Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Catron County Attorney James Catron may be correct when he asserts that “he and Catron County residents personify the frontier ethic portrayed by James Fenimore Cooper” (HCN, 6/24/96), but is he aware that Cooper despised frontiersmen and their “ethic’? In The Pioneers, the 18th century settlers’ only “ethic” is the myth of superabundance; […]

Dear HCN, The issue on outdoor education (HCN, 6/10/96) was excellent. I was delighted to see our photo and the quality of the entire issue. Then I read the blurb about Deer Hill. Deer Hill does not “yank bored teenagers out of suburban high schools and drop them on the Colorado plateau.” What a message […]

Dear HCN, Karl Hess tells us, in “Imagine a West Without Heroes,” that the West would best be managed by New Westerners and not by federalists, justifying his conclusion by portraying John Wesley Powell as a worn-out hero (HCN, 5/27/96). It seems that many Western writers prefer to wrestle with the ghost of Powell. Perhaps […]

Dear HCN, This spring I had the pleasure of leading a group of fifth-graders from Portland, Ore., on a hike through the Opal Creek Ancient Forest. These are the future hellions which our politicians have been scrambling to build prisons for. Kids from not-so-normal families. Their neighborhood is known as “felony flats.” My kind of […]

Dear HCN, Regarding the Quincy Library Group efforts described in HCN May 13, there are consequences to the Clinton administration’s well-meaning decision to provide the promised $4.7 million to fund the library group’s agreement. The funding was taken off the top of an already impoverished Region 5 resources budget. Range management programs which have never […]

Dear HCN, I read with interest your issue featuring community-based approaches to conservation (HCN, 5/13/96). Mike McCloskey’s essay illustrates the concerns of many since, in his view, locally based conservation would disempower the heavily urban constituencies of the Sierra Club, and by extension, other national environmental organizations. That concern is perhaps the most compelling reason […]

Dear HCN, Sierra Club leader Michael McCloskey was correct when he told his board that community collaboration processes “have the effect of transferring influence to the very communities where we are least organized and potent.” He went on to note that local environmentalists often lack experience, training, skills and money. So what is the correct […]

Dear HCN, As a professional in the field of outdoor-adventure education, I appreciated your well-balanced, thorough discussion of outdoor education (HCN, 6/10/96). As wilderness becomes the place for personal growth, team-building and therapeutic purposes, industry regulation becomes increasingly critical. This is evidenced by the toll of teenage fatalities in “tough love” programs such as North […]

Dear HCN, Your May 13 article on dams and Northwest salmon quoted a Boise teacher to the effect that removing dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers would only affect “15,000 jobs connected to the BPA, the Army Corps, the navigation industry, three lower Snake ports, eight aluminum companies, and 500 farms served by the […]

Dear HCN, I am alarmed by the collaborative approach described in the May 13 issue and praised by Karl Hess Jr. in the May 27 issue. Though born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, I moved East to work and live here happily, though I return West as often as possible. As a supporter […]

Dear HCN, Your May 13 special issue on Westerners talking together was timely and thought-provoking. Two such efforts are under way on north-central Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. It’s too soon to know if they will be a success, but it is worth noting that the Forest Service has been an honest and energetic proponent. The […]

Dear HCN, Thanks to Mike McCloskey for sharing, and thanks to you for printing, his memo on the limits of collaboration. This is a very important issue: To what extent can environmental problems be solved through collaboration of interest groups at the watershed level? I believe the bottom line is that the environment needs both […]

Dear HCN, I feel compelled to respond to Todd Wilkinson’s May 2 article, “Utah ushers its frogs toward oblivion,” because it exemplifies one of the greatest problems facing contemporary conservation issues today: polarization. Wilkinson’s article does not just present the arena of opposition but pushes the fighters further into their respective corners. This article promotes […]

Dear HCN, I enjoyed reading about Sid Goodloe (HCN, 4/15/96) – a fellow who applied grit and intelligence to fix his piece of the West. I didn’t exactly enjoy, but sure did appreciate, the contrast provided by the “opinions from experts.” The “experts’ certainly covered most of the type. The old forestry professor is impressive […]

Dear HCN, HCN muddies the waters in regard to “chaining” of piûon-juniper woodlands almost as much as Sid Goodloe does (HCN, 4/15/96). Just think of it as deforestation accompanied by profound soil disturbance, habitat aridification and heating due to increased wind velocity and insolation, and destruction of virtually all extant wildlife habitat. On public lands […]

ENOLA HILL REPORT WAS NOWHERE NEAR OBJECTIVE Dear HCN: I work as a recreation forester for the Mount Hood National Forest where the Enola Hill timber sale is taking place and the sale has no “350-year-old Douglas fir that loom,” as HCN intern Bill Taylor reports (HCN, 5/27/96): The trees are about 90 years old, […]

Dear HCN, I am a long-time climber and resident of Wyoming and have worked here as a professional mountain guide for the past five years. I would like to make it known that many climbers and guides of Wyoming support the voluntary closure of climbing at Devils Tower (HCN, 4/16/96). It is unfortunate that many […]

Dear HCN, I appreciate your Hanford issue (HCN, 1/22/96) since I was born and raised in Othello, a small town to the northeast of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Our farm, which my brother still owns, lies a little more than a mile away from the northern border. Our father was also raised nearby, on a […]

Dear HCN: Sid Goodloe’s reliance upon wild turkeys to keep grasshoppers down and to fluff the forest floor (HCN, 4/15/96) to help it burn reminds me of a similar situation involving coyotes on a mountain ranch near Chiloquin, Ore. Through befriending a coyote they later named Don Coyote, the Dayton Hyde family was led to […]

Dear HCN, The story of Sid Goodloe’s success in rehabilitating degraded Western rangelands is encouraging. If there were more land stewards with his kind of passion, land ethic, and patience, there would be less controversy in the West and elsewhere. But this is not, nor will it ever be the case, for as Ed Marston […]