Who Needs Grayling?

But no one outside Washington, DC is giving up. Virtually all fish conservationists and fish managers believe that this distinct population segment is worth saving, that it is important not because fluvial arctic grayling are great gamefish (they aren't), not because they're good eating (they're barely OK), not because they're beautiful (although they are), not because they're anything--only because they are.

As Aldo Leopold put it in his foreword to A Sand County Almanac, "There are some people who can live without wild things, and some who cannot." It strikes me that members of the former group are the fortunate ones. Instead of agonizing over the steady erosion of earth's biodiversity they can, for instance, play golf. I envy them. We're running out of creatures like Montana's fluvial grayling, but we're making more golf balls all the time.