Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, A short correction to the article by Tony Davis in the Feb. 21 edition, Western Roundup section: In the first article on Jim Baca, the last paragraph mentions acting BLM director Mike Dombeck. Mike is not a career BLM employee … in fact, as recently as 1990, Mike was a staff fish biologist […]

Dear HCN, While the aluminum vs. dams article (HCN, 2/7/94) was good it was short of basic information: what the aluminum industry pays for power. People can understand grazing fees – try to get a horse fed for $3 per month or pay for patent land at $5 per acre – but we should know […]

Dear HCN, Grateful thanks to Rep. Kelly Atkinson, D-West Jordan (Utah), for his expression of concern regarding Umetco Minerals’ plan to bury radioactive waste in Uravan, Colo., on the San Miguel River and a short 20 miles from the Utah-Colorado border (HCN, 11/29/93). While it’s true we all live downstream, I would suggest that Utah […]

Dear HCN, WAKE UP High Country News! How loudly does the land have to scream before you come to your senses? The Western public lands you so graciously sacrifice to the rancher only account for 2-to-3 percent of the annual forage of livestock. Pocket change. Get all cows off public lands permanently and watch 300 […]

Dear HCN, Rifts like the one in the Northwest environmental community described in Kathie Durbin’s article (HCN, 12/27/93) are often portrayed as moral questions: hardliners vs. sellouts or realists vs. idealists. In fact, these splits are perfectly predictable given the rules of the political game. Organizations such as the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society work […]

Dear HCN, A major blow to Hells Canyon prehistory has been soil erosion caused by over-grazing domestic stock, mainly sheep. Soil provides the context and something close to a set of rules or guidelines for making sense out of archaeological remains. Without the soil that surrounds them, artifacts are like words in a language without […]

Dear HCN, A recent letter to the editor in HCN belittled collaborative groups that try to solve natural resource conflicts as being too small and too slow. I ask, which is more effective: slow, steady progress, or rapid suit and countersuit that characterize our current attempts to control resources? Are the salmon making a comeback […]

Dear HCN, In your recent article (“Beauty and the Beast,” HCN, 4/14/97), Paul Larmer painted a rather bleak picture of the Kane County, Utah, economy. That negative economic portrait was part of an effort to explain why it was “no wonder everyone was hopping mad when the president took that hope (of the Andalex coal […]