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No more wilderness
It’s time to stop the insanity and realize that designating more and
more Mt. Hood National Forest acres to wilderness is a certain death
sentence for our national resource. Just look out your window, that
isn’t “haze” it’s our National Forests burning up and killing
everything for hundreds of square miles while spewing tons of
pollutants into our air shed.
Wilderness to the U.S. Forest Service equates to abandonment. The
forests will be left to overpopulate, stressing the trees and making
them vulnerable and susceptible to disease and insect infestation. The
trees will die, creating dangerously high fuel loads just waiting for
that one lightning strike to cause death to the entire forest
ecosystem.
Wildfire kills everything in its path; the trees and the wildlife. It
sets up a disaster just waiting for the fall rains to flush the burned
and devastated forest landscape into the streams and rivers choking
the fish habitat.
Keep the Mt. Hood National Forest under reasonable U.S. Forest
Management allowing them to harvest the dead and dying trees, thin
overcrowded stands, and assure that our national resource is utilized
for all Americans, not just a few who want it off limits. No one wants
our treasured national resource to be devastated by wildfire and lost
for generations.
Remember, every acre designated to wilderness takes federal dollars
away from our schools and our communities.
So please contact Oregon Senators Smith and Wyden and encourage them
to withdraw their new proposal. Tell them to follow the three years of
hard work by both Congressman Walden and Blumenauer regarding the Mt.
Hood National Forest.
Jerry Tausend
Hood River
Choice is ours
When in school we long for a friend, robbed of our need to be
heard as an equal by mother and father; being restricted but never
consulted as to our need simply to feel loved and understood, we
are forever in conflict.
When a father fails to see the needs of his wife and children and
himself and we see his need we end in domination, war and
destruction.
Making laws, we break them because we have no love to follow them.
Will we, of this harmonious valley, ask what solution there is in
killing each other? The end to our pain is only to hurt each
other? And so the constant attacks, the bullying and erupting
pain.
So, where will we find understanding and feeling loved,
helpfulness, kindness, caring and wholeness? Within ourselves,
longing to be understood? Break the dam within and build a bridge
together?
Have we lost purpose? Will we find purpose in each other? Will we
choose life over death? Will we fight for survival and destroy the
reason for surviving?
The choice has always been ours.
Allison Andrus
Hood River
Do you feel safer?
I don’t. The Bush administration has failed to keep us safe. The
war in Iraq is a dream come true for al-Qaida recruiting and bin
Laden will be on the loose long after Bush is gone (shades of
Castro!).
We are headed into another hurricane season and the Bush
administration is no closer to ensuring the safety of Americans at
home.
And, of course, there are the civil liberties we have all given up
in the “War on Terror.”
So, do you sleep better at night knowing that Bush is “on watch”?
Cindy Morus
Hood River
This is security?
First and foremost, let me say that I am a strong admirer and
supporter of our local fire departments and their volunteers. BUT,
I fail to see the connection between Homeland Security and
turnouts/firefighting clothes for rural and wilderness areas.
Has United Airlines been threatened at Jernstedt Airport? Or the
helipad because it’s near the swimming pool and fire station?
What’s the big deal? Take our county population compared to the
nation’s population and that $66,000 grant becomes almost $1
billion ... not to mention REAL security needs.
Those same type of numbers apply to all federal grants, not to
mention the cost of federal bureaucrats and locally funded grant
writers. So I suggest we all remember this when we pay our tax
bills or thank our local grant-writers and Congressional
delegation for the pork barrel bobbing.
Dave Dockham
Hood River
Encore!
Thank you, Maren Euwer, for sharing your great musical gift and
giving us a very special evening (Friday at Riverside Community
Church)! We hope there will be others!
Paul and Maria Kollas
Hood River
Don’t harm pets
I am compelled to write this letter to warn residents who live in
Cascade Locks near the Harmony residential subdivision and Forest
Lane that their pets are at risk of being trapped and or poisoned
by someone living in this area.
I believe this is a cowardly act and this could have been resolved
by talking to your neighbors about their pets instead of taking
matters into your own hands. I live on Forest Lane, so the
possibility of having a pet run over is pretty high and it
wouldn’t have bothered me losing Morris that way.
Morris was a beautiful, healthy orange-and-white neutered male
about 4 years old who we kept inside at night to keep him from
being a nuisance. But one day he failed to come inside to eat. The
next morning in the far corner of my yard I found Morris dead.
There were no blood or puncture wounds. One of my neighbors has
been trapping cats at night and I don’t have a clue what he would
be doing with them. There is absolutely no reason or explanation
to why my cat just up and died mysteriously other than being
poisoned
I reported it to the Hood River County Sheriff’s Department so it
is on record.
Please, if you have a problem with my pets talk to me, don’t kill
them. I have two Chihuahuas and grandkids who play in my back yard
and it makes me real nervous to think someone probably real close
by just poisoned my Morris the cat.
Richard Randall
Cascade Locks
Long-range benefit
I am enjoying the articles about the “land swap” appearing in the
“Our Readers Write” section of the news and also have a few
comments to add.
The Mount Hood National Forest does not need nor want to be
involved in rehabilitating the forest and buildings thereon in the
Cloud Cap area of our mountain. The Forest Service is far too
understaffed and underfinanced to take on additional
projects/programs. Historically it takes about five years for a
land exchange to be completed from birth to deed transfer as there
are many steps involved and regulations to follow. Consequently
they tried to distance themselves from this process.
Many land exchanges have been made fully understanding that the
land transferred would become far more valuable, dollar-wise, as
soon as the ink dried. The land around Carefree, Ariz., was a part
of the Tonto National Forest and it was exchanged for “par value”
land vicinity of Payson, Ariz.
The city of Phoenix thus was able to grow northerly. The Bureau of
Land Management swapped desert land adjacent to Las Vegas for the
common interests of local growth needs. And we need to recognize
that the long-range benefit for our community is to protect our
mountain for future generations by enlarging the areas, as much as
practical, into the Mount Hood Wilderness.
It is unfortunate that the land exchange even became a part of the
House bill but can be resolved by supporting the Senate version.
Let us encourage our Representatives and Senators that have been
involved in this process to “stay the course.”
Leonard Murphy
Damascus
Humans prevent fires
As I sit here in our scenic wonderland choked in smoke, I have
questions. I ask, what have we done? Lock Snidely Whiplash the
evil logger out and protect the forests as world treasures for
generations to revel in their beauty as we have? Wilderness
designations; a good thing? Would you leave home with combustibles
stacked floor to ceiling lying on a live wire? Would we tell a
friend with breast cancer to let nature take its course? And what
about Smokey Bear?
Sorry, Smokey, you and all other living things warm-blooded and
bark-clad will have to face the inferno. We are natural now and we
don’t prevent forest fires anymore.
We have turned our backs on our forests. I believe there is a
difference in letting ‘nature’ take its course and stewardship of
our lands. There is nothing natural about walking away from the
tinderbox forests that past forest practices have made.
Over 100 years of fire suppression have congested our forests with
unnatural build-ups of fuels, leaving them set up for holocausts.
These fires do not race through, burning only grass and brush,
sparing trees. They burn everything — trees and all — turning them
into charred wastelands. If this is natural, how did old growth
trees ever come about?
Fuel reduction is not logging and can be done in environmentally
friendly ‘green’ ways that nurture nature, not devastate it. Time,
money and training is needed to ready our cherished places to once
again stand the tests of time on their own.
Most people like their forests green and growing, not blackened
scientific laboratories to be studied. Some seeds need charring to
sprout? Sure, how about five minutes on a grill. Is letting
‘nature’ take its course in terms of forest fires really what we
had in mind? Is this forest protection?
Has this fire been good for the economy, tourism, air quality,
human health or the forest environment? What have we done and what
can we do to change it?
Pam Crider
Hood River
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