Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Those who simply scanned Paul Koberstein’s Nov. 28, 1994, headline, “BuRec to allow water thefts to continue,” may have assumed that Reclamation is not addressing the problem of unauthorized use of water. That’s not the case. Reclamation is actively seeking to eliminate the unauthorized use of water, sometimes referred to as water spreading. […]

Dear HCN, “Shrink To Fit” (HCN, 11/12/94), about downsizing the Park Service, hit me where I used to live. Almost 40 years ago I began a Park Service career as a laborer on a trail maintenance crew at Many Glacier. Two months ago I was one of the 425 who took the “buyout” and retired. […]

Dear HCN, I was most interested in Bruce Selcraig’s article on the pending water crisis facing the city that never listens (HCN, 12/26/94). I was enticed by the city manager, Richard Wilson, in 1971 to assume the position of planning director of the combined planning programs of Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Planning Commissions. One year later Wilson […]

Dear HCN: Had reporter Kathie Durbin been more thorough in her examination of the facts (about the hanging in effigy in Joseph, Ore., of two environmentalists (HCN, 11/14/94), she would have discovered the unemployment rate in Wallowa County is nearly twice as high as she erroneously reported in her exposé on our ugly little town. […]

Dear HCN, Last summer my partner Lynn and I did some backpacking in Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies, a couple of months after Canada instituted their backcountry usage fee of $5 per person per day. After we got over the initial shock, and headed back into Radium Hot Springs to pull more cash […]

Dear HCN, Beauty has definitely not eluded the Beast, and this Beast does not turn out to be any Prince Charming … In the past I have greatly enjoyed and appreciated the journalism of HCN. The Nov. 28 article on the Methow Valley, however, was exceedingly optimistic. The idea of development based on compromise and […]

Dear HCN, It seems to me that we environmentalists are in danger of shooting ourselves in the foot – again! In retrospect, it’s clear that a major mistake was made in giving the appearance (sometimes maybe more than that) of not caring about workers who lost their jobs in mining, timbering or elsewhere. This gave […]

Dear HCN, To suggest that logging in some way is a way towards forest health is like the medieval doctors who thought the best way to save a dying patient was to bleed them to rid them of “bad blood.” From an ecological perspective, there is no forest “health” problem. Disease, insects, and yes, even […]

Dear HCN, In driving around the West for the past five weeks we largely confirmed the picture you described in “Grappling with Growth,” Sept. 9, of pell-mell, frantic growth and the growing gap between obvious wealth and poverty. Not only are the monster “homes’ ugly and in bad taste, but they are usually located on […]

Dear HCN, Having just returned from a four-day camping trip to Yellowstone National Park, I was interested in Dave Tillotson’s letter (HCN, 9/5/94). Unfortunately, what I would like to tackle is a little more difficult than a vehicle ban: visitor stupidity! A huge number of park visitors blatantly ignore warnings about approaching wild animals and […]

Dear HCN, I have worked in the backcountry of Dinosaur National Monument for four years and have had numerous encounters with groups from the Colorado Outward Bound School. They have been using this area for a number of years and frankly, it shows. Mark Udall of COBS says they “thoroughly instruct … students to diligently […]

Dear HCN, To the people of Wallowa County, Oregon: My dictionary says an environmentalist is “a person working to solve environmental problems such as air and water pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources.” Andy Kerr and Ric Bailey are true environmentalists (HCN, 11/14/94). If you in Wallowa County are not yet concerned about the […]

Dear HCN: Your Aug. 22 editorial is right: “The West has internalized much of what environmentalists fought for (in the Reagan-Bush years)”; it is time for environmentalists to enter the “twin tents of ecosystem management and consensus.” But the “generation of environmentalists that stopped the Reagan-Bush lawlessness may not have the skills or temperament to […]

Dear HCN: Thanks for the excellent issue on growth in the West (HCN, 9/5/94). In his essay, Dick Lamm fails to divulge the underlying cause of the population growth and immigration: poverty. It seems that Lamm advocates closing the borders to immigration. Although our borders are lined with 10-foot fences and armed guards and bodies […]

Dear HCN: One topic not dealt with in your recent special issue on development in the West: the transformation of the private-land component of public-lands ranches to ranchettes. The proliferation of 10- to 40-acre ranchettes with their accompanying traffic, paving, fences, sewer systems, dogs and horses decimates winter range, degrades groundwater quality, accelerates runoff and […]

Dear HCN, I am writing to clarify some statements in the article from your 9/15/94 edition re “Rural residents defy Washington law.” I am a Whatcom County resident, a former candidate for public office (County Council, 1993), and the current co-president of the Washington Environmental Council. As a co-founder of Whatcom Watch, a citizens’ networking […]

Dear HCN: Ed Marston may have been right in his Aug. 22 opinion article that environmentalists have won and there has been an amazing conversion at the Forest Service and BLM and the beasts of contention can now lie down together on Mr. Babbitt’s holy middle ground. But where is the evidence? Has he listened […]

Dear HCN, I fell asleep in my overstuffed chair in front of the TV the other night. Suddenly, gunfire broke loose on the street outside my door and I was snapped into full alert. I leaped to my feet and grabbed my trusty Benjamin air rifle and gave it a couple of pumps. Thinking it […]

Dear HCN: Your coverage of the push for salvage logging in the wake of an intense fire season was both timely and insightful (HCN, 9/19/94). Kathie Durbin’s interview with Tom Graham, a rehabilitation worker on the Tyee Creek Fire, exposed one of the central fallacies of public forestry. Mr. Graham suggested that the fire had […]

Dear HCN, The “Grappling With Growth” issue of Sept. 5 was the best yet, albeit downright despairing. I’ve been traveling around the West, up and down, back and forth, for almost 20 years and have yet to find a community that really had a clue as to what was happening to it. Quite frankly, the […]