ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

Ranchers Deserve a Say

NEW MEXICO RANCHERS are working harder than ever these days and are suffering numerous wolf problems? in contrast to whatever a full-time activist does sitting behind a desk to undermine our work. …

Ranchers are overworked, overstressed and uncompensated for their damages and their extra stress. Unfortunately for ranchers, they have to sleep sometime and wolves kill in the dark. So, baby calves? their paychecks at the end of a long year? are freebies unwillingly donated by the ranchers.

Ranchers are literally paying the feed bill for the Mexican wolf program. It is appalling that the general public apparently wants wolves, yet does nothing to support the people who have lives built in the recovery range and are forced to live with the animals or leave. …

LAURA SCHNEBERGER
President, Gila Livestock Growers Association
Winston

This is the first whining I’ve heard from these stalwart stewards of the land. Interesting that they recognize public opinion is turning away from them. Wolves belong in the forest — cows don’t.

I’m all for compensating these ranchers twice the market value. mjh

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In Defense of the Wolf

I WOULD LIKE to speak out in defense of the wolf, which has been taken to task by the cattlemen. While this government has seen fit to lease ground in the national forests for the grazing of cattle, it does not imply that the government will protect the cattlemen from all risks.

The national forests were created for all of us to enjoy, not just a specific entity. Originally, the virgin forests contained the wolves and other wild creatures. Man introduced domestic cattle? thereby upsetting the natural balance.

In his 1960 “Wilderness Letter,” which was used in a 1964 bill to establish the National Wilderness Preservation System, Wallace Stegner wrote, “… Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction.”

Wildness reminds us what it means to be human? what we are connected to rather than what we are separated from. This is not about economics. This is about putting ourselves in accordance with nature, of consecrating these lands by remembering our relationship to them.

Who can say how much nature can be destroyed without consequence? Who can say what the human spirit will be crying out for a hundred years from now?

ROY BOAST
Albuquerque