WHEN CHRIS CAHNOVSKY SAYS 'The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is protecting the water that you drink, the air that you breathe, the land that your food is grown in, the places where you work and where you live,' you can see a man engaged in a heroic struggle against invisible forces.

Cahnovsky would laugh this off as a grandiose vision, but he accepts it's a tough mission. Chris Cahnovsky is an enforcement manager for the Illinois EPA, where he has worked for over 16 years.

Now 40, Cahnovsky gained a first degree in animal science at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, then a postgraduate degree in science and environmental studies at the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville.

Attracted by the varied set of skills needed in the role, he became a field officer with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. 'You have to be a policeman, a geologist, an engineer and a good negotiator to be able to do the job really well,' he notes.

Cahnovsky once applied for a federal law-enforcement position, but, he says with characteristic frankness, 'I think they were looking for kids straight out of college.' And during the most complex case of his career - he calls this 'the Chemetco debauchery' - Cahnovsky consiered a logical progression from enforcement to the law. But he thought better of this, considering such a major mid-career move too disruptive.

Each year, Cahnovsky shoots - he says 'harvests' - a deer for its meat; an 100-lb animal supplies his family for almost a year. Wild turkeys are 'harder to get,' but he's bagged 20-pounders. He's less interested in pheasant shoots, which are artificial by comparison. In southern Illinois, the birds are raised in 'preserves' to keep them out of reach of marauding coyotes.

Talk to Cahnovsky for a while, and it's soon clear that the gun looms large in his consciousness. It's not just because he hunts, nor because a munitions factory is the biggest employee in Madison County, Illinois: the Olin Corporation, based here, owns Winchester. The frontier

Cahnovsky's interest in guns is historical, and deepened with his personal study of the American frontier between 1760 and 1830. 'You see the development of the flintlock to the cap-lock to the percussion lock. Then the rifle barrel was a big factor in the revolution. America had rifles accurate to 300 yards, whereas the English only had smooth-bore muskets accurate to 60 yards. This was the golden age of the American rifle.' 'A vast land, ripe for exploration'

In a trice, we're back to exploration and adventure: 'A man in the wilderness without a gun might as well curl up and go home,' says Cahnovsky. 'Lewis and Clark [who carried military specification flintlocks to hunt with, not to kill men] discovered there's a vast land out there, ripe for development and use, and huge resources available to the United States.'

And Cahvnosky takes very seriously the job of protecting those resources in the state of Illinois.

© Alistair Siddons, 2006