Hood Canal has lost one of the region’s original
environmentalists.
Andy Rogers
Andy Rogers, who died two weeks ago at age 94, might be
surprised that I would call him an environmentalist — and he
probably wouldn’t like it.
But when it comes to nature, few people could match Andy’s love
for Hood Canal. He worked as a trapper, logger and fisherman and
often talked about the bounty once found in Hood Canal but now lost
to the advance of our civilized society.
Andy would never deny someone the right to move to the Hood
Canal region, to build a house, to enjoy the water and woods. But
he understood better than most about what development has done to
the natural world.
“Every time anybody moves here, it gets worse — and that
includes me,” he once told me. “You can’t do anything about it.
People have rights. It seems our rights are going to kill us in the
country.”
If Andy were alive this week, he’d be one of the first I would
call to ask about whether humpback whales — like the one observed
on Friday — ever showed up in Hood Canal. (See
yesterday’s Water Ways.) Other longtime residents I contacted
could not remember seeing humpbacks anytime in the past.
I once asked Andy about resident killer whales — the ones that
eat fish. The National Marine Fisheries Service was about to
designate “critical habitat” for our endangered orcas, and the
agency was not listing Hood Canal as a critical place for them to
live.
Andy thought back and remembered watching killer whales when he
was younger — and even hearing them breach before he could see
them. “We called them ‘blackfish’ in those days,” he said.
I relied on Andy Rogers to put Hood Canal into historical
perspective for me while writing a series of articles called
“Hood
Canal: Splendor at Risk,” a project that grew into a book by
the same name.
Much of the Hood Canal region was logged before Andy was born,
but he lived to see many second-growth harvests and some areas that
grew into harvestable trees for a third time. As a child, Hood
Canal was a wilder place.
“When I was 10 or 11 years old,” he said, “I saw a sign that
said, ‘No trespassing.’ I went and asked my mother what that was,
because I had never seen that before. People went where they wanted
to go.”
Some wild animals have been displaced by logging, but the
changes were not permanent. Rogers told me that humans remain in
control and can decide whether to tolerate cougars, wolves and
bears. In days gone by, he said, the answer was simply to kill them
on sight.
“Man’s the only one of the species who can control how many
there are going to be,” he said.
Andy recalled when salmon were plentiful and arrived on a
regular schedule.
“I knew the salmon would start up the creek about the 20th of
August,” he told me. “Pert’ near all these stream were full of
salmon by Labor Day.”
I think the loss of the salmon saddened him. He once suggested
that all fishing be stopped for four years — something that seemed
out of character for Andy, a fisherman. But the result, he said,
would be an abundance of salmon. People would be able to see the
possibilities and learn how to manage salmon for the larger numbers
that were possible.
Andy lamented the loss of steelhead. He told me that he
remembers when they were thick in all Kitsap County streams. At the
time, I wasn’t sure I believed that, because steelhead are so
scarce today. You generally go to coastal rivers to find them. But
later, after steehead were listed as a threatened species, state
biologists told me there was no apparent reason for steelhead not
to survive here — except for the fact that there are no fish left
to breed.
Rogers said it was poaching that wiped them out. He remembers a
man who ran a black market for the prized fish, and this “outlaw”
foolishly netted the streams until all the steelhead were gone.
Andy supported reasonable efforts to protect wildlife habitat,
“but you cannot shut the door and keep people out,” he
insisted.
I concluded my profile of Andy with a comment he made: “Id sure
like to stick around and see what this place is like in 50
years.”
If that were only possible, I’m sure many people — including
Andy’s coffee and card friends at Seabeck Store — wouldn’t mind
listening to his stories a little longer.
At Andy’s request, no services are planned. A military honor
ceremony was held today with his family in attendance. Andy Rogers
was an Army veteran of World War II.
Survivors include his children, Albert Rogers, Jo Ann Belis,
Barbara Smith and Charles Rogers, along with many grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
Jo Ann told me that she wanted to offer a special thanks to
members of the Seabeck Community who had supported Andy through the
years. His family placed an obituary in the
Kitsap Sun on Jan. 25.
Andy Rogers offered many memories of
Hood Canal through the years. This photo, taken in 1991 on Stavis
Bay near his home, appeared in the book Hood Canal Splendor at
Risk.
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