Confessions of an Eco-Redneck - Or How I Learned to Gut Shoot Trout and Save the Wilderness at the Same Time.

by Steve Chapple Plenum. 263 pages. $24.95.

Steve Chapple's collection of twenty-five essays, some of which have previously appeared in Sports Afield and other outdoor magazines, are far too cacophonous and bloody-minded, far too funny and ironic, to win praise from all environmentalists.

Chapple has a Darwinian appreciation for the complexities of the ecological food chain, and he counts the eco-redneck (genus--hook and bullet) a vital part of that chain. He posits a "genetic yearning for the spiritual through blood sport that lies deep within the hind brain of us all." But you don't need to agree with that to appreciate his literary effort to redefine environmentalism in a more inclusive manner.

"Sportsmen and environmentalists are too often kept on opposite sides of the barbed wire: so they won't see how close they really are to each other," argues the author, who long ago jumped that particular fence with .30-.06 rifle and graphite fishing pole in hand.

Chapple has a long and distinguished writing career under his waders. But his unique voice only recently emerged with the end of a twenty-year urban pilgrimage and a return to his Montana roots. He has helped drive back the threat of multinational mining on the Yellowstone through his river writings in National Geographic, The New York Times, and a previous book--Kayaking the Full Moon.

Whether casting line for Tigerfish on the Zambezi, recording the depredations of domesticated cats on wild bird populations ("Is Mittens with her kittens? Or is she outside, ripping the lungs from a lark?"), or recording an elk hunt on Ted Turner's ecologically restored megaranch, Chapple crosses the sensibility of a native humorist with the descriptive prose of fellow naturalist authors John McPhee and Daniel Duane.

While I've personally never been much for blood sport, I appreciate Chapple's willingness to challenge the urban romanticization of nature that sometimes confuses animal rights with species protection, or pastoral landscapes with the genetic diversity found in bug- and leech-ridden rainforests.

While decrying the slob hunter and game hog, Chapple asks, "Who has done more for wetlands than duck hunters? More to stop nickel-and-dime trailer courts, subdivisions, and septic tanks at streamside than trout and bass organizations? More to convince farmers not to rainforest-torch the cover that runs alongside country roads than pheasant beaters? Those who enjoy tying into the bull trout, that tiger shark of the northern Rockies, are learning that acid-mine waste must be stopped in the headwaters, because the bulls are like prize-fighters with bad lungs. They can't stand even minimal pollution."

Of course, for every Ducks or Trout Unlimited, there's a Safari Club International or a Congressional Sportsman's Caucus backed by big oil and mining interests. But perhaps Eco-Redneck works best not as a polemic but as an inspiration for those who seek to put the pleasure principle back into preservation. And while shooting a ten-point buck may not be everyone's raison d'etre, Chapple is more than willing to support those who get their thrills by hiking, kayaking, bodysurfing, or watching wildlife. He even goes so far as to joke about reintroducing the Grizzly to Central Park.

His book is full of useful information. "For each one of us, there are 200 million of them, which sifts out to about 300 pounds of bugs per person," he reports in the essay "Bugz." And as a former resident of Sausalito, California, I was pleased to discover that the mysterious humming below my friend's houseboat was probably a male midshipman fish "calling to passing females from the nest he's built on the bottom of the harbor." This from the essay, "Do Fish Have Orgasms (and if so what do they sound like?)"

At his best, in writerly and reflective essays like "The Mother's Day Caddis Hatch," "The Lodge Where All Dance," "Marriage, Guns, & Pheasants," and "Last Fish," Chapple manages to capture for us the subtle but sturdy connections between landscape, community, and family history that widen our vision about what it means to live well and to do good on lands often threatened by the avaricious and the short-sighted. In recalling a long gone day of fishing with his father, where they helped an old cowboy and his dying, wheelchair-bound buddy catch a final trout, he also gently reminds us of our need to be good stewards of this Earth, since we'll all be returning to it, probably sooner than we'd like.

David Helvarg is author of "The War Against the Greens" (Sierra Club Books).