Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Stephen Lyons told us in the last issue that he left hate-filled Idaho for the more progressive state of Washington (HCN, 3/16/98). Since I made that same move last autumn, here’s my response to his essay: Dear Stephen, Welcome to Washington! You’ll find excellent coffee, happy diversity and easy access to recycling. Enjoy […]

Dear HCN, While the Poppers’ update on the Buffalo Commons was interesting, it failed to disclose a disturbing trend in private bison herd management (HCN, 2/2/98). That trend is the domestication of bison. The bison slaughterhouse in North Dakota mentioned in the Poppers’ article requires that bison be grain-fed 120 days prior to slaughter, and […]

Dear HCN, In the opinion of Frank and Deborah Popper, their Buffalo Commons idea is accurate, but your headline tells the real story: “The bison are coming’ – not the “Commons’ (HCN, 2/2/98). If the Poppers had said 10 years ago that bison (note they still get the animals’ name wrong) should become more numerous […]

Dear HCN, My pet peeve is the anti-ranchette bias I see in almost every issue of High Country News. Granted, some ranchettes, just as some ranches, are environmental destabilizers, but most probably serve to increase environmental awareness, just as most ranchers who work with the land amid weather and wildlife have far more respect for […]

Dear HCN, Hugh B. McKeen cried wolf in the article “Wolves go wild in the Southwest” (HCN, 2/16/98). McKeen, who is convinced that people have been killed by wolves, predicts a child will be killed by Mexican wolves within a few years. That dog don’t hunt. Compared to Fido, the family pet, wolves are saints. […]

Dear HCN, Lynne Bama’s story does a good job of explaining some of the controversy surrounding management of feral horses (HCN, 3/2/98). In regard to the Pryor Mountains, however, she did not capture the most important issue: how the horses and their management might impact wilderness designation for the range. The Pryors are a fabulous […]

Dear HCN, As an activist and a writer, I am dismayed by the acrimony being flung by enviros toward enviros around the West regarding the recent decision by Judge Downes in the wolf reintroduction case. The editorial in The New York Times by Thomas McNamee, as well as pieces appearing in High County News, raise […]

Dear HCN, David Rockland invokes a rather confusing logic in his essay “Is our love of the West destroying Chile?” (HCN, 1/19/98). Just because Americans wish to protect their local communities from the environmental impacts of bad mining does not imply, as Rockland asserts, they wish to “export environmental problems’ to other countries. Nor are […]

Dear HCN, Maxine Keesling lamented land-use restrictions in King County, Wash., in a letter (HCN, 1/19/98), but on a recent trip to the area I was hard pressed to see any lack of construction or land development. In fact, sprawl and congestion in the Seattle area strongly resemble that of Southern California. If we are […]

Dear HCN, Letter writer Laurence Jewett of Massachusetts generally took National Audubon Society to the woodshed as the cause of the recent court ruling mandating wolf removal from Yellowstone and central Idaho (HCN, 1/19/98). Only one problem: Audubon didn’t cause the order, the Farm Bureau Federation did. It appears that Mr. Jewett, and a number […]

Dear HCN, Since the user fee issue isn’t going away, judging from your recent letters and columns, I’d like to throw in two more cents. My only problem with the fees is that they aren’t high enough, and there aren’t enough of them (HCN, 10/13/97). Terry Anderson eloquently defended user fees; however, he left out […]

Dear HCN, I am writing in response to the excellent essay by Ken Toole on the far right (HCN, 12/8/97). I have only one problem with his article: Except in the title, he almost always refers to extremists and militias and white supremacists as “the right.” This might give readers the false impression that the […]

Dear HCN, I was disappointed to see Ken Toole’s essay, “How the far right spreads its “wacky” ideas’ (HCN, 12/8/97). In publishing this article, you clarified for one and all that your agenda is a political and lifestyle one, not environmental. You have just alienated the conservative fringe of your readership at a time when […]

Dear HCN, I am one of the letter writers being accused by Mike Yost in his letter of being a “California activist … spreading misinformation about the Quincy Library Group.” (HCN, 12/22/97) But I’m not a California activist – I’m a local Plumas County activist and have been for the past 15 years. My opposition […]

Dear HCN, “Wolves take a heavy toll in Montana,” declared the headline (HCN, 9/15/97). At least 30 sheep killed by wolves over a six-week period in the Tobacco Valley of northwest Montana, according to the story. No doubt the loss of 30 head of sheep – -one of the worst wolf attacks on livestock in […]

Dear HCN, Though your recent issues covering the mining industry in the West were informative and interesting, I must call you to task for letting rabble-rouser Dave Skinner share the platform with credible witnesses. (HCN, 1/19/98) Why is it that “issues’ publications like High Country News, in struggling so hard to be unbiased, repeatedly allow […]

Dear HCN, As a geologist who thinks the flooding of Glen Canyon was tragic but who also happens to work for the Bureau of Reclamation, I can’t help but say something about the drain Lake Powell idea (HCN, 11/10/97). Over and over we hear from David Brower and others who claim that Glen Canyon is […]

It’s an awful job, but somebody has to do it – register an afterthought to Kathie Durbin’s story on the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, “Cows depart, but can antelope recover?” (HCN, 11/24/97). I have no problem accepting as fact that livestock grazing wrecked the place, that cows broke the cryptogamic crust, that Eurasian cheatgrass […]

Dear HCN, As one of the founders of King County Property Rights Alliance (King County surrounds Seattle), I take exception to Ken Toole’s essay on the Far Right and its wacky ideas (HCN, 12/8/97). I endorse the bulk of those “wacky” ideas, even though I haven’t been to church, fundamentalist or otherwise, for a good […]

Dear HCN, It is more than a little ironic that the arguments of a group – the Audubon Society – trying to enforce the letter of the Endangered Species Act yielded a result contrary to the one that they had hoped for. Their intention was to extend coverage of the act to all wolves, including […]