Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, I had to respond to the following statement from the Sept. 10 article about shooting in Arizona: ” ‘I go out to these places, carpeted with spent brass (cartridges), a car door over here, a TV or a propane bottle over there, and what I see is unbridled freedom…’ ” I lived in […]

Dear HCN, I have been on a crusade to stamp out redundancies and the use of the plural when referring to the Sierra Nevada, which means Snowy Range. It is just plain Sierra or Sierra Nevada, not Sierras or Sierra Nevadas, Sierra Nevada Mountains, or Sierra Nevada Range. Your Aug. 27 issue did get it […]

Dear HCN, I just wanted to congratulate you and Craig Childs on the wonderful article about desert streams (HCN, 9/10/01: The rise and fall of a desert stream). I thought that was the most inspirational and entertaining reading that I have ever seen in HCN (which is saying a lot, by the way). I enjoyed […]

Dear HCN, The unstinting praise for the Sierra Nevada Framework in your last issue is praise for a remarkably one-dimensional and frankly unsound plan. The Sierra Nevada Framework – like virtually every other current national forest planning effort, from the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project to the Quincy Library Group – has a myopic […]

Dear HCN, In his piece on Brad Powell, the Forest Service’s Regional Forester for California (HCN, 9/10/01: New forest chief becomes a lame duck), Ed Marston makes it sound like Dale Bosworth fired Powell. In fact, Powell is moving to Missoula to become regional forester for the Northern Region (North Idaho, Montana, North Dakota). That’s […]

Dear HCN, I am a reader with only a single year of experience with your publication. I have learned to enjoy the doom, irritation, pique and hope that your publication brings to my home on a periodic basis. Being a born-and-bred Lexingtonian (“Home of the Revolution,” don’t you know …), my move West opened my […]

Dear HCN, Rebecca Clarren’s article on the Klamath River Basin (HCN, 8/13/01: No refuge in the Klamath Basin) gives readers the most in-depth portrait of the real people engaged in the Klamath water conflict – farmers, Native Americans and commercial salmon fishermen – that has appeared to date in the national, regional or local press. […]

Dear HCN, I was surprised at the thoughts reflected in two articles in the Aug. 13 High Country News. In “The man in the rubber boots,” Paul Larmer states that in western Colorado, where he lives, 12 inches of rain falls. He says he lives in a desert. He says he used to use his […]

Dear HCN, Your recent story, “Showdown on the Nevada Range” (HCN, 8/27/01: Showdown on the Nevada range), was timely and objective. Whether from the extreme left or right, I think most Nevadans are getting a bellyful of dissident groups that peddle fear and distortion. More importantly, individuals like Mr. Colvin jeopardize the future of grazing […]

Dear HCN, In a May article titled “Debate rages over fish poisoning” (HCN, 5/7/01: Debate rates over fish poisoning), very subjective views of the impacts of fish-control chemicals antimycin and rotenone on the environment were presented. It’s ironic that despite the article’s recognition of the growing fears of the uninformed public toward fish-control chemicals, it […]

Dear HCN, The July 30 front-page piece titled, “Not in our backyard” was well-written and informative, except for one important detail: It gave the reader the impression that Greg Woodall and his sister, Carla, invented the campaign to preserve Scottsdale’s McDowell Mountains and are practically doing it by themselves. That isn’t the case. Greg and […]

Dear HCN, We are so delighted when HCN arrives in our mailbox. It provides well-written and excellent information – though often disturbing – about our changing world and Western landscapes. Some of these changes are very positive, however, like the most recent article about the Salish and Kootenai tribes whose stewardship principles should be carried […]

Dear HCN, I find the “essay” on the back of the July 30 issue full of hypocrisy. Writer Bill Cope would have the reader believe that the Rainbow Family of Living Light was a very environmentally conscious group. Come on, now. I saw firsthand what that group did to the lands of the national forest […]

Dear HCN, Nobody has more distrust of the government in affairs radioactive than I do. My credentials are impeccable. My brother and I both had occurrences of thyroid cancer 20 years after leaving Richland, Wash., where we grew up at the Hanford plant in the ’40s and ’50s. Most likely we were contaminated by drinking […]

Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s essay (HCN, 6/04/01: Environmentalism meets a fierce friend) regarding future strategies of the conservation movement was dead-on, and sparked a predictable response from Dave Skinner (HCN, 7/02/01: Greens are still a minority) with a list of red-herring comments that completely ignored the important facts in the fight to protect America’s heritage […]

Dear HCN, Sam Kennedy, in his article on the grazing controversy in the new Carrizo Plain National Monument in California (HCN, 6/4/01: California monument welcomes cattle) starts by saying “The first thing you notice … is, well, there’s not much to see.” How wrong he is! Carrizo Plain is a premier world site for seismology, […]

Dear HCN, After reading Louise Wagenknecht’s essay (HCN, 5/7/01: The year it rained money) and Mark De Gregorio and Lester Wood’s responses (HCN, 6/18/01: Smokey’s secret is out), I am more than ever convinced of the danger and arrogance of the use of the word “tool” for the practice of prescribed burning. How can we […]

Dear HCN, I cringed at the photograph of myself on your June 18 cover, but I guess it is churlish to blame HCN for the distance between my self-image and how I actually look. So on to substance. It was a good article on the complex intersections of salmon, dams, energy and money. I’d like […]

Dear HCN, While Jon Christensen did a great job of detailing Nevada’s battle against the permanent storage of nuclear waste (HCN, 7/2/01: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?), the story unfortunately was not broad enough to tackle the question of what if Yucca Mountain’s opening is delayed. That issue, too, encompasses the West. The fact is […]

Dear HCN, Tim Westby’s article on Rocky Anderson highlighted well some of our mayor’s controversies, political integrity and impressive achievements (HCN, 7/2/01: A maverick mayor takes on sprawl). However, it also presented a stereotypical caricature about “Mormons” and the “Mormon” Church. Anderson’s “lapsed Mormon” status is emphasized along with the “polar opposite” of an influential […]