A Personal Story

Before we arrived, I knew there would probably be trouble. I was a biologist for the state of Washington and we were going to sample fish in rural Lake Alton in far northwestern Washington. The far western and northern parts of Washington consist of the Olympic, Key, and Kitsap peninsulas. Washington's Olympic Peninsula was a land of deep cedar and hemlock forests, cold mist and rain, crashing surf, and ice-capped summits—a spectacularly beautiful place. The peninsula was one of the last places explored in the continental United States by Europeans. Almost nothing was known about its interior until reconnaissance expeditions led by Lt. Joseph P. O'Neil in the late 1880s hacked and pushed through the soaking, thick vegetation and across steep icy crests, blazing the first trails across this unknown land. The Kitsap and Key peninsulas contained bedroom communities for Seattle on their far eastern sides, and supported two major navy bases; however, their interiors held thickets of second-growth Douglas fir, alder, blackberry, salal, and gravel roads on which you could twist and turn for hours before finding your way out.

Northwestern Washington was never densely populated, and many of those who did live there harbored a rich animosity for government officials, especially conservation professionals. Post–Vietnam era newsletters and magazine articles spoke of "tripwire veterans" dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome who roamed the deep woods of the area, living off the land and shunning public contact. The town of Aberdeen, on the southern end of the Olympic Peninsula, had the reputation of being the wildest town west of the Mississippi because of excessive gambling, violence, drug use, and prostitution. It was declared off-limits to military personnel as late as the 1980s.

Rapid harvesting of timber and destruction of habitat for the northern spotted owl led the government to restrict the amount of logging that was conducted, which increased animosity even more. Residents of Forks, Washington, a small town in the heart of the Olympic Peninsula, painted all of their fire hydrants to look like loggers, and boasted a holiday called "James Watt Appreciation Day," named after Ronald Reagan's controversial secretary of the interior who was the bane of many environmental groups. At that time, towns throughout the area were known to be unfriendly, even dangerous, to those wearing the uniform of a state or federal conservation agency. Two of my friends, fisheries biologists for the state fish and wildlife department, came under rifle fire from a disgruntled citizen at a rural lake when they were conducting an electrofishing survey in the area. My racquetball partner, also an agency biologist, was beaten up by irate commercial fishermen.

The study of interactions between salmon and introduced fish, such as largemouth bass, was ranked as the highest priority for our research team by fellow state fisheries biologists, and Lake Alton was the perfect site for studying these interactions. Lake Alton was about forty acres and was surrounded by cattail marsh and a few ranch-style and two-story wooden houses. The lake had a large population of coho salmon migrating through it, and it also contained a healthy population of introduced fishes. Several miles downstream, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists had monitored the run of juvenile salmon leaving the watershed for the past twenty years, using a trap located on a small, sunny tidal flat next to Puget Sound.

We were legally entitled to sample the fishes of this lake, and had called landowners who had given us permission to launch our boats from a small common area on the lake. The lake was different than most in that there were two, not one, homeowners associations. While one homeowners association was very cooperative, the other refused all of our efforts to contact them in order to explain the purpose of our project. When I phoned and asked if I could send them some information about our project, a cold voice on the other end of the line said I could send it to them in care of "Fort Alton." They told us, in no uncertain terms, that they did not want us to do a study on "their" lake. Having little luck interacting with this group, we decided to launch our boat from the side of the lake owned by the friendly homeowners association.

On a cold, damp April evening we drove to the lake to launch our electrofishing boat from the common area and sample the fish populations. I led the crew, which consisted of two other biologists and a technician. Large Douglas fir and western hemlock trees lined the twisting two-lane road, small puddles soaked the black pavement, and little clouds of white mist marched across the darkening adjacent hills. The wipers clacked from side to side, and we had the air conditioner turned on to high heat to suck the excess moisture from the windshield so we could see out.

As we neared the lake, a dirty, white, late-model pickup truck appeared in my sideview mirror. It followed closely and would not pass. I felt my stomach turn uneasily as it became apparent that the truck was not trying to get somewhere, but was slowly following us. As we neared the launch, we pulled our trucks to the side of the road and stopped to ready the boat for the lake. Then the white truck gunned around the front of our truck and pulled in at an angle, blocking our way. It screeched to a stop, and a stocky man, dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of old khakis got out from behind the wheel. He was yelling and making his way to me as I exited the driver's side of the truck. I held out my hand to him, to shake hands and calm him down, but he ignored it and continued to shout. Then other people started to gather from a few nearby houses: a tall gaunt man in a cowboy hat; a heavyset woman with a couple of kids dressed in camouflage; some other men and women looking mad and rural. Soon a group of ten to fifteen people were clustered around our trucks, many of them yelling at us and fiercely angry. We were in an isolated area, unarmed, and did not have radio or cell phone contact. I realized I was going to have to talk my way out of this one.

The Importance of Effective People Skills in Conservation

Overuse and degradation of the world's natural resources is becoming critical. In 1980, Paul Ehrlich predicted that the earth's population would reach six billion by 2000. His predictions were very close. The six-billion mark was reached on or...