Censored by the Bangor Daily News: When One Door Closes Another One Opens Up..

A nonnative landlocked salmon from the Roach River in Maine, a tributary to Moosehead Lake the largest wild native brook trout water wholly in New England…

When NFC Executive Director Bob Mallard submitted an article to the Bangor Daily News as part of his decade old guest column, he was stunned to learn that new Outdoor Editor, and former Maine Department fo Inland Fisheries and Wildlife employee, Susan Bard would not run it.

While Bard offered no reason as to why she would not run the piece, she told Bob that she was looking for “engaging pieces about fishing.” Clearly, Bard had never read Bob’s column or she would have known that for the most part he covers native fish conservation and fisheries management issues, not fishing.

Believing that the piece was important and wanting it to be read, Bob posted it on the NFC blog as well as NFC’s Facebook page and his personal page. After a few weeks, he decided to submit the piece as an OpEd to the owner of the 3 largest southern Maine Newspapers. To their credit, they ran it in all three..

Prior to that, Bob reached out to V.Paul Reynolds, publisher for the Northwoods Sporting Journal, asking if he would be interested in running the piece. It was an article about so-called bucket biology by Paul in the Bangor Daily News that triggered Bob’s piece. To his credit, Paul ran the piece as well.

Today, Bob learned that Kennebec Valley Trout Unlimited was including the piece in their newsletter. Kudos to KVCTU for seeing the important message in the article and helping to get it out there. And shame on the Bangor Daily News for censoring an accurate and valid concern in regard to how our wild nartive fish are being managed.

The piece rejected by the Bangor Daily News has seen exponentially more traffic than it would have had they run it. And that it was read is far more important than where it was read… As they say, often when one door closes another opens. In this case, the door that was opened was notably wider than the door that was closed…