Dear HCN,
Ray Ring’s otherwise
excellent article about whirling disease and trout in torment (HCN,
9/18/95) missed a critical part of the fisheries picture in the
arid West: livestock.
One of the key reasons why
the Idaho Watersheds Project and eight regional environmental
groups filed a listing petition for the desert redband trout with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in April of this year was
because of the ongoing destruction of stream habitat of this
subspecies by cows. In Owyhee County, Idaho, and every other rural
county in the arid West with perennial streams, the single largest
negative impact on native fish is livestock abuse. The unvarnished
truth is that unmanaged welfare ranching remains the single largest
destroyer of all ecosystems in the arid West.
Jon
Marvel
Hailey,
Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Don’t forget cows.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
