Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, I am alarmed by the collaborative approach described in the May 13 issue and praised by Karl Hess Jr. in the May 27 issue. Though born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, I moved East to work and live here happily, though I return West as often as possible. As a supporter […]

Dear HCN, Your May 13 special issue on Westerners talking together was timely and thought-provoking. Two such efforts are under way on north-central Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. It’s too soon to know if they will be a success, but it is worth noting that the Forest Service has been an honest and energetic proponent. The […]

Dear HCN, Thanks to Mike McCloskey for sharing, and thanks to you for printing, his memo on the limits of collaboration. This is a very important issue: To what extent can environmental problems be solved through collaboration of interest groups at the watershed level? I believe the bottom line is that the environment needs both […]

Dear HCN, I feel compelled to respond to Todd Wilkinson’s May 2 article, “Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion,” because it exemplifies one of the greatest problems facing contemporary conservation issues today: polarization. Wilkinson’s article does not just present the arena of opposition but pushes the fighters further into their respective corners. This article promotes […]

Dear HCN, I enjoyed reading about Sid Goodloe (HCN, 4/15/96) – a fellow who applied grit and intelligence to fix his piece of the West. I didn’t exactly enjoy, but sure did appreciate, the contrast provided by the “opinions from experts.” The “experts’ certainly covered most of the type. The old forestry professor is impressive […]

Dear HCN, HCN muddies the waters in regard to “chaining” of piûon-juniper woodlands almost as much as Sid Goodloe does (HCN, 4/15/96). Just think of it as deforestation accompanied by profound soil disturbance, habitat aridification and heating due to increased wind velocity and insolation, and destruction of virtually all extant wildlife habitat. On public lands […]

ENOLA HILL REPORT WAS NOWHERE NEAR OBJECTIVE Dear HCN: I work as a recreation forester for the Mount Hood National Forest where the Enola Hill timber sale is taking place and the sale has no “350-year-old Douglas fir that loom,” as HCN intern Bill Taylor reports (HCN, 5/27/96): The trees are about 90 years old, […]

Dear HCN, I appreciate your Hanford issue (HCN, 1/22/96) since I was born and raised in Othello, a small town to the northeast of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Our farm, which my brother still owns, lies a little more than a mile away from the northern border. Our father was also raised nearby, on a […]

Dear HCN, I am a long-time climber and resident of Wyoming and have worked here as a professional mountain guide for the past five years. I would like to make it known that many climbers and guides of Wyoming support the voluntary closure of climbing at Devils Tower (HCN, 4/16/96). It is unfortunate that many […]

Dear HCN: Sid Goodloe’s reliance upon wild turkeys to keep grasshoppers down and to fluff the forest floor (HCN, 4/15/96) to help it burn reminds me of a similar situation involving coyotes on a mountain ranch near Chiloquin, Ore. Through befriending a coyote they later named Don Coyote, the Dayton Hyde family was led to […]

Dear HCN, The story of Sid Goodloe’s success in rehabilitating degraded Western rangelands is encouraging. If there were more land stewards with his kind of passion, land ethic, and patience, there would be less controversy in the West and elsewhere. But this is not, nor will it ever be the case, for as Ed Marston […]

Dear HCN, Congratulations on the Sid Goodloe story (HCN, 4/15/96), which stuck a cattle prod into conventional narratives. I need to explain my sure-to-be-maligned comments about saguaros. I lump them, properly I think, with “woody” plants. But I do not mean to imply that they, like piûon-juniper, have exploded over the landscape. They have always […]

Dear HCN, The article about Sid Goodloe (HCN, 4/15/96) and his ranch reconstruction is a real winner: The guy has spent 40 years working and seems to be on the right track. He has actually done something to show how it can be done; the reasoning and understanding that he has developed is amazing. It […]

Dear HCN, I must comment on Ron Selden’s article on the Flathead Indian tribes and the Yellowstone Pipe Line Co. (HCN, 3/4/96). Did Selden ask any questions at all, or was the article written by the tribal spokeswoman? First, I won’t defend Conoco’s spill record – it sounds abysmal. They should be made to pay […]

Dear HCN, The jet tubes of Glen Canyon Dam have been opened, the dye dumped, the posturing of politicians and politician-scientists is over. As I write this, a bunch of real scientists are down in Grand Canyon poking, prodding and monitoring the Colorado, its beaches and residents to determine if this “flood” will restore a […]

Dear HCN, The story “Who owns these bones?” (HCN, 3/4/96) addresses a timely and important issue prompted by recent introduction in Congress of the “Fossil Preservation Act” by Reps. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Joe Skeen, R-N.M. The proposed legislation requires clarification. Your article states that, under the new law, “commercial and amateur collectors would be […]

Dear HCN, We appreciate the attention that High Country News recently gave to fossil ownership, but first, we need to point out that part of the nation’s fossil legacy also occurs on land administered by the Forest Service. The Forest Service has been managing fossil localities for years on a case-by-case basis, and began developing […]

Dear HCN, While it was certainly entertaining to read that “naturalists’ go to the park to nap in the nude (Heard around the West, March 18) – and perhaps quite true – I can’t help but suspect that you meant “naturists’ instead. What characterizes most of the naturalists I know is not so much an […]

Dear HCN: Just a few thoughts on reintroduction of the Mexican wolf. Al Schneberger of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association is correct when he says, “This isn’t about wolves. It’s about control.” However, I see it as ranchers doing the controlling. They control not only the public lands but every aspect of anything that […]

Dear HCN: Michael Cain’s question about forest “edges’ is a good one (HCN, 3/4/96). Too much edge can be a very bad thing. When edges are created by large-scale forest fragmentation – for instance, as a result of extensive clear-cuts – then the remaining forest stands can effectively become islands isolated from the rest of […]