Letter to the editor

It’s hard to see rural opposition to public-land protection as anything more than a front on the great American culture war (HCN, 4/26/10). To hear, again, the opposition of San Juan County, Utah, commissioners to new national monuments or to wilderness designations confounds economic rationality. National parks and monuments are big drivers of economic activity […]

When I read the subhead of Jonathan Thompson’s article “Wilderness by Committee,” I inwardly groaned (HCN, 4/26/10). Thompson wrote: “Federal land protection is all about dealmaking.” Here in Montana, we are being confronted with this kind of “dealmaking” in the form of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, the fruit of three separate […]

I feel that the “Flare up” article misses the real story and scapegoats environmental groups (HCN, 4/26/10). Libby has asbestos problems? Those awful environmental groups! Sinclair refinery spilling too much pollution? Where are the environmentalists!? Environmental groups aren’t superheroes, fixing refineries, organizing labor and healing the sick. Instead, you should ask the real questions: Who […]

It is clear to me that it is time for HCN to do a meaningful update on the wild horses and burros (HCN, 4/12/10). There is solid science that supports wild equids as having evolved on this continent and nowhere else. On Feb. 12, 2009, Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., and Patricia M. Fazio, Ph.D., testified […]

Some radical wild horse advocates just keep repeating the same lies over and over, hoping people start to take their lies as truth (HCN, 4/26/10). The biggest lie is that horses are native to North America. The EPA defines introduced species as “species that have become able to survive and reproduce outside the habitats where […]

As a native-born Nevadan living in Humboldt County, Nev., I have seen firsthand both sides of the mining issue (HCN, 4/26/10). Twenty years from now, we will be asking what we have to show for all the mountains of tailing piles, open pits with poisoned water, miles of roads cut into the landscape for test […]

I’d like to see HCN correct the grave misinformation in “Eligible Mustangs” and treat the subject with the accuracy and respect it deserves (HCN, 4/12/10). First and foremost, the Bureau of Land Management sets the “Appropriate Management Level” for wild horses on our ranges and decides when to call horses “excess.”  However, this is based […]

The only thing missing in “Mobile Nation” was the real reason all those communal, neighborly, flag-waving, self-identified not-liberal RV settlers are so happy (HCN, 3/15/10). First, they don’t have to work any more. Second, there are no children around. And last, the government gives them a place to live for almost nothing. So much for […]

I’m still laughing at one of the photos in “Mobile Nation” (HCN, 3/15/10)! Was that a bit of editorializing in the photo of the gentleman in his land-yacht watching the “male enhancement” commercial? Was the author trying to make some sort of Freudian connection between the size of a guy’s RV and his, uh … […]

I have read several positive reports (including the one in HCN on March 15) about Calera Corporation’s presumed process that uses seawater or brine to sequester carbon dioxide, particularly from coal-fired power plants. Calera claims to produce a mixture of calcium and magnesium carbonates (limestone, dolomite, etc.) that can be used as a substitute for […]

Charles Bowden is a wonderful, as well as provocative, writer (HCN, 3/1/10). He has a way of serving up the truth so it slaps you in the face. I’m not sure any magazine but High Country News would have the guts to print this story as is. Maybe you would be willing to reprint something […]

Thanks for Charles Bowden’s grim but clear-eyed view of events along the border and Jonathan Thompson’s editorial relating them to too many people and too much consumption (HCN, 3/1/10). There’s no doubt that our addiction to consumption creates social and environmental costs, but I have a quibble regarding Thompson’s statement that it is “the most […]

I am sorry that Charles Bowden, in “The War Next Door,” does not mention Mexico’s population growth among the causes of Mexican migration into the United States (HCN, 3/1/10). It is, he says, “a natural shift of a species.”  Perhaps, but it is also a case of the mushrooming of a people. Since I was […]

Kevin Jones was certainly the first person with any kind of authority to step forward and dispute the claim that Everett Ruess’ bones had been found, but Paul Leatherbury should get a bit of credit, too, for locating Ruess’ dental records, which David Roberts of National Geographic Adventure overlooked at the University of Utah special […]

Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless (HCN, 3/1/10). Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior that has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of […]