HCN IGNORED
THE REAL
ISSUES
Dear
HCN:
Does Jon Christensen work in his off hours
for the wise-use movement? He should learn a little more about
Nevada before he writes about environmental issues. With several
articles about ranching April 3, how come Mr. Christensen fails to
give readers a full understanding of how this one activity
detrimentally affects the state?
He failed to
mention a recent study by the Forest Service Range and Experiment
Station in Fort Collins, Colo., which mapped biodiversity. It
concluded that Nevada has had more species decline to endangered
species status attributed to livestock production than any other
state. Why no mention of the sage grouse, desert tortoise, Lahontan
cutthroat trout, and dozens of other species in the state
threatened with extinction primarily due to habitat destruction
resulting from livestock production? Why not mention that all this
destruction is done in the name of the less than 2,000 people who
work in agriculture? Nevada, despite its myth of the cowboy, is a
lousy place to try to grow anything. Ask my
wife.
In his story about Great Basin National
Park, he is again sympathetic to the livestock industry. He doesn’t
tell HCN readers that virtually all of Nevada is grazed by cows and
that there is virtually no place cow-free. Is it too much to ask
that less than 100,000 acres in a national park be reserved
strictly for the native wildlife?
Nor does he
bother to note that two out of the seven permittees running
livestock in the park are corporations from California. Christensen
leads readers to believe that livestock production in the park was
a benign activity. The rancher quoted implies they are being forced
from the park, but all that is being required is that they graze
without damaging the land – something that ranchers aren’t used to
doing, so they take it as a threat.
At least for
perspective, a good reporter would have noted that an Oregon State
University range study completed last year concluded that livestock
were destroying riparian zones and causing other problems in the
park. A good reporter would have also noted that the park’s bighorn
sheep herd is in decline and threatened with extinction, in part,
due to the continued exposure to disease from domestic sheep grazed
in and adjacent to the park (available from the
park).
And why didn’t Christensen mention in his
story about the Newlands Irrigation Project that 90 percent of the
water consumed in the state is used by agriculture instead of
implying it’s sprinklers and golf courses at the Las Vegas casinos
or growing suburbs that is the problem? We don’t have a water
problem in Nevada, we have an agriculture problem. Why does he
ignore the fact that the farmers in the Newlands project – besides
threatening Pyramid Lake – had already drained 20-mile-long
Winnemuca Lake by the 1930s? Or note that this lake was a wildlife
refuge that is now gone? Nor does he mention that a similar fate
may soon await the Stillwater Wildlife Refuge which often is
nothing more than a dry, cracked lakebed while adjacent alfalfa
fields are flood-irrigated, and that through subsidies to
irrigators taxpayers are paying to destroy their wildlife
refuge.
He doesn’t mention the “great” deal
worked out by the Nature Conservancy to have “waste” water diverted
to the Stillwater Refuge that will be loaded with fertilizers and
pesticides, and that potentially could make Stillwater into another
Kesterson death trap.
I expect to read stories
with a slant like Jon Christensen’s in Range Magazine or in the
local booster papers here in Nevada. But I expect better from a
paper that bills itself as an “environmental”
paper.
Randy Weber
Elko,
Nevada
JON CHRISTENSEN
RESPONDS
One thing I have
learned about Nevada: Although there is a vast open territory
between the environmental and wise-use movements, very little of it
is productively occupied. What troubles me about Mr. Weber’s letter
is not everything that he feels I need to learn about Nevada.
Although I’ve immersed myself in the state’s environmental issues
for five years, I’ve mainly learned how much more we all can and
need to learn. Mr. Weber faults me for sins of omission. I think
his letter is an excellent amplification of his point of view. I’m
glad to see his concerns in print. What bothers me, however, is
that he feels the need to jump-start his argument with a personal
attack. The message is clear: You’re either for us or against us.
It’s the same message that comes from both sides in the so-called
War on the West. I don’t work for either side.
As
a journalist who writes about people and the environment, I feel
fortunate to work for a newspaper that doesn’t adhere to any
organizational battle lines. In my off hours, I try to enjoy this
region that Mr. Weber calls “a lousy place to grow anything” by
spending time outdoors with my growing children, planting a garden,
taking trips to beautiful and not-so-beautiful places in the Great
Basin, and talking with friends about making our communities and
environment better for all of us.
n
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline HCN ignored the real issues.
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