The election last month of the president of the state Board of Game Commissioners made history, and not just because it was the first president in the group's more than 100 years to live in Greene County. Rather, it's because the 53-year-old retired forester, who lives on 22 wooded acres in Whiteley, is a woman.

While the ranks of female hunters are steadily growing (according to a recent survey, women account for about 15 percent of the nation's 21 million active hunters), hunting and fishing is still primarily a man's game. It's hardly surprising, then, that the eight-member board, which is a venue for hunting and fishing issues, would mirror the predominantly male clientele it serves.

Roxanne Palone is used to making news. In 2001, the Waynesburg native was sworn in as the first woman to serve an eight-year term on the state commission, replacing Dennis Fredericks, of Amity, whose term expired in 1999. She represents District 2, which includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Not that the position necessarily came easy.

Interested more in wildlife management than backroom politics, she nevertheless sought the appointment because she was "dismayed" by the Game Commission's decision not to sell bonus doe tags at a time when she believed the state's deer population needed to be thinned. Her nomination by then-Gov. Tom Ridge took three tries before it was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

"I kind of felt like Clarence Thomas," she said with a laugh. "It's really an arduous process for someone who doesn't get paid."

An interest in setting rules for what kind of traps and guns can be used or how much game a sportsman can bag, which the commission does on a regular basis, might strike some as strange for a woman. But when you grow up on a 250-acre family farm, you can't help but fall in love with the great outdoors and be passionate about protecting those natural resources. And when you're joined by several brothers who liked nothing better than to hunt, you can't help but come to love that aspect of the rural life, too.

Starting at about age 12, when many of her friends were still playing with dolls or starting to experiment with makeup, Mrs. Palone was hunting squirrels and pheasant. By her teens, she'd expanded her repertoire to deer, turkey and rabbits -- sometimes with beagles barking in hot pursuit, other times with just her thoughts and favorite shotgun or rifle to keep her company. Yet it was fishing that actually sowed the seeds for a lifelong love affair with nature and a career in forestry.

The family made its living raising livestock, but the farm also had seven ponds, called pay lakes, where people paid a fee to come and fish. Each was stocked with a different types of fish, recalled Mrs. Palone, and every day she and her mother, Anna, would walk the property to check on them. They almost always ended up throwing a line in......

"She taught me fishing first," she said, "and then all about the outdoors, and the plants and the trees."

No one was all that surprised, then, when Mrs. Palone, after a four-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, went on to study plant science and biology at Glenville State College in West Virginia. Or followed that with a graduate degree in forestry from West Virginia University. Or got a job with the U.S. Forest Service that lasted some 18 years before she retired in 2005.

Being outdoors, said Mrs. Palone, has always provided her with a way to clear her head.

"I always think about that quote from Anne Frank, when she was living in the attic during the war," she said. "She said if you don't want to be afraid, if you want to be at peace, then go outside with God and nature and you'll find it." She paused, allowing the words to sink in. "And animals do the neatest things, which is why nature is so fascinating to me."

While the commission is responsible for managing all of the state's more than 450 species of birds and mammals and hunting heritage, the agency's "real" work in the field is handled by its executive director, who oversees 200 full-time wildlife conservation officers and more than 500 deputy wildlife conservation officers. Yet members still work closely with legislators and the governor to enact laws that set the stage for the state's wildlife recovery. For instance, said Mrs. Palone, the commissioners moved the bald eagle from the endangered to the threatened list. They also attend quarterly meetings during which citizens give public testimony.

"And people are very passionate about wildlife," she said. "It can be very humbling to be a commissioner."

Not to mention enlightening. One of the first things Mrs. Palone did as a commissioner, she recalled, was participate in a fawn mortality study during which biologists collared fawns in the Penn's Valley area of Centre County and in the Moshannon State Forest in Clearfield County to determine survival rates.

On a team that caught 12 fawns in one day, "It was a spiritual experience for me, holding them and weighing them," she said.

She's also been able to go into bear dens to work with cubs, and been at the Cathedral of Learning in Oakland when the peregrine falcons that live on the 40th floor were removed from their nest to be weighed, examined and banded. Removed from the national Endangered Species List in 1999, the peregrine population remains endangered in Pennsylvania where only 12 breeding pairs have been identified.

"There's just all kinds of adventures with wildlife," she said. "It's so exciting."

Unlike other appointed officials who represent just the people in their home districts, members of the state Game Commission are required to serve all the people of the commonwealth, regardless of where they live. That's because Pennsylvania's constitution makes clear that the state's natural resources belong to all the people, and that they have a right to have those resources protected. "And as a trustee of those resources, we take an oath to do just that," Mrs. Palone said.

What makes it tough, she said, is that the commission doesn't get any general tax money from the state. As with the state Fish and Boat Commission, it is self-funded through the sale of licenses, with additional funds coming from oil, gas and coal rights on state game lands and the sale of commission-related merchandise. It also gets some money from the federal Pittman-Robertson Act, which collects an excise tax on hunting equipment, and the Wildlife for Everyone Endowment Foundation, which was formed in 2004 with the goal of benefiting Pennsylvania's wildlife. (Mrs. Palone sits on its board.)

Mrs. Palone's term expires Nov. 21, but the law allows her to stay on for an additional six months if her seat isn't filled. And because it sometimes takes a long time for a new member to be appointed and confirmed, that's a definite possibility. (One current seat has been empty for two years).

That said, she knows of a few people who are already working to take to her place on the board, regardless of the fact it entails long hours, more than occasional travel and a measure of public scrutiny.

"There are a lot of people out there who would do a good job," she said. And after almost a decade of volunteering, she's looking forward to having more time to pursue her hobbies of sewing and cross-stitch, and flying over the beloved gamelands that abut her property in the 1943 Taylor Craft two-seater plane she and her husband, Vincent, keep at Waynesburg Airport.

"You can see herds of deer and turkey," she said.