The Magazine

Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Jack K. Anderson has announced several major changes in the fishing regulations for the park, a response to heavy angling pressure.

The environmental issues surrounding Earth Day are nothing new to us. But we wanted to join millions of others in celebrating what is hopefully a new direction in the destiny of our planet. We will continue to tell people about the beauty of the Rocky Mountain region, its clean air, clear streams, wide-open spaces, and friendly atmosphere.

Representatives from the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will meet with sportsmen’s clubs, outfitters, meat processors, and others to discuss the 1970 hunting season and proposed changes to hunting regulation.

Hunting and fishing is big business in Wyoming, where in recent years it has provided a direct boost of $60 million to the economy.

Although Wyoming’s big game herds are generally doing well, helped by competent management, private land is increasingly causing problems with critical winter range.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s compensation of ranchers for game harvested on their land, plus expenses of feeding large numbers of elk, add up to a large cost.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has found that it is often cheaper to buy certain ranches than to pay ranchers damage fees year after year.

A Wyoming program compensates ranchers when wild game inhabit their land, but state game officials say that deer and antelope numbers are not as high as in former years.

Wyoming has a unique law whereby private landowners are reimbursed, supposedly for feed eaten, for antelope harvested on their lands.

The Wyoming Stockgrowers and the Wyoming Woolgrowers Association recently met to talk about the possibility of asking the state to reimburse ranchers for increases in wild game on their ranches.

In a fast-moving series of events, President Richard Nixon ordered all federal installations to meet air and water pollution standards within three years, signed an executive order to fund clean-up of pollution on military bases, and more.

President Nixon has recommended to Congress that it appropriate more than $8.4 million for construction in Yellowstone National Park during the next fiscal year.

Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to create a national park, national river and wilderness area complex along the Middle Snake River between Idaho and Oregon, an area known as Hells Canyon.

Paul Petzoldt, whose National Outdoor Leadership School was recently featured on a national television special, declared that the idea of a Continental Divide National Recreation Trail was “silly” and not practical.

The strongest opposition to the recently announced grizzly bear hunting season has come from the Natrona Sportsman’s Association in Casper, Wyoming.