D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June
2009
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Redneck River Lover
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He doesn't fit the stereotype of a tree-hugging environmentalist. A self-described (with tongue in cheek) "redneck," this ruddy outdoorsman loves unleashing his hounds to run down jackrabbits, shooting squirrels out of trees, and casting lines to snag wild trout. Guns, rods and dogs are lifelong passions. Yet Silver City's M.H. "Dutch" Salmon is a fierce defender of our untamed, untrammeled and undammed.
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"Dutch" Salmon with a favorite
hound, Phoebe. |
"I moved to southwest New Mexico in 1980 because I like to chase things," explains the activist writer and book publisher, who spent time in the Mimbres Valley before settling on five rolling acres below Gomez Peak some 20 years ago. Our quadrant, Salmon has found, is "ideal for the pursuit of game and fish."
During an interview at his home-office — clad comfortably in work boots, denim overalls, plaid shirt and a battered straw hat — the man whose nickname recalls a childhood resemblance to the iconic blue-eyed, blonde-haired Dutch boy states a preference for the old-fashioned term "conservationist." Salmon sees his environmental ethic as derivative of the Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold traditions of the early 20th century, "where you got yourself out hunting and fishing as a way of being outdoors. Then you began to see threats [to game animals and their habitats]. So you realized the need to preserve species — and not just the species for which you hunted and fished. Yet you still sent yourself out there with hook or bullet — and that's the redneck part."
The 64-year-old wilderness advocate — whose name carries an accent on the first syllable (SAL'-mon) — suggests constant vigilance is essential in order to protect and defend the "ideal" world of the upper Gila River and adjacent watersheds from misguided meddlers and bungling bureaucrats.
"It's basically under the same threat" of development as it was 25 years ago, Salmon maintains, "but it is a little trickier now." Today, for example, there is no imminent risk that a dam will be built on the Gila, New Mexico's last large free-flowing stream. A less-obtrusive form of diversion is a more likely scenario, calculated to benefit farmers and regulate water-flow. This may explain, says Salmon, why "people in the environmental community today are not quite as agitated as they were back in the Eighties."
The cool-down follows abandonment of several plans to block or divert the Gila. But new ways to store or manipulate its waters are still topics of serious discussion among government authorities, and tens of millions of dollars of public money are readily available to help pay for such projects. (Under terms of the 2004 Arizona Water Settlements Act, New Mexico is allowed a substantial federal subsidy and permission to use up to 14,000-acre-feet per year of Gila River water.) Think stimulus. Think recession. Think construction. These are reasons why Salmon remains as active on river-related issues now as he was in 1984.
The ongoing battle to preserve New Mexico's Gila and its nearly 4 million acres of associated real estate reflects a tense struggle between old and new Southwest water-management strategies. According to Salmon, the prevailing paradigm holds that people in a given geographic area will do whatever they can to keep as much available water within their sector for so-called "consumptive" or "beneficial" use. Gila River water that flows into Arizona, by this manner of thinking, is essentially "wasted" water. Such folks are likely irked further that Arizona deliberately diverts virtually all of the Gila's flow, creating hundreds of miles of dry riverbed before its confluence with the Colorado River near Yuma.
"We're up against an entrenched mindset that says, 'If you get a chance to take water out of a river, take it — even if you won't use it for 300 years!' It is a real flip of that mindset," Salmon concedes, "to be able to look at a river like that and say, 'Well, that 14,000-acre-feet in question really does us more good in the stream than it does diverted out, both aesthetically and economically.' This new paradigm hasn't yet caught up with the old one in the minds of the powers that be."
Salmon's own mind has been clear on the subject since he first fished the Gila back in the early 1980s, a time when local residents were divided sharply over the now-defunct Hooker Dam project: "I thought, this is ridiculous, to put a dam up in this roadless area, in a magnificent canyon above the Mogollon Creek confluence. From the first time I went there, I hoped there was a way to avoid it, even though people told me the dam was pretty much a done deal." He found enough kindred spirits to help stop the project in its tracks.
Salmon, a freelance journalist and author, employed the Hooker controversy as a central (though nominally fictional) theme in his 1989 novel, Home Is the River, which features a latter-day mountain man who helps stop such a project by revealing the existence of a remnant otter population near a proposed dam site. The book was a departure for Salmon, whose previous manuscripts included a hound-hunting guide and a memoir about his 200-mile float down the Gila accompanied by a hound dog and a tomcat. He has since published a half-dozen other books, written numerous articles, and penned an award-winning outdoors column, "Country Sports."
The 1967 Trinity University English graduate has been in print about as long as he's been hunting, fishing and raising hounds — with no end in sight. "I finished the draft of a new novel about three years ago," says Salmon, "and I'm editing it now with the hope of getting it out later this year. I usually keep a schedule of writing between one and five each weekday afternoon." Although his first few books were typewritten, today they are pounded out on a computer in an alcove off a master bedroom.
But Salmon's writing routine is often interrupted by an impressive swirl of ongoing public-spirited commitments. He is a second-term member of the New Mexico Game Commission, for example, and participates in meetings of the Arizona Water Settlements Act Stakeholders' Group. Salmon continues to chair the board of directors of the Gila Conservation Coalition (GCC), which he co-founded with three other area activists 25 years ago, and holds a board seat on the associated Gila Resources Information Project (GRIP). Over the years he's served in similar capacities for other groups, including the Quivira Coalition and New Mexico Wildlife Federation.
"Yes, it is disruptive," he says of organization-derived intrusion, "but it's hard to say 'no.' And I try to hold [my group involvements] down to the most important ones."
Despite (or perhaps because of) the demands of meetings, writing deadlines and the publishing business, Salmon escapes to the woods or desert whenever possible. He heads into the backcountry "about 100 days each year," by his count, "or at least once each weekend and once during each set of weekdays. Sometimes it's only for a few hours; other times I'm gone for several days at a time."
Salmon backpacks into remote parts of the Gila for a few days once or twice every summer, and there are occasional canoe trips, too. "I get out more than the average person," he admits, "so I can't complain." (A favored pastime is "coursing," or the hunting of game by hounds trained to pursue by sight rather than scent. Also called gazehounds, preferred breeds for this sport include the saluki and whippet.)
Asked why he finds this region so attractive, Salmon leans away from his big wooden desk and considers the question at length. "Even an objective observer would have to say that the Gila is unique," he offers, in his characteristically steady, thoughtful cadence. "It is vast and relatively unvisited. You can go to even the most obvious places for a day's fishing and most of the time not see anybody beyond the trailhead. . . . And sometimes in the same pool you can catch a catfish — the epitome of the southern, slow-moving stream fish — and a wild trout, a fish associated with cold, clear, mountain waters."
Salmon welcomes the controversial reintroduction of Mexican wolves to the Gila, so long as those who can verify losses of their livestock are properly compensated. "Wolves are certainly interesting," he says, "as is the reaction of people to having them around. I think every native species of the Southwest deserves at least a remnant of its former life. There's a place here for wolves, grizzly bears, jaguars, otters and all kinds of critters."
While he's not a scientist, Salmon's recent book about the Gila River, Gila Libre! New Mexico's Last Wild River (University of New Mexico Press $19.95), has cemented his reputation as one of the top authorities on New Mexico's last large untapped waterway. But he acknowledges that the Gila's obscurity, even among New Mexicans, compounds the challenge of keeping it protected.