cheap, asking no sacrifices of any American other than military families to pay for this misadventure. Why should we expect taxpayers -- who would probably be the first to
complain if campgrounds are not to their liking or, worse, closed -- to pay for improvements? None of us like to pay taxes. But we sure enjoy the benefits those taxes bring us, don’t we?
Tom

As someone who agreed with former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and the environmental organizations who sued to stop the initial alignment of the Legacy Highway, I view the new parkway that is scheduled to open this week as a victory for the art of compromise. That’s all too rare these days. And it’s a lesson politicians, citizens, planners and decision makers ought to follow in the future. The sad part of this legacy is that it took a lawsuit that ended up costing the state millions of dollars for planners to do the right thing. See link to the Trib's A-1 package Sunday here.

There was no doubt that, even with commuter rail, a highway was needed and was going to be built. The question was where and how. The first alignment that resulted in the contentious lawsuit the environmentalists ultimately one would have contributed to urban sprawl and destroyed wetlands. To coin a phrase, highway planners and Davis County leaders basically said “our way AND the highway” instead of looking at more reasonable alternatives.

When the environmental groups won the lawsuit, they sat down and came up with a plan that destroyed fewer wetlands, reduced the speed limit, kept big trucks off the new highway, helped push commuter rail forward, reduced and eliminated some development options and created a new trail system. Everyone won a little and lost some in the compromise which was a good one.

Let’s hope that the legacy of this project is that planners, politicians and environmentalists can learn to work together and
compromise in the early stages of any project rather than end up in an expensive court fight.

As for myself, I can’t wait to go bicycling on the new trail system.
Tom

 Will the fact that Republican vice president nominee Sarah Palin is an active hunter and member of the National Rifle Association make any Utah hunters more inclined to vote for the Republican ticket this year? That's an interesting question not only in Utah, but throughout the West. The guess here is that most people involved in outdoor recreation issues have already made up their minds with rural, more consumptive ATV owners who favor opening up more public lands to motorized recreation voting Republican and the more urban environmentalists who favor wilderness going with the Democrats. Still, it could make a difference in the way you vote. One interesting article worth reading is the most recent High Country News which traces Republican candidate John McCain's evolving stands on the environment. Hunters and gun owners might also be surprised at the sophistication of Barack Obama's stands on guns and hunting and fishing issues. 

Anybody out there experiencing "off-road" rage? According to an interesting article by Karl Vick in the Aug. 12, 2008 issue of the Washington Post violent incidents involving non-motorized users such as mountain bikers and hikers and ATV riders are increasing in the West. Vick reported one incident this way:

 DWR officials announced late Thursday that the four-fish trout limit at Vernon Reservoir has been lifted because the water will be drained starting Sept. 15. to clear debris from the outlet. Anglers can now catch as many as they want until Vernon is full and stocked with fish again. Mostly known as a planter rainbow fishery, there have also been some dandy browns caught at Vernon in recent years.

Anglers let up a collective cheer when the Utah Supreme Court weighed in on the stream access

Waterfowl hunters looking to purchase the federal duck stamp through the U.S. Postal Service are being directed to a toll-free sex line due to a printing mistake. Paul Welsh of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote today that a typo on the cards that 3.5 million of the self-adhesive stamps are attached to includes the incorrect phone number.

 Welcome to the Trib's blog on the outdoors. Tom and I plan on using the blog to inform, educate and offer our opinions about events and breaking news with ties to the outdoors/recreation world in Utah and across the globe. We hope you will weigh in with your thoughts as well. See our coverage in the Salt Lake Tribune, here.