The great salmon compromise

Rebecca Clarren’s excellent report on the exposure of Oregonians to herbicides sprayed by timber companies brings to mind a similar struggle by the state’s citizens in the late 1970s (“Fallout,” HCN, 11/10/14). Back then, a small group of women from Alsea, Oregon, who had suffered miscarriages after exposure to herbicides sprayed by the U.S. Forest […]

Regarding “Defuse the West” (HCN, 10/27/14), these conflicts are not restricted to the West. Most of these confrontations are initiated by redneck motorheads who apparently think they are living in 1880 and can do anything they please. These fools don’t seem to grasp the fact that ever-increasing use of our public lands demands that there […]

“Fallout” was an extraordinary report on the perils of modern-day pesticide spraying in Gold Beach, Oregon. Apparently, the consequences of DDT spraying epitomized in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 have sunk deep into our memories and are now almost forgotten, once again allowing history to repeat itself. Unfortunately, most people, including senior editor Jonathan […]

In a paranoid response to publicity over the recent dramatic increase in severity of wildland and interface fires, there’s a lot of forest thinning going on in a misguided attempt to reduce fire danger (“Lost in the Woods,” HCN, 9/1/14). In the 1970s, when we were thinning the Southwestern forests, I’d probably killed about a […]

I met Barrett Funka many years ago on the trails in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (“Pack-Man,” HCN, 11/10/14). Nice to see he has “made it.” I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I know what he gets paid, and that the real reward is not in a bank account, but rather in the pride in a job […]