Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, While Andy Wiessner did many environmentally heroic deeds in the past when he was counsel for the House Interior Committee, such as making sure that the California Wilderness Bill included many key lands in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, he seems to have let the big money his consulting work brings in color his […]

As one who makes a living on federal land exchanges and Land and Water Conservation Fund purchases, I was disappointed in Lynne Bama’s story on land exchanges (HCN, 3/29/99). Two exchanges which came in for heavy criticism in the article were the Huckleberry and Plum Creek exchanges in Washington state. The criticisms stemmed mainly from […]

I was appalled to read your recent puff piece about the Bea-Lang house being constructed in a critical place in my home, the Columbia River Gorge (HCN, 2/15/99). Your supposedly objective article claims “a big house slipped through” protections enacted by Congress in 1986. Nonsense. This monstrosity is not an anomaly but the norm – […]

Rachel Odell’s article about the whitewater boating ban in Yellowstone National Park missed the heart of the issue: The standard for use in our national parks which was established by the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916 implies that as long as a use does not damage the resource, the National Park Service should […]

Dear HCN, While the Air Force is busy in Nevada, giving lip service and meeting time to ecosystem management and touchy-feely sound bites, it is forging right ahead with the destruction of the Owyhee Canyonlands of Idaho (HCN, 3/15/99). No matter that a broad coalition of public-interest groups and a majority of Idaho citizens oppose […]

Dear HCN, Talk about stupidity! The trapping and relocation of lynx from their natural habitat in northern Canada to Colorado has to top the list (HCN, 2/15/99). Most people in the Colorado Division of Wildlife have never seen a lynx, let alone have much knowledge of how they live, but because they were pressured by […]

Dear HCN, The articles about the Trout Creek Mountains in the March 1 edition of High Country News overlooked a key player, the American taxpayer (HCN, 3/1/99). The Bureau of Land Management addressed this effort as a “must not be allowed to fail” demonstration grazing project. Funding was redirected to the tune of about $500 […]

Dear HCN, Tom Knudson’s story on the Trout Creek working group in Oregon lacked some important factual information that would have cast the “success’ of this BLM propaganda project in a less favorable light (HCN, 3/1/99). The article implies that the Trout Creeks can serve as a model solution for public-lands grazing disputes across the […]

Dear HCN, In Dustin Solberg’s story about alternative forest products on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation – where one-third of the people live below the poverty line – I was angered by the author’s comment, “whether (earnings from the sale of coneflowers are) spent on school clothes or 12-packs, everyone seems to like the new […]

Dear HCN, In response to Michael Cohen’s letter, (HCN, 3/l/99), Mr. Cohen needn’t worry about recreational fun-hogs filling the Escalante River Canyons. Aside from Coyote Gulch being overrun, in my 28 years of backpacking the Escalante River, I have never seen more than a handful of people, and most of them were up Death Hollow, […]

Dear HCN, We recently became aware of a “Heard Around the West” article in your publication that addressed the upcoming Outdoor Writers of America Association conference in Sioux Falls (HCN, 3/1/99). The Outdoor Writers of America Association did not plan the prairie dog shooting trip you mentioned in your article and the excursion does not […]

Dear HCN, In your article, “A Question of Photography Ethics,” reporter Dan Oko unfairly impugns the integrity of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) over a bear photograph which he charges was taken in an unethical manner and subsequently appeared in National Wildlife magazine. But Mr. Oko leaves out some important facts. First, the photographer in […]

Dear HCN, Please allow me to respond to the letter from Marc Gaede which addresses hunting (HCN, 3/1/99). I find Mr. Gaede’s remarks fascinating. I also sense an unhealthy anger towards hunters simmering just beneath the surface of his views. I suggest the cure for this anger is for the inflicted to spend a day […]

Dear HCN, The last time I heard a spiel like Marc Gaede’s letter, a male forester was telling me that women shouldn’t be foresters because the cave MAN went out and clubbed the mammoths (HCN, 3/1/99). Give me a break. Gaede chooses to define “hunting” only as the tracking and killing of large animals by […]

Dear HCN, I think your readers who are complaining about receiving too much junk mail are possibly taking the wrong attitude toward this matter (HCN, 2/1/99). Think positively! I remember hearing about a man who intentionally got his name onto as many catalog mailing lists, etc., as he could. He heated his house with a […]

Dear HCN, I enjoy High Country News, but am continually dismayed by your promotion of consensus. Wallace Stegner once characterized the American West as “stretches of picturesque poverty.” It is the most salient fact about the West. And the fact most missing when visionaries talk about what the West should be. The idea that public […]

Dear HCN, I should like to respond to Paul Quinnett’s letter (HCN, 1/18/99) in which he says he is unaware of any science that can demonstrate hunters are “subconsciously killing other male humans because of competition for females.” There are numerous scientific publications dealing with the issue of hunting and personal aggression, but one will […]

Dear HCN, I am sorry to say that I will not be renewing my High Country News subscription. I have been reading your paper with much interest and appreciation for the past four years, but lately have become increasingly disappointed with your anti-hunting, and anti-hunter, sentiment. While your writers do an outstanding job illuminating some […]

Dear HCN, Re: “Fun-hogs to replace cows in a Utah monument” (HCN, 2/1/99), give us a break. Give us the real story. The Escalante, a lone remnant of Glen Canyon, is a sensitive and disastrously disturbed river system. It is a central riparian corridor for wildlife, but at present it is barely alive. It flows […]

Dear HCN, I seldom voice my opinion in the public arena, but I felt compelled by the recent articles in High Country News to share some of my experiences and opinions. Like Brad Dimock, I am a recovering river rat. I got my start with Outward Bound School in the late 1960s. I started floating […]