BIRDERS ACROSS BORDERS
It was great to read about the wonderful work Sky Island Alliance is doing with dedicated ranchers like Eduardo Ríos Colores (“Searching for sparrows in the Sky Islands,” July 2025). Collaborative efforts with like-minded people in Mexico are so important for the future of our wildlife and plants. Wildlife knows no borders. We can learn a lot from this concept.
Katherine Brown
Cochise, Arizona
TAKE IT OUTSIDE!
I took the July 2025 editor’s note recommendation to heart. I headed outside to the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway (!) and read your fine publication under the trees in the Roanoke Mountain Campground.
Despite our geographic distance, I’m a fan. I particularly enjoyed Angie Kang’s drawings and text that I found to be unique and spellbinding.
Rupert Cutler
Roanoke, Virginia
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
The person featured in July’s “I am the West” seeks, by control of women’s fertility, to “level the playing field with men.” Birth control methods control women’s fertility. Abortion can never level the playing field because abortion is an accommodation that women extend to careless men so to relieve men of responsibility. The gal gets the grief while the guy gets away.
Mark Clinard
Florence, Colorado
BUILD IN, NOT OUT
Thanks for highlighting concerns over the federal land sell-off proposal of Utah Sen. Mike Lee (“MAGA and the developers are coming for your public lands,” June 26, 2025). Those of us who work in local planning and development recognize the difficulties in creating new developments on remote lands. We are very aware of the environmental issues, capacity limitations and public-cost issues raised by this kind of development.
Rural land development is an issue that we in Mesa County, Colorado, and its communities have grappled with over the years. We have adopted community comprehensive and master plans that attempt to limit “sprawl growth” that is not supported by local infrastructure and instead encourage infill growth. Costs of Sprawl by Ewing, Reid, Hamidi and Shima is a well-known book that quantifies the high public cost in infrastructure that such growth entails.
Planners have estimated that existing communities could double their housing stock within their existing growth boundaries, so there is no need to extend these boundaries to rural and federal lands!
Bennett Boeschenstein Member
American Planning Association Former City Council member and community development director
Grand Junction, Colorado
WOLVES BELONG IN THE WEST
Jonathan Thompson’s article “Wolves Return to the West,” (June 2025) illustrates the charged terrain surrounding wolf reintroduction in the West, shaped as much by fear and politics as by ecology. As someone who has spent decades advocating for wild carnivores, I see a troubling déjà vu: The same misinformation and persecution that nearly wiped wolves out in the 20th century are gaining ground again.
Wolves are once again being vilified, scapegoated and used as political pawns. From aggressive wolf-killing policies in the Northern Rockies to the introduction of federal legislation like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s “Pet and Livestock Protection Act,” we’re witnessing an orchestrated effort to undermine decades of recovery. The old mythology that wolves are a threat to ranching and livelihoods is being weaponized to justify killing them, often with taxpayer dollars
Project Coyote’s Protect America’s Wolves (PAW) campaign engages in litigation, coalition-building and public education to fight anti-wolf policies in Montana, advances science-based restoration in the Northeast, and supports Colorado’s return of wolves to the landscape. Public engagement can stop regressive policies that put wolves back on the path toward extinction.
Americans overwhelmingly support wolf recovery. It’s time wildlife agencies and lawmakers listened. We owe wolves better than a cycle of reintroduction followed by eradication. If we’ve learned anything over the last 50 years, it should be this: We must reject this cycle of political scapegoating and instead embrace coexistence — grounded in science, ethics and a shared responsibility — to protect the wild for future generations.
Camilla Fox
Founder and executive director, Project Coyote
LESS TRASH = LESS TROUBLE
Thank you for Jaclyn Moyer’s excellent article “Where the Garbage Goes” (June 2025) about the expansion of the landfill in the community of Soap Creek Valley, Oregon. This is perhaps a topic we would rather not think about but one that has relevance for all of us in our consumer society. It needs to be addressed, both at the source by reducing consumption but also with better solutions for disposal and recycling of the waste that ends up in our landfills.
Janet Rahmani
Colorado Springs, Colorado
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