Dear HCN,
It was with considerable
personal interest I read the article “Forest Service dunked by its
own witch hunt” (HCN, 8/8/94) as the mention of Paul Senteney
provided a personal link to the national story.
As a wildlife biologist for the San Juan National Forest in 1971,
Senteney was one of the initial people to contact me when I began
my first job, as a reporter for the Durango
Herald.
“How would you like to
see some elk?” he asked over the phone one afternoon. He picked me
up the next morning and we drove out to the Animas Valley north of
town where the elk that had been grazing there for about a week had
decided to move elsewhere – something I’ve since learned wildlife
have an uncanny ability to do! While we didn’t find the elk that
morning, it did begin a relationship with Paul and an interest in
Colorado’s wildlife that eventually led to my, at this point,
20-year career with the Colorado Division of
Wildlife.
During the following years, I took
many trips with him, astride one of his now nationally known
Missouri foxtrotters, as we surveyed various Forest Service
projects he was developing for wildlife. At the time I was too
naive to realize what an anomaly he was in an agency dedicated, for
the most part, to timber harvest.
While I have
many fond memories of the rides and the stories I was able to
write, perhaps the overriding characteristic that comes to mind
when I think of Paul is integrity. It is a trait of many employees
in the Forest Service, but one the agency as a whole is trying
desperately to recover. One can only hope that reaction to the
phony charges brought against Senteney, Mumma, et al, and the
national political shenanigans in which they found themselves
unjustly entangled, doesn’t hamstring the sincere efforts of the
many dedicated Forest Service field people.
D.
Geoffrey Tischbein
Montrose,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A man of integrity.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
