OCR Text |
Show VIEWPOINTS A-15 www.parkrecord.com Wed/Thurs/Fri, May 31-June 2, 2017 EDITORIAL Search and Rescue Assistance Card will get you home faster I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Student encourages citizens to contribute to Bonanza Flats Editor: As a 13-year-old seventh-grader and the future of Park City, I would like to urge people to donate for the preservation of open space. My seventh-grade class at Park City Day School is currently learning about our local government and we are trying to raise awareness about Bonanza Flats. Bonanza Flats is 1,350 acres of flat land full of wildlife, aspen groves, alpine lakes, beautiful scenery, and peaks of the Central Wasatch Mountains. Many bikers and hikers use this land, and it is visible from the top of McConkey’s ski lift. The property is currently owned by a firm called Redus. If Park City does not purchase this land, it’s likely to become a gated community closed off to the public. Hikers and bikers won’t be able to use it. In order to purchase this land, Park City needs to raise $38 million. The Park City passed a bond to acquire this land and will be supplying $25 million, which means we need to raise $13 million. Several organizations are pitching including utahopenlands.org, saveourcanyons.org, mountaintrails.org and many more. Summit County has agreed to fund $5.75 million, and other government entity commitments have approved now total $1,750,000. We still need about $2.5 million. If each household from Sum- LETTERS POLICY The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guidelines. They must include the home (street) address and telephone number of the author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. Letters must not contain libelous material. Letters should be no longer than about 300 words (about 600 words for guest editorials) and should, if possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters if they are too long or if they contain statements that are unnecessarily offensive or obscene. Writers are limited to one letter every seven days. Letters thanking event sponsors can list no more than 6 individuals and/or businesses. Send your letter to: editor@parkrecord.com The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER Andy Bernhard Editor Nan Chalat Noaker Staff writers Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Bubba Brown Angelique McNaughton Griffin Adams Contributing writers Tom Clyde Jay Meehan Teri Orr Amy Roberts Steve Phillips Tom Kelly Joe Lair Interns Jessica Curley Emily Billow Copy Editor Frances Moody ADVERTISING Classified advertising Jennifer Lynch Office manager Tiffany Rivera Circulation manager Lacy Brundy Accounting manager Jennifer Snow Advertising director Valerie Spung Advertising sales Lori Gull Jodi Hecker Erin Donnelly Lisa Curley Digital Products Manager Mike Boyko Photographer Tanzi Propst Production director Ben Olson Production Nadia Dolzhenko Patrick Schulz Linda Sites mit, Wasatch, and Salt Lake County participated, each would only need to donate $8 to reach this goal. We encourage you to donate to www. savebonanzaflats.org. Savebonanzaflats.org will refund your money if they do not reach the required amount and your donations are tax exempt. The deadline for donations is on June 15, so if you are interested in donating, please do so before this date. Jamie Forchic Park City Help shut down the meat industry Editor: Last month, animal rights activists shut down the 146-year-old Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus after years of effectively exposing them for animal abuse. Can the meat and dairy industry be far behind? The shift toward plant-based eating is everywhere. Fast-food chains like Chipotle, Quiznos, Starbucks, Subway, Taco Bell and Wendy’s offer plant-based options. Parade, Better Homes and Gardens, and Eating Well are all touting vegan recipes. Indeed, Global Meat News reports that nearly half of consumers are reducing their meat intake. Beef consumption has dropped by 43% in the past 40 years. Google CEO Eric Schmidt views replacement of meat by plant protein as the world’s #1 technical trend. The financial investment community is betting on innovative start-ups, like Beyond Meat, or Impossible Foods, while warning clients about “death of meat.” Even Tyson Foods new CEO Tom Hayes sees plant protein as meat industry’s future. The industry needs to transition to plant-based foods, or shut down like the Greatest Show on Earth. In the meantime, every one of us can shut the meat and dairy industry out of our own kitchen by checking out the rich collection of plant-based entrees, milks, cheeses, and ice creams in our supermarket. Paxton Ryker Park City f you wander off a snowy backcountry ski trail in the Wasatch Mountains, or take an unexpected plunge into a steep red rock canyon in the Utah desert, there are trained volunteers who will drop whatever they are doing to come find you. They will set out on snowmobiles, jump into inflatable rafts or rappel into narrow slot canyons to bring you home. Their only reward? Seeing the tears and hugs when you are reunited with your loved ones. It is impossible to repay that kind of selfless dedication. But now there is something that you can do to ensure Utah’s Search and Rescue volunteers have the best training and the best equipment possible. Last week, the Governor’s Office of Outdoor Recreation activated the long awaited Utah Search and Rescue Assistance Card which, for an optional fee, guarantees you won’t be billed for that unplanned extrication. The cost of the card is $25 per year for an individual, or $35 for a family, and covers all nonmedical search and rescue costs. Proceeds from the sale of the cards (100 were sold on the day the website went live) will be collected in a fund administered by the state’s Search and Rescue Advisory Board. The fund is currently subsidized by boat and recreational vehicle fees, and at the end of each year the money is divvied up to reimburse counties for a portion of their search and rescue training and equipment expenditures. The reimbursements, though, are meager compared to the real costs involved. And, of course, some counties find themselves shouldering the burden of more lost souls than others -- think of those that are blessed/challenged with National Parks, wilderness areas, rugged ski terrain and expansive mountain bike trails. They may have the most to gain from the new program. Grand and Utah counties, are at the top top of that list. But Summit County’s Search and Rescue experts see plenty of action, too, and if local residents embrace the USARA Card program, the proceeds will benefit their hometown team as well as search and rescue squads throughout the state. That means, whether you are backpacking in the Uintas, carving fresh powder in the Wasatch, rock climbing in Zion or wandering in Waterpocket Fold, and need help, they are likely to find you faster and get you home more quickly. And they will be safer while they are doing it. Utah’s Search and Rescue Assistance Card is an important program for a state that takes pride in sharing its majestic natural landscapes. We hopes lots of Summit County residents and their outdoor-adventure-loving guests will support it. To learn more and to sign up for the USARA card go to: rescue.utah.gov GUEST EDITORIAL Prairie dogs and us JOHN HORNING Writers on the Range There’s a place in the heart of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where a small colony of prairie dogs survives between railroad tracks and the busiest road in town. It’s a fragile existence, and some of the animals perish when they venture onto the pavement. But somehow, they survive in this small fragment of wildness. On most Saturdays, my 4-year-old twins and I ride our bikes to the spot and watch in fascination as the prairie dogs yip and chirp at our arrival. They disappear into their burrows when my exuberant guys approach too close and too quickly. We practice sitting still, and the animals seem to be learning to respect this invisible safety zone. Eventually, the intrepid dogs get the courage to reappear and return our gaze as they perch on the edge of their burrows. I hope the boys are also learning a deeper lesson about vulnerability and trust that will serve them in their future relations with people, as well as with wildlife. Across the American West from Montana to New Mexico, prairie dogs, which once numbered in the millions, are increasingly vulnerable — to plague, habitat fragmentation, poisons. And, worst of all, to the blood thirst of hunters, farmers and ranchers who use them as target practice. Though plague is the most severe threat to the species’ survival, ecologists argue that the dogs’ fragile existence underscores the importance of removing human threats. And now they have a new threat: Donald Trump Jr. The president’s son recently went to Montana to stump for Republican candidate Greg Gianforte, who’s running for the seat in Congress vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Donald Jr. joined Gianforte to shoot prairie dogs, and when asked about it, Gianforte said, “What can be more fun than to spend an afternoon shooting the little rodents?” I know Trump Jr. is a hunter. I’ve heard he is a conservationist. But shooting prairie dogs is not about hunting. Nor is it, for me, about Trump’s conservation ethic, though conservation ought to be part of the discussion, because of the vital role that prairie dogs play in healthy grasslands, and because of their vulnerability. The senseless slaughter of prairie dogs is fundamentally about the powerful and the vulnerable, which I see as the defining narrative of the Trump administration. The budget President Trump initially proposed made drastic cuts to the most vulnerable Americans — eliminating funding for after-school programs for 2 million children in the poorest communities, cutting $6 billion that keeps millions of people from falling into homelessness, ending a program the helps people heat their homes, and slashing funding for Meals on Wheels, which provides meals for struggling seniors. While the final budget changed, Trump’s original version remains a painful reflection of the administration’s values. A telling example of those values is that he would have eliminated the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal aid to those who can’t afford it. This would result in swelling our prison population — already the largest in the world. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” He said this because he recognized that, in many ways, prisoners are the most vulnerable people in any society. We know who we truly are, as moral individuals, by the way we respond to weakness and power. It is easy to serve the powerful because they usually reward our service. Serving the weakest in our society offers less tangible rewards. How do we respond to the vulnerable? Do we ignore those who cannot speak for themselves, whose voices go unheard? After 30 years of study, Con Slobodchikoff, a professor at North Arizona University, discovered that prairie dogs have a complex communication system with all the elements of language, its sophistication surpassed perhaps only by cetaceans and primates. Despite their sophisticated language, prairie dogs cannot speak for themselves. That responsibility falls to those of us who believe it is our duty to represent the voiceless, whether they are prairie dogs or people. Ultimately, politics is a struggle between two ideas: the belief that the weak are meant to serve the powerful, and the belief that the powerful have a duty to serve the weak. At its best, America has always defended the weak, whether it was Franklin Roosevelt fighting the Nazis or Abraham Lincoln abolishing slavery. We now find ourselves at a moment when we must decide between these two ideas once again, and that decision is nothing less than a referendum on our character as a nation. John Horning is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is executive director of WildEarth Guardians. GUEST EDITORIAL An exile returns to his roots RICHARD LEBLOND Writers on the Range There’s a place in the northeastern corner of Oregon that I’ve come to love: Zumwalt Prairie, between the Wallowa Mountains and Hells Canyon. It supports one of the largest Buteo hawk breeding populations known on the continent, and contains the largest remaining bunchgrass prairie in North America. The prairie is a nearly treeless expanse of low hills, plains, and swales. Wildflowers are abundant among the grasses, and in early summer there is an excess of color, as if some sloppy god had spilled his paints. The grasses sway not only to the wind, but also to the scurrying of ground squirrels, badgers and gophers, and to the predatory swoops of hawks and eagles. This fecundity appears to make no sense. The soils are poorer than dirt. Euro-American settlers found the rocky earth too difficult to convert to cropland, so they put it beneath the hooves of cattle. Though not native, the cows mimicked an essential natural process. In pre-Columbian times, the prairie likely was maintained in an open condition by fire and grazing elk. (As far as is known, there had never been bison on Zumwalt Prairie.) Elk were nearly extinct in Oregon by the end of the 19th century, and cattle more than adequately filled the role of primary grazer. Crucially, some ranchers learned that restricting when and where cattle grazed maintained the prairie’s health. On several large tracts, no area was grazed during the same season in consecutive years, allowing the habitat to recover. Elk were reintroduced in the 20th century, and they now share the prairie with the cows. The Nature Conservancy reintroduced fire on its portion of the Zumwalt in 2005. The combination of grazing, manure, firecreated nutrients, nitrogen-fixing plants — and, ultimately, life’s tenacious ability to wrestle nutrition from the most meager of soils — has produced a marvelous diversity of plants and animals. During a visit in early July 2008, I saw one of the most beautiful and prolific wildflower displays of my life. About five minutes after I got out of the truck, a coyote started yipping at me from a low hill about 300 feet away. He or she kept it up for about 10 minutes; no doubt I was messing with its dinner plans. Corpulent ground squirrels were everywhere, and I kept stepping into badger holes — a disconcerting experience. It seemed impossible to scan the sky and not see a hawk or eagle. To the east, the prairie dipped down into the complex of gorges heading to Hells Canyon, and to the southwest I could see the snow-capped Wallowa Mountains over the shoulder of one of the Findley Buttes. And the wildflowers were stunning. As I got down on my knees to try and identify them, I spontaneously said, “This is home.” That afternoon, I went to the bookstore/espresso bar in the nearby town of Enterprise to browse and hang out. During one of my brief conversations with the owner, I mentioned my experience on the prairie earlier that day. She handed me a chapbook titled The Zumwalt: Writings from the Prairie, a collection of essays, poems and historical accounts. In an essay by local resident Jean Falbo, I found a passage that resonated with my experience on the prairie that morning. The essay is titled “On Becoming Native to Place.” “Before us was a herd of elk, perhaps two hundred animals. They stood tensely still, eyes on us and ears radaring in our direction. Some voiceless decision was taken and the herd moved down slope like a brown mudslide against the dark yellow green grass, gaining momentum as they went. A more distant herd on Findley Butte caught the message and started its own slide over the undulating land and disappeared from view. A bright evening star appeared. ‘This is A’gamyaung,’ one of my friends, a Central Yup’ik Eskimo, said. After a pause, he went on to say, ‘It means “I’m homesick for nowhere.” ’ Seeing we didn’t get it, he explained that at moments like these, his people said, ‘A’gamyaung’ — meaning to be at one with the universe, no matter where one might be physically.” I know that feeling, and I am now a prairie volunteer. After 55 years of voluntary exile, I can now give something back to the state that raised me. Richard LeBlond is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). A former inventory biologist for the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, he grew up in Oregon. |