Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Lynne Bama’s wild horse story is an excellent introduction to many of the philosophical and practical problems attendant to management of a large, sacred, feral domestic ungulate on the public lands (HCN, 3/2/98). Although ecologically responsible management of feral horses and burros under current laws and policies is theoretically possible, censuses and removals […]

Dear HCN, Jon Margolis often has interesting insights, but his article titled “The Land and Water Fund waits to be tapped” naively misses the bigger picture (HCN, 2/16/98). It is true that the Land and Water Trust Fund is not managed like a trust fund dedicated to conserving land and water. But the misuse of […]

Dear HCN, This is regarding your “Heard around the West” article about the closure of the Tucson Rod & Gun Club rifle range in Sabino Canyon (HCN, 3/16/98). I am a loyal HCN reader and also an avid hunter and shooter. During the late “70s through the mid-’80s, I spent many hours at the Sabino […]

Dear HCN, After reading Ed Marston’s column, “Show me the science,” (HCN, 3/16/98), I feel compelled to respond to your criticism of modern Western environmentalists wherein you called them “enemies of rural life and rural economies.” Why do you, and so many others, think that Western rural lifestyles and economies must be based upon traditional […]

Dear HCN, Kieran Suckling is afraid to talk to ranchers with environmentally enhancing grazing practices. His belief is that all ranchers are destructive. He states: “Show me a national forest grazing allotment in Arizona or New Mexico that isn’t trashed, and I’ll sit down and talk about sustainable grazing. It doesn’t exist” (HCN, 3/30/98). Mr. […]

Dear HCN, Stephen Lyons’ finely crafted bull’s-eye prose on Idaho will no doubt draw the ire of people who love the state (HCN, 3/16/98). His frank assessment of the neighborhood is as welcome as an empty larder to starving children. Keep in mind that all of Mr. Lyons’ examples are quite current. Keep in mind […]

Dear HCN, Stephen Lyons told us in the last issue that he left hate-filled Idaho for the more progressive state of Washington (HCN, 3/16/98). Since I made that same move last autumn, here’s my response to his essay: Dear Stephen, Welcome to Washington! You’ll find excellent coffee, happy diversity and easy access to recycling. Enjoy […]

Dear HCN, While the Poppers’ update on the Buffalo Commons was interesting, it failed to disclose a disturbing trend in private bison herd management (HCN, 2/2/98). That trend is the domestication of bison. The bison slaughterhouse in North Dakota mentioned in the Poppers’ article requires that bison be grain-fed 120 days prior to slaughter, and […]

Dear HCN, In the opinion of Frank and Deborah Popper, their Buffalo Commons idea is accurate, but your headline tells the real story: “The bison are coming’ – not the “Commons’ (HCN, 2/2/98). If the Poppers had said 10 years ago that bison (note they still get the animals’ name wrong) should become more numerous […]

Dear HCN, My pet peeve is the anti-ranchette bias I see in almost every issue of High Country News. Granted, some ranchettes, just as some ranches, are environmental destabilizers, but most probably serve to increase environmental awareness, just as most ranchers who work with the land amid weather and wildlife have far more respect for […]

Dear HCN, Hugh B. McKeen cried wolf in the article “Wolves go wild in the Southwest” (HCN, 2/16/98). McKeen, who is convinced that people have been killed by wolves, predicts a child will be killed by Mexican wolves within a few years. That dog don’t hunt. Compared to Fido, the family pet, wolves are saints. […]

Dear HCN, Lynne Bama’s story does a good job of explaining some of the controversy surrounding management of feral horses (HCN, 3/2/98). In regard to the Pryor Mountains, however, she did not capture the most important issue: how the horses and their management might impact wilderness designation for the range. The Pryors are a fabulous […]

Dear HCN, As an activist and a writer, I am dismayed by the acrimony being flung by enviros toward enviros around the West regarding the recent decision by Judge Downes in the wolf reintroduction case. The editorial in The New York Times by Thomas McNamee, as well as pieces appearing in High County News, raise […]

Dear HCN, David Rockland invokes a rather confusing logic in his essay “Is our love of the West destroying Chile?” (HCN, 1/19/98). Just because Americans wish to protect their local communities from the environmental impacts of bad mining does not imply, as Rockland asserts, they wish to “export environmental problems’ to other countries. Nor are […]

Dear HCN, Maxine Keesling lamented land-use restrictions in King County, Wash., in a letter (HCN, 1/19/98), but on a recent trip to the area I was hard pressed to see any lack of construction or land development. In fact, sprawl and congestion in the Seattle area strongly resemble that of Southern California. If we are […]

Dear HCN, Letter writer Laurence Jewett of Massachusetts generally took National Audubon Society to the woodshed as the cause of the recent court ruling mandating wolf removal from Yellowstone and central Idaho (HCN, 1/19/98). Only one problem: Audubon didn’t cause the order, the Farm Bureau Federation did. It appears that Mr. Jewett, and a number […]

Dear HCN, Since the user fee issue isn’t going away, judging from your recent letters and columns, I’d like to throw in two more cents. My only problem with the fees is that they aren’t high enough, and there aren’t enough of them (HCN, 10/13/97). Terry Anderson eloquently defended user fees; however, he left out […]

Dear HCN, I am writing in response to the excellent essay by Ken Toole on the far right (HCN, 12/8/97). I have only one problem with his article: Except in the title, he almost always refers to extremists and militias and white supremacists as “the right.” This might give readers the false impression that the […]

Dear HCN, I was disappointed to see Ken Toole’s essay, “How the far right spreads its “wacky” ideas’ (HCN, 12/8/97). In publishing this article, you clarified for one and all that your agenda is a political and lifestyle one, not environmental. You have just alienated the conservative fringe of your readership at a time when […]

Dear HCN, I am one of the letter writers being accused by Mike Yost in his letter of being a “California activist … spreading misinformation about the Quincy Library Group.” (HCN, 12/22/97) But I’m not a California activist – I’m a local Plumas County activist and have been for the past 15 years. My opposition […]