Letters to the editor, May 2023
Comments from readers.
PREDATORS AND PSEUDOSCIENCE
I enjoyed reading Christine Peterson’s “Chronic Mystery” (April 2023). It was well written and informative. If predators can help stop or slow the spread of chronic wasting disease, I am all for it. However, I do not want to see a push for more protection over the healthy populations of big game predators under pseudoscience of predators as the answer to CWD spread.
Steve Langdon
Boise, Idaho
COMMUNAL VIEWS
Having grown up in Wyoming, I identified with “The last of Wyoming” (April 2023). I’ll admit to multiple rants about the compressed geography of Wyoming in the show, not to mention the idea of Jackson Hole, or anyplace in Wyoming, somehow spontaneously becoming a communal collective. I can’t tell you how emphatically I nodded my head at this line: “Other Wyoming residents see Jackson as a place apart from the rest of the state.” Thank you, Taylar Dawn Stagner, for writing it.
Ryan Johnson
Portland, Oregon
A FOWL BUSINESS
The article “Fowl migration” (April 2023) made me laugh cynically when the restoration ecologist and environmental consultant for ARCO and Montana Resources said, “The parties had been trying to do the right thing, and they just didn’t really know how to do it.” I thought that was their job!
This is a “defunct mine flooded with toxic water,” and a Superfund site to boot. The right thing is to close the mine, dewater the pit, filter and remove the toxins, release the cleaned water, and take the filtered toxins to an industrial wastewater treatment site, and destroy or store them in perpetuity with forever monitoring.
All profits should be used to stop the pollution. These “crocodile tears” are more industry propaganda used to avoid being responsible for their actions.
Brandt Mannchen
Houston, Texas
Editor’s note: The Berkeley Pit mine closed in 1982. Some of its water is being treated and discharged.
FOR ONE ANOTHER
Regarding “Why electrify?” (April 2023): I found my response to the article a celebration of each other: We’re doing this for our fellow living beings. We’re doing this so someone somewhere doesn’t die of heatstroke, or die in a wildfire. We’re doing this to save someone’s home on a low-lying island. We’re not making decisions that are in our interest financially, but rather trying to leave a livable world for our fellow Earth travelers.
Robert Brayden
Golden, Colorado
DO YOU WANT TO BE TRAPPED?
The article “Can camera traps relieve our species’ loneliness?” (March 2023) was entirely enthusiastic about camera traps. That’s not surprising, since the article only presented the perspective of the human animals that are doing the trapping. But what about the perspective of the non-human animals that are being captured in the photos?
We cannot know how animals feel about being “trapped” in this manner. But we, too, are animals, and so we can ask: How would we like to be “trapped” on camera by a different species without our consent? I would not like it. How about you?
Felice Pace
Klamath, California
COLONIALISM LIVES ON
I appreciated the reportage on the hydropower storage facility on Yakama lands in Washington (“A wave of green colonialism,” March 2023). It cannot be green with the impact a hydropower storage facility would have on the Yakama way of life. The Doctrine of Discovery lives on in corporate and political America.
Cheryl Smith
Richland, Washington
UPWARD SPIRAL
As an on-and-off-again subscriber since the Tom Bell days, I couldn’t agree more with Andy Kulla of Florence, Montana (“Letters to the editor,” March 2023). HCN is definitely on an upward spiral. The March issue was terrific, front to back. (No surprise with ace Acting Editor-in-Chief Michelle Nijhuis at the helm.) Still, I have to single out the “Gold in the hills, but not for us” piece. Excellent photojournalism, marvelously paired with Vickie Vértiz’s powerful poems, that told not just the facts about LA’s petroculture injustices, but the deeper story — its impacts and social realities. Kudos all around.
Art Goodtimes
Norwood, Colorado
TRANSFIXED AND TRANSPORTED
I just read Craig Childs’ long-form article on Lake Powell (“Glen Canyon Revealed,” February 2023) and was transported back to an earlier, more vital time in my own life, while also being transfixed by the history, and the reporting on current events. Fantastic writing, phenomenal images. Thank you so much for investing in this kind of deeper, richer writing. A rarity these days, much appreciated.
Chris Laliberte
Seattle, Washington
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