At 02:02 PM 12/14/94 -0600, Andrew Robinson wrote:
>G'day Kieran,
>
>You have made a number of interesting points in your message. I regret
>that you found it necessary to litter it with cheap shots. I do not think
>that annoying me or anyone else taking the time to read your thoughts will
>be productive. It certainly makes it more difficult to take you seriously.
I have lived my whole life (30 yrs, which is not very long) in the
west. I have hiked and camped many of the forests of the southwest. I have
gone back to places that I used to go to in SW Colorado, and well they are
not there anymore. The stream, the critters and the peace are gone. So, when
I hear the anger in Keiran's writings, I also feel it.
The same rhetoric that has been used by the Wise Use has also been
used by Forest Service personel (as if there is a difference), and many
students of forestry. Why, when someone speaks with emotion do people try to
disqualify them rather than their statements? I am not saying that you have
done that here, it just seems that you are playing into that line.
You ask Keiran to provide sources for his statements, yet you also
have written postulations. Where does it end and where does it begin.
Science is an interesting way of life, we are constantly being pulled and
pushed by our mind and heart. I know of no person who has a perfect and
totaly substantiated perspective. There are realities and theories, very few
people have the same realities and theories about what exists around them.
It is my experience and thus my reality, that the Forest Service,
politicians, BLM, and the Fish and Wildlife Service have catered to industry
with regard for little else. In many parts of the West the governmental
agencies that are incharge of "management" of OUR public lands are equal to
industry.
You see it is very simple. Senator DeConcini owns lots of land here
in AZ and he uses his political power to manipulate the law to put $$$$$ in
his pocket and the pockets of his friends. You see it is not about science,
it's about money. The Dept. of Ag here at the U of AZ gets quite a bit of
its funding from Agro-business. Thus they teach that cows are good for the
land. I don't know of a single allotment in AZ that is not totally thrashed
by cows. It is this kind of twist on science that has jepordized the
scientific perspective. I have little faith in science anymore, numbers can
be made to say anything. I have seen nice charts and graphs showing that
grazing in arid lands is good. I have never seen a REAL life example of
this, and I have looked.
"Fighting our own liberal government and the rich environmental groups has
been exhausting to our community, not only financially but emotionally.
Those of us involved with the timber industry may be armed with good science
and common snese, but those defences are just wet noodles against the
nuclear power of the endangered species act and the propaganda machines of
the environmentalist." - Jeannie Hunt, Fredonia, AZ
This my friends is what we are up against. The Wise Use movement,
funded by extraction indistries, is well organized and powerfull. They
manipulate the media and the politicians, as do we. Who is right, who is
wrong. I only have to look at a CLEAR-CUT, an OPEN PIT MINE, a GRAZING
ALLOTMENT, or the cars that politicians drive around in to know. I don't
need anymore of the stinking stats, or charts to tell me that the extraction
industry is raping the land and killing the wildlife. In this process they
have killed local communities and a way of life. Industry then projects the
disaster onto the Enviros, which is like blaming the smoke alarm for the fire.
-shane
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