Courtesy of Idaho Game Warden Magazine By Matt O’ Connell- IDF & G
During the dog days of summer, I try to beat the
heat and work early in the day, attempting to check the fishermen who have gotten an early start. This morning, that involved loading up my mountain bike and heading for the Boise Greenbelt to check trout and salmon fishermen. It was a quiet morning, at least for checking fishermen, and by late in the morning the heat and the lack of excitement had combined to have me heading toward my truck. While checking a cell phone message, I glanced back up the greenbelt just in time to see a man do a good deed.
Without being asked to and without having observed me, he walked down to the shore of Veterans Park pond and picked up a plastic bag full of garbage and then walked across the greenbelt to put it into a garbage can. When I hung up the phone, I hollered a Thank You to the man, who replied that it was nothing. He told me that he often picks up litter along the greenbelt and stated that one of the most frequent things he picks up is plastic worm containers left by fishermen. It was disturbing to hear that coming from a non fisherman, and it made me sad to hear that type of statement. I thanked him again for doing the right thing and went on my way. He was someone trying to be part of the solution.
Earlier this spring, I was watching a man shooting near Blacks Creek Reservoir south of Boise. To set the stage, the Blacks Creek Reservoir area has long been a hangout for target shooters, plinkers, mudboggers, and the assorted fisherman. It is also an important migratory bird stopover and safe haven; a small oasis of water in the sagebrush desert. Most of the time, the shooters and other recreationalists were just good folks trying to be safe and to have a good time. They packed out their targets and other debris and no one knew they had been there. Somewhere along the line, computer monitors, televisions, and living room furniture became better targets, and the Blacks Creek area began to look like the de facto Ada county landfill.
Most of the users assumed that it was public land, which must have made it okay to trash in some weird sense of logic.
The type of logic which implies- Someone else will clean it up, it is public land. When the Ada County Sheriff’ s department posted much of the area around Blacks Creek with No Trespassing signs, and yours truly began to show up and tell people that they were on private ground and needed to pack up and leave the area, some people began to look around at the piles of garbage that had forced the landowners to finally say enough is enough. That man I was watching was on that private land shooting, and he shot and exploded several glass bottles before leaving a bag of glass bottles behind him as he left the area. When I asked him why he had left the bag of bottles behind, he told me that they were for the next shooters to use for target practice. I issued him a citation for littering, hoping that might reinforce the concept that littering on private or public land is just not acceptable. He was someone who was part of the problem.
To see someone voluntarily taking time out of their routine to do an act of good is a refreshing thing to see. The fact that I see those acts so infrequently makes them stand out in my mind, which is not a good thing. In the case of Blacks Creek Reservoir, organizations like the Audubon Society and Federal Agencies like the Bureau of Land Management decided to try to make a difference. Meetings were held, trying to involve a diverse group of citizens and organizations to try to clean up the area and to protect it from further degradation. Hundreds of people volunteered their time to help clean up the area, and it has made difference. I was patrolling through the area the other day, and the litter clean up has made huge difference. A small grass roots effort to protect an area which is biologically important and could have easily gone by the wayside has gained momentum. New interpretive signs spell out the importance of the area to birds, and spell out the private land issue. Initially, someone cared enough to start the positive process of protecting that area, and it has blossomed into an ongoing trend toward better things.
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