What the Izaak Walton League Is
Trying to Do
Kenneth A. Reid
Executive Director, The Izaak Walton League of America
Chicago, Illinois
The Izaak Walton League of America was founded twenty-five
years ago last January by fifty-four enthusiastic anglers who had become
alarmed about the declining quality of fishing and wanted to do something about it. In the original articles was the following clause: "to
advance all things piscatorial". But the founding fathers very soon
found that they could do little to advance things piscatorial without
thinking and acting in terms of water rather than fish. Then, in order
to protect or provide good water habitat, they had to think and act in
terms of watershed.
Good fishing opportunities are but the end result of good water
management, and good water is based on good land management. So,
as the years progressed, the Izaak Walton League found itself devoting
more and more attention to soil conservation practices, forestry, range
management, and similar basic watershed considerations on the land,
and to control of drainage, impoundage, diversions, pollution, and other
direct interferences of man with natural waters. Attempts to maintain
or produce a good fish and game supply by artificial propagation while
neglecting basic natural resource management is like trying to put a new
roof on a building while permitting termites to eat out the basement.
The program of the Izaak Walton League embraces the whole broad
field of natural resource management. Its objective is not only to provide decent fishing and hunting opportunities for the public, but to bring
about a better outdoor America for the use and enjoyment of this and
future generations of Americans. Believing that good fish and game crops
are logical by-products of good land and water management as a means
of preserving or providing suitable environment for them, the League
devotes its efforts to the basic environmental factors. In doing so, it goes
down to the bedrock of our national economy, for everything we eat,
everything we wear, and all the refined products of our current civilization spring originally from our basic natural resources. The way we husband those resources will determine the economic welfare of the nation
and the standard of living which future generations will enjoy.   The
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