Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Paula Del Giudice: After nearly 10 years, I’m sure gonna miss this place

Paula Del Guidice's outdoors notebook has appeared weekly for the past 10 years in the Las Vegas Sun. We thank her for her many years of service and dedication and wish her and her family well in their new endeavors.

It has been almost 10 years since I wrote my first column for the Las Vegas Sun just after we moved here from Elko. I remember driving into the north side of the valley and catching my first glimpse of the lights of the city I would soon call home. I was filled with hope and excitement as I sat down to write my first column that ran on Sept. 1, 1992 -- the first day of dove season.

Every week since, for almost 500 weeks with just a few exceptions, I sat down in front of the computer and "penned" my weekly column for the Sun. It has been an honor and a distinct pleasure to have that opportunity. The Sun is a wonderful newspaper whose management and readers have always been terrifically supportive.

Now other opportunities and challenges beckon to our family as we prepare to move to the Seattle area. After volunteering with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) for nearly 20 years, culminating with serving as the first woman chair of the nonprofit's board of directors from 1999-2001, I will begin my career as an employee. I have been selected to serve as the director of NWF's Northwestern Natural Resource Center in Seattle.

Much has happened in the past 10 years, both professionally and personally.

Our son Kevin was only 18 months old when we moved here and now he's a strapping 11-year-old who has traded in his Little Tykes tool bench for PlayStation II and baseball catcher's gear. He's saving up his allowance to purchase his first rifle. Kevin rekindled a family interest in baseball that carried over into my outdoors columns on occasion. Thanks for being patient while I digressed from the normal outdoors topics.

Katie came along in 1994. With a feisty temperament, she loves soccer and dancing and animals of all kinds. Remember those waders she thought were ugly at Christmas? They must have made enough impact on her to rethink her fishing tackle needs. She told us just last week that she was probably old enough now to replace that purple kid's fishing rod with something more grown up. I hope she'll like fishing for salmon.

We moved to Las Vegas so that Mike could become the regional manager of the Nevada Department of Wildlife. There are no longer regional managers and the agency is no longer a department but a division of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Mike's retired now from NDOW and working with an environmental consulting firm to establish an office in Southern Nevada -- a position with which he will continue out of the firm's Bellevue, Wash., office.

There have been many issues that have surfaced throughout the years that I've addressed through this column, such as trying to keep game farming out of Nevada -- an even better idea now that game farming has been linked to chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.

I wrote in favor of keeping a strong Endangered Species Act on behalf of the many species affected by loss of habitat throughout the country. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was a favorite cause as was riparian areas in Nevada. There was support for politicians (mostly just Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev.) who took a stand against most others in Congress from the West, standing for a clean environment that protects wild places and wild things.

There was the issue of shooting coyotes for fun and the time animal rights activists dressed up as fish at Lake Mead to protest fishing. There was a well-known professional angler fishing a tournament at Mead without a license. I wrote in support of relocations of bighorn sheep, elk and pronghorn antelope -- and in support of those organizations and individuals who helped out there. There were cycles of boom and bust -- shad at Lake Mead, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, deer and others -- that occur in nature leaving sportsmen frustrated.

My favorite columns to write were about kids who had found a love of fishing, hunting or the outdoors to continue those passions. In hearing their stories, I knew our favorite pursuits would be safe because the next generation cared.

During the past 10 years my professional life changed, as being a mom became more important than traveling around the West hunting and fishing and writing about it. Writing opportunities declined in number and my desire to help teach the next generation of writers took over.

So while continuing to write my outdoors column and edit the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas newsletter,"The Desert Clarion," I became a Catholic school teacher -- a vocation that I loved because I really could see and nurture kernels of talent in kids. I hope I had the same impact in their lives that they have had on mine.

It's not easy leaving Nevada, especially because I was born here and have lived here for my entire life, save nine months in southern Idaho. Even as large as Nevada's communities have grown in the past few years, it's not unusual to run into someone who knew my family back in Elko or to run into others with whom I went to school. The most difficult part about leaving is saying so long to the many wonderful friends who have made living here such a joy.

So we're trading our flip flops for Birkenstocks, our iced Mocha Frappuccinos for steaming lattes, our tank tops and shorts for Eddie Bauer flannels, our sunblock for insect repellant and our sunshades for umbrellas.

God bless you all and thank you for a great decade. Come up and visit when it gets too hot down here in the summer. We can be reached at [email protected].

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