Alan Gregory is a writer, specializing in natural resource and conservation policies and politics. He’s also a naturalist, but is not a biologist, having flunked his first college biology course before switching his major to journalism. He was born in Massachusetts, but his family moved soon after to Oregon, then California and New Mexico before landing in Idaho. He’s been hiking forests, bogs and wetlands in his home state as well as New England, the Adirondacks and Pennsylvania, where’s hung his shingle since 1989, the year he departed active duty in the Air Force.
Alan wrote a conservation column for a daily rag in eastern Pennsylvania for more than a decade and a half. He’s done volunteer work for a whole bunch of conservation organizations, including Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, the Nature Conservancy and the North Branch Land Trust near his current home of Conyngham, Pa. He’s also a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association and the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association.
Alan’s spouse, a double lung transplant recipient, is the chief academic officer at Penn State University’s Hazleton campus.
Alan’s home
How big is my place? Well it’s millions of acres wide. And guess what? It’s also yours, if you’re a citizen of America. The place is our American public lands, our great national commons.
Trouble is there’s a lot folks who want to steal our land; some live here in Pennsylvania, others are back home in Idaho. Sen. Rick Santorum, who claims to be from Penn Hills, Pa., is one of the thieves. He’d just as soon as give our public land to developers, foreign mining corporations, campaign contributors, oil companies, anything but the American public.
My goals are different. I want to put some wolves back in the woods and keep more wild brook trout in the water. I favor fewer whitetails and more critters with big teeth and claws to match.
Some folks say that’s perverse. Maybe it’s because like a lot of other folks my ranch house and my job are in the city.
As a conservationist, I’m strictly opposed to the good old boys, off-road cowboys, bucket biologists and politicians whose vocabularies are limited to what their rich cronies want to hear.
My dad (he died in August 1980 while I was a second lieutenant at Robins AFB in Georgia, launched the parks and recreation curriculum at Idaho State University. And That’s where I got my J-school degree. I’m in the minority. I’m not at all quiet about the men and women who’re stealing and trashing our natural heritage.
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