Sportsmen support monument

To the editor,

Our country has an incredible and unmatched protected public lands legacy that allows hunters, anglers, hikers, backpackers, outfitters, equestrians and untold numbers of others the opportunity to experience parts of our country as they were in the days of Lewis and Clark and, more recently, Theodore Roosevelt. One such area is Brown’s Canyon, a scenic and rugged region between Salida and Buena Vista on the Arkansas River.

In 2005, State Rep. Joel Hefley, a Republican, sponsored a bill to designate Browns Canyon a national wilderness area. The Browns Canyon Wilderness Act was cosponsored by the entire Colorado congressional delegation at the time, including Rep. John Salazar, a Democrat, and Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Republican. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, carried a similar bill in the Senate. That nearly universal support has withstood the test of time.

Unfortunately, despite continued widespread support for protecting Browns Canyon, the current partisan paralysis in Congress has prevented a wilderness bill from moving forward. Gladly, there’s another option: a national monument. It was a hunter-conservationist (and Medal of Honor recipient), Teddy Roosevelt, who was responsible for much of the public lands heritage Americans enjoy today, and he designated our nation’s first monuments.

In the opening years of the 20th Century, looters ran wild through the Southwest, pillaging cultural treasures left behind by early inhabitants. To stop the theft, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which Theodore Roosevelt signed into law June 8, 1906. The Antiquities Act was a Republican accomplishment, sponsored by Rep. John F. Lacey, R-Iowa, one of America’s 4

lesser-known conservation heroes, and passed by a Republican Congress.

Theodore Roosevelt made Devils Tower in Wyoming the first national monument on Sept. 24, 1906. Since then, more than 100 national monuments across the United States have been established by presidents under the Antiquities Act. The president of the United States can establish a national monument by executive order or the United States Congress can by legislation.

The 15 presidents preceding Barack Obama designated more than 140 monuments or expansions, with 66 of them coming from Republicans and 77 from Democrats. George W. Bush, for example, used the Antiquities Act for a breathtaking conservation achievement – protecting some 200 million acres of islands and territorial ocean waters that hold geological curiosities, archaeological artifacts and spectacular marine wildlife. Bush’s oceanic monuments are more than twice as large as all of our national parks combined.

When Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect the Grand Canyon, he was pilloried by mining and other development interests. Today, the Grand Canyon is a world-famous attraction. TR’s visage is on Mount Rushmore. His critics have sunk into obscurity. Recently, Obama followed in George W. Bush’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s footsteps here in Colorado, by designating Browns Canyon a national monument.

However, there are those opposed to protecting Browns Canyon and other public lands, like the deceptively named “Environmental Policy Alliance,” an anti-hunting/anti-conservation organization controlled by Richard Berman (a.k.a. “Dr. Evil”). For a fee, Berman’s organizations attack hunting-angling-conservation (and other similar) organizations. Let Berman and those like him complain.

Their names and grievances will be long forgotten by the coming generations of Americans who will explore, experience and treasure this newest of our nation’s national monuments. Protecting our heritage is an act of patriotism. Our heritage helps us appreciate our country’s special place in history. The Republicans who passed the Antiquities Act and the presidents who used the law understood that. So does President Obama. The sportsmen and women of Colorado thank you for protecting Browns Canyon.

– David Lien, chairman, Colorado Backcountry
Hunters & Anglers

Drowning out ecological diversity

To the editors,

“Only three of four Animas River trout species remain” an environmental disaster at our “front door!”

During the 2014 spawning season for brown trout, only a few smaller fish appeared on the spawning redds. Five or 10 years ago, these redds hosted huge numbers of trophy browns. Now gone!  The few large browns that remain in the river are being fed by the DOW’s annual post-highwater runoff stocking of thousands of small rainbows. Stocking after the high water subsides since the rainbows have poor survival in the toxic runoff, laden with tailing pond flushing and pollution from Silverton area stream-beds.

Large browns have been observed in the last few years having a feeding frenzy on these small hatchery stockers. The stocked rainbows being too puny for sport fishing and having no inherent defenses to the predatory large browns, aka “sewer carp” because of their resistance to pollution and poor water quality.

By August, most every stocked rainbow has been eaten, thus the larger browns may attack anything that mimics food, since the river is now mostly devoid of our historic entomological subsistence base. Only small midges survive, while our historic resources of caddis, mayfly, stonefly and sculpin populations have essentially disappeared.

Brown trout are a tremendous sport fish for either fly or gear fishers but they too will go the way of the rainbows, cutthroat and brook trout ... where no living thing can survive the current Animas River levels of pollution. Same for herons, waterfowl, raccoons and the rest of the riparian ecosystem’s birds and creatures of phenological dependence.

Throughout this planet, trout are a keystone ecologic “sentinel species,” as is their supporting entomological subsistence base.

It is incomprehensible that anyone would denounce this matter as less than catastrophic. Action not taken will send us all to the fate of Silverton resident Ms. Skinner’s dead dog, Hannah.

– L David Grooms, Durango

Drinking pro-flouride propaganda

To the editor,

Don’t believe everything you read (or print) ... in regards to the letter (advertisement) from the Exectutive Director of Oral Health Colorado ...

http://www.zengardner.com/the-sordid-early-history-of-fluoride/

http://fluoridealert.org/issues/health/

And for those too flouridated to read , here’s the YouTube Documentary: “The Flouride Deception:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBZRb-73tLc

Flouride is toxic!!!

– Sincerely yours, Shanti Sena, Durango

A healthy eating conundrum

My dietary

confusion and irony

tofu with bacon

– Ernie Wells, Durango