Today we bring you another in a series of short features about little-known aspects of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by David Klinger, a writer-editor at our National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

They claim it’s the mission.

That our admirable goal of conserving the fish, wildlife, and plants of the globe (“for the continuing benefit of the American people”) accounts for the almost-maniacal devotion to duty that motivates most Fish and Wildlife Service employees.

But, as most of us know... it is really about the food.

Well before training center smorgasbords, decades before regional office clambakes and central office holiday spreads (graced, occasionally, with gustatory delicacies and delights contributed by field stations and the occasional congressional office, intent on promoting home-state agriculture, from salmon packing to peanut raising), food played a central role in the life of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

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