Dear HCN,
I was disappointed in a
recent article about Silver City, N.M.: “A Struggle for the Last
Grass’ by Tony Davis, May 2. Mr. Davis interviewed my husband and
some of my friends. He asked questions which indicated he might be
looking only for conflict, not for ways problems were being solved.
I don’t necessarily question his facts. We’ve been aware of these
problems for years.
What I question is your
making Susan Schock some kind of heroine. “Gila Watch … has
fought both a fourth-generation rancher and a federal agency to a
standstill over the fate of the wilderness.”
A
lot of time and money and press has gone into a fight in which no
one is getting anywhere except scared and angry. I really question
the goal here. I don’t see Susan offering solutions. The conflict
in the press is being drawn as Coalition of Counties ranchers who
want title to everything vs. environmentalists who want cows off
the public lands now and forever. Great: Let’s all go to
war.
Friends of the Gila River worked for years
to get a Gila River plan. Without the plan it’s harder to fight
cows on the riparian areas here, and it is on the riparian that
most threatened and endangered species depend. I want to see
something change, not just be on the moral high ground, and there
is a lot about small human communities around here that I value and
would like to save. There are a lot of ranching folks who are fine
people and who care about the land, even if they aren’t aware
always of the damage that is happening to it. It’s from our
strengths as a community that we are going to find enduring
answers.
If we don’t get down to being committed
to looking for some kind of win-win solutions for which we can get
cooperation, we’ve got nothing. I don’t want to see ranchers sell
off to developers, and that could be one of their only choices. I
don’t see tourism or development as any option for
nature.
I don’t much like being yelled at in
meetings or bad-mouthed around town. So how about we start acting
like grownups and treating each other the way we want to be
treated? If the world were only made up of folks treating people
like Susan Schock does, or ranchers willing to shoot somebody to
make a point, well, I’d be happy to kiss off the human race. Nature
will survive us, in geological time. Somehow, I doubt we humans
will be a part of that future if we don’t learn something new
soon.
Nena
MacDonald
Gila, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline There’s another approach possible in Silver City, N.M..
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