September 16, 1999 Missoulian Two Letters to Editor: Closing roads will help grizzly bears and Public has right to use public lands.
Some people say we should put the concerns of humans above the concerns of grizzly bears; as though we aren't already. The grizzly bear in the lower 48 states has been forced to give up 99 percent of its former habitat to humans and, having once ranged from the Mississippi to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico, is trying to survive on the remaining 1 percent in a few areas of the Northwest.
Flathead Forest Plan Amendment 19 asks people to lay to rest some 15 percent of the nearly 4,000 miles of roads on the Flathead National Forest so that the bears can have a little bit more security and a little less competition with people. Fisheries biologists unilaterally agree that carefully removing the culverts from those 650 miles of reclaimed road will prevent inevitable culvert wash outs and benefit dwindling bull trout and westslope cutthroat populations too, not just the bears.
If the bears have given up 99 percent of their habitat i!ready, can't we humans properly retire 15 percent of an overabundance of forest roads, most of which are already either closed or overgrown due to lack of use and maintenance? Funding for maintenance is absent for more than 60 percent of the Flathead's roads. Amendment 19 simply recognizes that putting the worst roads to bed is cheaper than trying to maintain them, which in turn allows us to better maintain the more than 3,000 miles of road we keep. And that shows concern not just for bears and fish, but us human taxpayers as well. Keith ]. Hammer, Swan View Coalition, 3165 Foot Hill Road, Kalispell
CAG Comment
Are putting grizzly bears back to the natural range or are we trying to force them to survive in an environment that is poorly equipped to meet the grizzly bears' needs?
Granted you have Grizzlies in Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall but now there is a movement afoot by environmental groups, like Earth Share, Friends of the Bitterroot, The National Audubon Society, and the Swan View Coalition, to put grizzly bears in the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Wildernesses even though the habitat does not exist for them. After all, grizzly bears originally lived on the approaches to the Rocky Mountains along the rivers surviving on bison, deer, elk, and the various berries and tubers.
Read on, the companion letter below blames vested interest for tying up public land. Everyone had better become aware that most of this tying up of the land, introduction of grizzly bears, protection of bull trout and westslope cuthroat and now the prairie dog, has very little to do with those species and a lot to do with the establishment of political systems.
By following the hot links in the above article you will get a different perspective on expected outcomes and who is doing the "expecting" -- not CAG -- we are happy with our Constitution and national, state and local systems of government.
End CAG Comment
Public has right to use public lands How much of our natural resources are tied up by vested interests who donate large sums to environmental groups to use as a cover to prevent more exploration and development until such time as they can profit by so doing? Would there be any way of checking where and from whom the money comes to these environmental groups? Are the platinum and tin mines, that no one supposedly knew about, still operating in Alaska? Who really stands to gain by keeping the public lands isolated from access by the public? Who is the public? Isn't the United States still a democracy? What happened to " ... of the people, by the people, and for the people"? How many environmental issues did you get to vote on? Who really runs the country? Florence L. Smith, 510 N. lOth St., No. 9, Hamilton