Making conservation connections
To the editor,
On May 20-21, during the Connecting for Conservation Workshop, a diverse group came together to talk about how to partner on resource management and conservation in the Four Corners. Nearly 100 people from nearly 50 organizations learned from expert presenters and participated in facilitated conversations addressing resources, education and responses to changes in regional weather.
Participants included federal, state and local agencies; tribal representatives; environmental groups; environmental consulting companies; county representatives; and local business. They were introduced to each other during “speed dating” activities, listened to a key note presentation from Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango. They also spent the morning learning how to make collaborative work effective and learned from successful regional partnerships.
In the afternoon, the group was divided into breakout sessions to discuss forest health, water, climate change, education and recreation, economics and conservation, and archaeology. Participants assessed gaps and needs and identified ways to bridge those gaps.
A lot was accomplished. Collaborative efforts were developed for economics, climate change and forest health. Discussions of water and education identified ways to expand on existing platforms. The forest health breakout presented the idea of a partnership to address weeds across management boundaries. The economics and conservation breakout formed a committee to work on financial needs for conservation.
The effort was greatly received, and we hope that this will serve as the first of a series of “Connecting for Conservation” opportunities. Participants encouraged the development of a regular workshop with even more networking and workshop themes.
During the workshop, Kara Chadwick, new forest supervisor for the San Juan National Forest, presented Durango Mountain Resort, BLM hydrologist Kay Zillich and the Mountain Studies Institute with the Regional4 Forester’s Award for Restoration and Resiliency. The award was presented for restoration of the Chattanooga Iron Fen, a unique and rare riparian area north of Silverton. This joint effort incorporated science, monitoring and experimental restoration techniques to improve hydrologic conditions and vegetative cover.
This was a great opportunity to network and learn what a good collaboration is capable of. The steering committee is grateful to the volunteers who made the workshop possible, to the participants for their great energy, to the presenters, and to the funders who made it possible. A special thanks to Sen. Roberts for serving as keynote speaker.
Presentations and notes from the meeting are available at www.mountainstudies.org and more information can be found on the “Connecting for Conservation” Facebook page.
– Aaron Kimple, project manager Mountain Studies Institute, program coordinator San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership
Painting a picture of George W.
Dear editor,
While George W. Bush paints portraits of his naked feet in his bathtub tens of thousands of U.S. veterans have returned to our country broken, wounded, without limbs, suffering from post traumatic syndrome (PTSD), and in retrospect have deep questions as to why they went into that hell he and Cheney and corporations sent them into. More than a thousand vets attempt suicide every month, 22 a day succeed; not to mention domestic violence and broken homes as a result of what our brave military men and women are having to deal with as they return from their service. Does Bush even think of these veterans he sent into harm’s way or how he abused the trust of our entire country for needless death, hideous destruction of innocent people’s lives and horrific debt, putting us into the deepest recession since the Big Depression? I think not.
War is hugely expensive for the people of any country but it is extremely lucrative for the companies that sell the ammunition, weapons, artillery and billions of dollars worth of supplies and food they sell to the government for the troops they sent to fight wars they create for personal profit. Then they get paid with taxpayer dollars to rebuild the countries they blow up. U.S. corporations provide three out of four weapons to the entire world. These companies perpetuate and support atrocious activities all over the world at the cost of U.S. soldiers’ lives and citizens’ tax dollars, not to mention the millions of devastated lives and misery of the people in other countries as a result of supplying dangerous people with weapons. These global corporations are the NRA on steroids.
The fact is the Iraq war had nothing to do with our national security. We were blatantly lied to by Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, ad nauseum, to go into Iraq for corporate interests. In 1999 Cheney’s company, Halliburton was falling to pieces, so he made himself vice president and within a little more than a year after Bush was elected president by five people on the Supreme Court (appointed by his dad), we had an unprovoked war in Iraq and Halliburton’s stock exploded as they received war contracts. Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose 3,280 percent in 2003 alone.
The Bush administration and certain corporations supporting them opened the gates of hell in the Middle East. Most of us are wishing for the “Good Old Days” of Sadaam Hussein who kept the separate fanatical religious factions under control for decades. Now Iran is dancing in the streets because we have totally created a “Perfect Storm” for them to move into Iraq. The Bush administration dumped Iraq into their lap without them having to lift a finger, with the extra bonus of providing them with our technology in the form of all the billions of sophistical war equipment we left behind.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (a staunch Republican) warned us more than 50 years ago as he left office that the No. 1 thing we, as a country, had to fear the most was the “military industrial complex.” Whoever thought Eisenhower was a prophet?
All war-obsessed politicians and the powers behind them have absolutely no conscience – in other words, they are sociopaths. The next time George W. paints his feet in the bathtub, he should paint his toenails blood red.
– Susan Urban, Durango
Guns leading us down dark road
To the editor,
America can eventually destroy itself with the growing gun problem. The country has become numbed toward senseless shootings that occur so frequently. The need for powerful lobbyists and gun dealers to make money supersedes the need to bring sanity to a country drowning in greed.
As a result of greed over common sense, a form of denial is setting in. We as a nation are dangerously heading down a dark road where being safe will become a thing of the past. For those of us who can see that too many guns are leading us down a path of premature destruction, the coming 2014 ballot box should show a great unified effort to reverse the downward path; this would be in a real true sense a democracy rectifying itself.
– Alfred Waddell, West Barnstable Mass.