Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Logger Kirkmire’s letter in your Dec. 4 edition requires several responses. 1) The people he claims are outraged about the killing of excess hatchery salmon need to study up on their biology and ecology. Any watershed has a limited capacity for spawning and rearing of salmon. To introduce more spawning adults into a […]

Dear HCN, The “Analysis” by Tony Davis regarding the failure of Arizona’s anti-growth Proposition 202 in the last election misses an important part of the situation in southern Arizona and, I suspect, elsewhere as well (HCN, 11/20/00: In Arizona’s growth fight, advertising defined reality). Davis attributes the failure to an advertising blitz by the pro-growth […]

Dear HCN, I just received your latest edition of HCN and couldn’t get the Burma Shave lines out of my head. I think bringing information like this up about our checkered history is important (HCN, 10/23/00: Dear Friends). A quick, easy-to-read sign is an innovative way to get the information across. The hard-hitting reporting that […]

Dear HCN, Not long ago, I was eating pancakes in a small diner/grocery in Clark, Colo., just 25 miles north of Steamboat Springs. My waitress was 60-something, and I soon found that she and her husband owned a farm outside of Clark. “It’s been part of the family since the Homestead Act,” she explained. By […]

Dear HCN, Bob Skaggs and so many others miss the point when they argue that immigrants only take low-paying jobs that “no one else wants” (HCN, 11/20/00). Corine Flores is right. We have little hope of advancing the earnings potential of this nation’s poor or minorities, or of protecting the environment, as long as immigration […]

Dear HCN, I have just finished lunch with your essay, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” (HCN, 8/28/00). I read with particular interest the part about Nye, Mont., and the palladium mine. We visited Nye in the early ’90s for the sole purpose of seeing the mine (hillbillies do that). We were having a chuckle about […]

Dear HCN, Susan Cockrell’s letter attacking my research into nonlethal federal management of coyotes in the Oct. 23 issue of High Country News proves that, once again, you can lead some horses to water but you can’t make them drink. But the hopelessness of some tasks just encourages folks like me (I love my job!). […]

Dear HCN, Your story, “Into the depths” (HCN, 11/6/00) grossly understated the depth of Crater Lake, Ore., the deepest lake in North America at nearly 2,000 feet. You surely meant 600 meters. Because of this great depth and its clarity, it has an incredible blue color caused by molecular scattering and its steep shoreline. Go […]

Dear HCN, Mark Muro’s piece about the defeat of growth-control initiatives in Colorado and Arizona was disheartening, but there is a bright side (HCN, 11/20/00). All of us know that developers care about only one thing. Forcing them to spend money to defeat such proposals puts a crimp in their profits, and more than $4 […]

Dear HCN, I have just finished lunch with your essay, “Squishy-soft processes – hard results” (HCN, 8/28/00). I read with particular interest the part about Nye, Mont., and the palladium mine. We visited Nye in the early ’90s for the sole purpose of seeing the mine (hillbillies do that). We were having a chuckle about […]

Dear HCN, As a hunter, I find opinions like those of Ali Macalady nauseating (HCN, 11/6/00). “Hunters for Gun Control?” I wonder if she’s not a “plant,” a leftist radical posing as a hunter. If she’s really a hunter, she should be aware that the gun-grabbers will never be satisfied with banning handguns and semi-automatic […]

Dear HCN, I was pleased to see the article on “Hunters for Gun Control” (HCN, 11/6/00). I am interested in building a coalition of groups in Montana (and elsewhere) that can effectively challenge the perception that all or most hunters and sportsmen accept the NRA line. Ralph StoneVista, Montana This article appeared in the print […]

Dear HCN, I am glad that Ali Macalady and her family are devoted to hunting. I share with her the belief that “there is something important about harvesting my own food,” and a love of early mornings spent waiting for game. But it is disappointing to read that an outdoorswoman such as Macalady considers it […]

Dear HCN, Ed Marston’s visit to the Teton Dam disaster, described in his “Truth telling” essay (HCN, 9/25/00: Truth-telling needs a home in the West), reminded me of my involvement with that dam. In 1971, Gov. Cecil Andrus appointed me as the token environmentalist to the Idaho Water Resource Board. We soon thereafter visited the […]

Dear HCN, Thank you for the copy of your story about the Catholic Church’s pastoral letter to help people appreciate the sacred and divine nature of the Columbia River watershed (HCN, 9/11/00: Holy water: The Catholic Church seeks to restore the Columbia River and the church’s relevance to the natural world). I fell in love […]

Dear HCN, Contrary to the subtle assertions made by Mike Stark in his article titled “Killing salmon to save the species” (HCN, 10/9/00: Killing salmon to save the species), many people, from state to federal officials throughout the Northwest, were and are still angry, indeed outraged, at the salmon-clubbing episode that occurred in Oregon and […]

Dear HCN, David Petersen claims to be a hunter, but writes like an Animal Rights Fanatic (ARF). He follows the pattern of the typical activist, changing the names of things to disguise their true nature. Thus ranch hunts become the evil canned hunts. Reading his opinion piece, “When hunting becomes staggeringly stupid” (HCN, 10/23/00: When […]

Dear HCN, Your story on the Mexican-American border described in intimate detail the life of an illegal trying to cross, but we are not addressing the root cause of the problem (HCN, 10/9/00: The hunters and the hunted: The Arizona-Mexico border turns into the 21st century frontier). We think the solution to this problem is […]

Dear HCN, Having lived in a remote area of Cochise County, eight miles from the Mexican border, I found Susan Zakin’s article, “The Hunters and the Hunted,” to be an accurate and well-balanced examination of a very serious problem (HCN, 10/9/00: The hunters and the hunted: The Arizona-Mexico border turns into the 21st century frontier). […]

Dear HCN, I read with some puzzlement your edition of Sept. 25, in which you applaud the use of propane-powered buses in Zion National Park, then promptly deride the natural gas industry, the source of that propane. I’ve always respected the High Country News for what I thought was balanced, in-depth reporting on contentious environmental […]