Editorial

Editorial: Our Tenth Year

The riverbed, dried-up, half-full of leaves.
Us, listening to a river in the trees.
-Seamus Heaney

We have begun our tenth year. And probably by the time you read this we will have had our tenth anniversary celebration.

It has been a chaotic nine years. I never thought that being an advocate of rivers could be so time-consuming and confrontational. And it seems that in the latter few years it has become even more so.

We had our beginning in the fire of the debate over catch-and-release on the Mainstream. In the spring of 1986, as we looked forward to the first no-kill season on the Holy Water, opponents got a court injunction. For a decade, many Au Sable anglers had fought for special regulations. In early winter, the Natural Resources Commission had given its approval. Faced with litigation, we realized that to prevail we had to get organized.

In January 1987, with great help from FFF, led by Jim Schramm, we became incorporated; we were then a living body, with full vigor, prepared to "preserve, protect, and enhance" a river rich in heritage and widely recognized around the world as a premiere wild trout fishery.

In our first newsletter (put together by Jim Enger) Rusty Gates closed with this message:

Ours will be a far-flung club, but this newsletter and our common, shared feelings for this river will bind us together. We have chosen to affiliate with the FFF to give us additional muscle on a national basis, but our main energies will focus on the Au Sable.
One thing the struggle for catch-and-release taught us is that many in distant places really care about this river. I thank you for your support and cooperation. I give you my word we will continue to fight for this river and should you decide to join, your dues will go to whatever is necessary to protect it.

Since that first summer we have been allied in various coalitions addressing the conflicts regarding the Au Sable. The most notable have been with the Au Sable Manistee Action Committee (in a decade long contest regarding the expansion of Camp Grayling), with the Michigan Environmental Trust, Ltd. (in a successful lawsuit regarding the unregulated Antrim Gas Development in northern Michigan), with Trout Unlimited, Michigan United Conservation Clubs, and the Federation of Fly Fishers in the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Coalition (oversight of FERC relicensing of dams), with many groups in the Au Sable River Restoration Committee, and more recently with many groups in the Michigan Energy Reform Coalition (see story in this issue).

With coalitions and alone, we have been engaged in many environmental projects. Some have been successful, others have not. We have been doing our best to protect the river for future generations. We have been true to Rusty's promise in our first newsletter.

There are many future challenges; some of them are discussed in this newsletter.

We thank you for your support. We will continue to be aggressive in our protection of this lovely river. We don't want to be sitting around when we get old and gray, "listening to a river in the trees." RWOL

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