Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Sure have been enjoying my HCNs lately, but as roving critic laureate, I must insist that Lou “White Dork” Bendrick be informed that WEASELS ARE NOT RODENTS (HCN, 8/14/00: Native American Wannabes: Beware the Weasel Spirit). They are not only not in the same FAMILY, they are not even in the same order. […]

Dear HCN, I appreciated the interview with Steve Hinchman in the July 31 issue. It’s encouraging to know that there are other people who understand the problems that “recreation-based environmentalism” is causing in the rural West. Although I considered myself an environmentalist back when the movement was still the grassroots underdog, I’m terrified now at […]

Dear HCN, Thanks for the tribute to our late friend Lynn Dickey (HCN, 6/19/00: Dear Friends). She was a gentle giant, for sure. It always amazed me that she was in the world of rough and tumble politics but not of that world. She was always a calming influence. I remember the United Mine Workers […]

Dear HCN, I would like to respond on behalf of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness to the Steve Hinchman interview Ed Marston did for the July 31 edition. I know Steve and respect and admire the work he has done on the West Slope. Recently, as executive director of the Colorado Environmental Coalition, I […]

Dear HCN, In Jon Margolis’ article on “property rightsniks’ (HCN, 6/5/00: Can ‘property rightsniks’ stop a popular bill?), he says, “Mainly, though, the very irrationality of the opponents is rational. Their purpose is not to make sense, nor even to win votes, but to oppose, and to prosper while doing it. Cushman’s American Land Rights […]

Dear HCN, Let me calm down a minute here before trying to respond to Denver’s Wayne Schnell. His bigotry in the July 3 issue deserves some comment and analysis. First, Mr. Schnell, if you want Mexican nationals to stop coming to the U.S., stop hiring them to do the work you disdain or find some […]

Dear HCN, I am concerned about the call to logging put forward in Frank Carroll’s essay, “Los Alamos is burning” (HCN, 5/22/00: Los Alamos is burning), and I am concerned about the “BLM … planting millions of acres in non-native crested wheatgrass.” I am a biologist who used to work for the BLM in eastern […]

Dear HCN, Some Westerners seem to believe that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is the only one who ever moved, under presidential direction, to encourage the preservation of land and water under national monument designation. America has had 48 secretaries of the Interior. Since the passage by Congress in 1906 of the act that allows presidents […]

Dear HCN, The recent issue on wildfires and exotic weeds continues a disappointing trend in your paper, of peddling panaceas rather than creating dialogue. In the opening page, the “usual suspects’ are rounded up – grazing, farming, roads, mines – and from there it reads like a tabloid account of the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder. One […]

Dear HCN, In his essay, “Los Alamos is burning” (HCN, 5/22/00: Los Alamos is burning), Frank Carroll, formerly with the Forest Service and now with Potlatch Corp., presented us with two stretches of the imagination. First, he managed to avoid placing any blame for the Los Alamos fire on the Forest Service and other land-management […]

Dear HCN, I’ve just read Ed Marston’s column about the Los Alamos fire (HCN, 5/22/00: Yelling fire in a crowded West). I was disappointed to see no discussion of the impact of climate change on fire regimes and the occurrence of catastrophic crown fires in recent decades, despite the severe drought under which the New […]

Dear HCN, I read with interest Michelle Nijhuis’ fine piece on the Colorado Delta. As HCN so aptly puts it, the issue is really whether or not environmentalists can find the means to change the Law of the River. While I support and applaud the legal efforts of the Delta coalition (Southwest Center for Biological […]

Dear HCN, After the forest fires in New Mexico and Colorado, I had to write. This could be nature getting back at the hobby ranchers and interlopers. On the Front Range in Colorado and New Mexico, you don’t have corporate tree farms, so most of the interface lands from the Plains to the U.S. Forest […]

Dear HCN, In response to the lead article, “After the fall” by Steve Thompson, and Ed Marston’s column (HCN, 5/8/00), here is Plum Creek’s perspective. We at Plum Creek disagree with the premise of both the column and the article that sets up an artificial conflict between small mills and large forest products firms such […]

Dear HCN, Diane Pietrasanta says that her wilderness fee program in the Sierra should generate enough revenue to “pay five or six seasonal rangers where there would have been none” (HCN, 2/14/00: Land of the fee). I think the real issue is not “should we charge fees?” or “how much should we charge?” but rather […]

Dear HCN, I’ve been working with reclamation in the Great Basin for 17 years and personally know the learned gentlemen interviewed by Jon Christensen. Your article left me feeling like all our efforts over the years (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush) have little show. I agree that the crested wheat plantations are more like museums […]

Dear HCN, Jim Gerber, president of Citizens for a User Friendly Forest, has written several letters to the editor of High Country News in which he has neglected to identify his affiliation. CUFF supports motorized access to national forests. The vice president of CUFF, Adina Cook, is also the public-lands director of the Blue Ribbon […]

Dear HCN, I am responding to several letters in the May 8 edition. One letter said that “enviros are mostly intruders funded by wealthy foundations.” Those foundations are set up by nonprofit corporations supported by the donations of many environmentally conscious citizens and companies. An individual cannot make any impact on the money-obsessed power structure […]

Dear HCN, Thank you for the thoughtful coverage dealing with weeds across the West, and especially the discussion of the cheatgrass/fire cycle problem. A quick point of clarification, though. Your articles seemed to return to a theme of grazing as a central cause. In my experience, grazing may not be necessary for land to experience […]

Dear HCN, The recent article by Steve Stuebner about wolves in Idaho demonstrates why wolf recovery is an ongoing failure (HCN, 5/22/00: Activist calls for cease-fire on wolves). If it were not for a few livestock-free safe havens like Yellowstone Park and the core of central Idaho wilderness, there would be no wolf recovery whatsoever. […]