Letter to the editor

Dear HCN: One topic not dealt with in your recent special issue on development in the West: the transformation of the private-land component of public-lands ranches to ranchettes. The proliferation of 10- to 40-acre ranchettes with their accompanying traffic, paving, fences, sewer systems, dogs and horses decimates winter range, degrades groundwater quality, accelerates runoff and […]

Dear HCN, I am writing to clarify some statements in the article from your 9/15/94 edition re “Rural residents defy Washington law.” I am a Whatcom County resident, a former candidate for public office (County Council, 1993), and the current co-president of the Washington Environmental Council. As a co-founder of Whatcom Watch, a citizens’ networking […]

Dear HCN: Ed Marston may have been right in his Aug. 22 opinion article that environmentalists have won and there has been an amazing conversion at the Forest Service and BLM and the beasts of contention can now lie down together on Mr. Babbitt’s holy middle ground. But where is the evidence? Has he listened […]

Dear HCN, I fell asleep in my overstuffed chair in front of the TV the other night. Suddenly, gunfire broke loose on the street outside my door and I was snapped into full alert. I leaped to my feet and grabbed my trusty Benjamin air rifle and gave it a couple of pumps. Thinking it […]

Dear HCN: Your coverage of the push for salvage logging in the wake of an intense fire season was both timely and insightful (HCN, 9/19/94). Kathie Durbin’s interview with Tom Graham, a rehabilitation worker on the Tyee Creek Fire, exposed one of the central fallacies of public forestry. Mr. Graham suggested that the fire had […]

Dear HCN, The “Grappling With Growth” issue of Sept. 5 was the best yet, albeit downright despairing. I’ve been traveling around the West, up and down, back and forth, for almost 20 years and have yet to find a community that really had a clue as to what was happening to it. Quite frankly, the […]

Dear HCN: Congratulations on your “Grappling with Growth” issue (HCN, 9/5/94). It will circulate around these quarters and be referenced for some time to come. I read Ed Marston’s essay on a possible bust and wanted to respond with some different interpretations. My counterparts in southern Utah see the ups and downs of the California […]

Dear HCN, I read Tom Knudson’s article on Bernard DeVoto with great pleasure (HCN, 8/8/94). Among those who are familiar with his life and writings, DeVoto’s acerbic wit, lifetime commitment to the twin arts of writing and history and passionate defense of both individual liberties and the American West are still inspirational. Yet, his own […]

Dear HCN, Thumbs up on the article “Whose Fault?” in your Aug. 22 issue. It seems that more and more we look toward someone to blame for anything that befalls us. As a skiing and river guide and a former wilderness ranger, I often see people who assume the “invisible someone” out there wouldn’t let […]

Dear HCN, We waited seven years for our permit on the Colorado River. Six months before our launch we started planning: 16 good friends schemed to enjoy the Grand Canyon for 14 days. We each went on this trip for a different reason. Some were there to experience the beauty of the Southwest, some to […]

Dear HCN, Blaming federal fire-suppression policy on the conditions leading up to the South Canyon (not Canyon Creek) fire that killed 14 near Glenwood Springs, Colo., is very trendy but bullshit (HCN, 7/25/94). Fuels don’t accumulate in the piûon-juniper vegetative types; typical stands are open-spaced canopies with little understory to carry a fire. In addition, […]

Dear HCN, Yellowstone Park managers are still not focusing on the main problem – true for most parks, I would guess – and that is crowds and what park officials feel they must do to accommodate them (HCN, 5/30/94). Crowds destroy the basic mood of the park itself – its differentness. This differentness is a […]

Dear HCN, When the U.S. Department of the Interior recently released regulations that would establish procedures for state and local governments to claim road rights-of-way under the old RS 2477 law (HCN, 8/22/94), there was an immediate outcry from Utah’s Sen. Bob Bennett, who said the proposed rules constituted “… a threat to the economy […]

Dear HCN, It was with considerable personal interest I read the article “Forest Service dunked by its own witch hunt” (HCN, 8/8/94) as the mention of Paul Senteney provided a personal link to the national story. As a wildlife biologist for the San Juan National Forest in 1971, Senteney was one of the initial people […]

Dear HCN, I note with particular sympathy the various articles in HCN that talk of the destruction of small Western towns due to the influx of us “city folk.” It reminds me of my early childhood growing up in the Santa Clara Valley, now Silicon Valley, when the majority of land use consisted of orchards […]

Dear HCN, Richard Manning (HCN, 7/25/94) says “a national boycott of gold would make many of our environmental worries go away, as if by magic.” He should carry it even further. What about silver? It is mainly a by-product of other mining, so we could also eliminate copper and other metals to help protect the […]

Dear HCN, Here in my driveway on Carrizo Valley Ranch, I’m sitting on the tailgate of my pickup watching the most vicious forest fire I have ever seen. The entire Patos mountain range is ablaze, producing smoke thermal clouds that can probably be seen from 150 miles away. Flames are visible through the smoke leaping […]

Dear HCN, The reasons the Colorado Outward Bound School is opposed to the Canyonlands Backcountry Management Plan are far greater than group size limits as implied in Florence Williams’ article, “Outdoor Groups Fight Camping Limits’ (HCN, 6/27/94). In fact, the plan proposes to eliminate permits for commercial and educational backpacking groups altogether, thus denying public […]

Dear HCN, Yellowstone National Park faces a terrific dilemma. Enhancement for recreational visitors or management as a diverse ecosystem? What ecosystem? The pre-Columbian system or the modern system which is a result of endless human tinkering? Of course, this kind of dilemma faces not only Yellowstone, but every place. The overriding goal, which researcher Fred […]

Dear HCN, A recent letter criticized Ed Marston’s review of Rangeland Health (HCN, 4/4/94) in which he described range science as “a handmaiden of the livestock industry.” Marston stands accused of political incorrectness for pejoratively using a female gendered word. At least he was civil. Agriculture faculty in the West’s land-grant universities are often accused […]