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Show tUlie Page A7 ffrtmeg-31ttfrgPgnfrg- Thursday, August 19, 2004 ttt Letters from the People VIA- To programs shouldn't be cut to salvage budget Times-Independe- nt guest editorial . . . the Editor, Regardless of personal feelings whether the war in Iraq was justified, we all share the same concern that our soldiers come home safely. The consequence of any war is there will be casualties, and in Iraq there have been 12,000 American soldiers wounded to date. The young soldiers volunteering to serve have different motives for enlisting, but the overriding reason is to serve America. They believe in what theyre being asked to do, and they believe America wouldnt abandon them if something were to happen to them. America is getting ready to do just that. President Bush is proposing a estimated 3. 1 percent cut for the Veterans Administration in fiscal year 2006. The real cut is for the veteran who shoulders another burden after leaving harms way. Reduced services, closed enrollments, and rationed healthcare due to insufficient funding. The cut will affect all past, current, and future members of the Armed Forces. Your sons and daughters, fathers, uncles, cousins. The President would like to put the brakes on the runaway budget, as well he should, but disabled veterans shouldnt have to compete with pork-barrprojects designed to help officials get reelected. Such projects should be the focus of budget enforcement, not VA programs. As is often the case, something not earned el is usually treated with disregard. The President availed himself of the Texas Air An alternative look National Guard while most of his peers were in Vietnam. Mr. Cheney never was a member of the Armed Forces, having received five deferments during the Vietnam conflict. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have no need of services provided by the Veterans Administration. The amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill (S.2400), which would have guaranteed full funding for veterans health care, fell short of the votes needed to pass, The voting broke almost evenly along party lines, Democrats voting for passage, Republicans voting against it. The honorable Utah Senators Mr. Bennett and Mr. Hatch voted against the amendment. The question is not what our daughters and sons are willing to give for our country during its time of need, but rather what is our country willing to do for them in their time of need. And the question shouldnt wait until Veterans Day, after the elections are over, nor should it wait for four years from now. Ask the question, for your sons and daughters, in or going into by Wayne Y. Hoskisson Executive Director, Red Rock Forests Moab, Utah Joel Frandsen is partly correct. Changes in policies and action are needed to get Americas - and particularly Utahs forests healthy again. Its the price we must -- as the present situation has eliminated other alternatives. He just has not identified the right prescription to regain our healthy forests. Mr. Frandsen says we have too many trees. He is largely correct. In some places we do have too many trees. But he does not tell us why we have too many trees. He does not give us a cause. He does not tell us what the disease is. He does not tell us why there are too many trees. We cannot expect to get healthy forests from logging if we do not know and recognize the causes of unhealthy forests. We must expect foresters to tell us what causes the unhealthy forests and then plan the treatment. Research indicates two of the prime reasons for too many trees in a forest are previous logging and commercial livestock grazing. Roads are related to increased fire risk. Fire suppression is not just aggressively fighting fires. Other permitted activities also suppress fires. In the huge fire in Arizona last year, fire raged through ten logging projects completed in the last decade. After each logging project the number of trees increased and the size of trees decreased. We do have too many trees in some places but it is not because the forests have not been managed. The Missionary Ridge fire near Durango, Colorado originated in an old spruce forest pay, harms way. Please write your Congressman and ask them. Or visit the Disabled American Veterans website www.dav.org -- Michael Hardy Moab Rodeo-Chedes- Reader cites reasons for presidential preference . . . Letter: dont like the direction that President Bush has taken our country. I dont like the way he deceived us into an frivolous war while alien- ating all of our potential allies. I dont like the way he gave tax cuts to the rich and bailed out his corporate friends. And I dont like his assault on our individual rights. Now that Ive seen more of John Kerry, I can see that he represents so much that Bush I doesnt. Kerry has wisdom and intelligence, integrity and courage. He has experience and strength, morality and principle, and he cares about the environment. Kerry is a strong leader who can steer our country back on course through these difficult times. John Kerry will put our priorities back where they Parents share a letter home: remember our troops Dear Editor: Being so far away, we might lose sight of the war. Here is a reminder, a letter from our son, SFC Charles Bennett, in Baghdad with First Calvary. j Well, lets see. I said Id try to describe my days. My primary jobs are Force Protection and Ammunition. Force protection deals a lot with engineers, designing and improving our check points and observation towers. Making them as defensible as possible. Primary concerns are snipers, car bombs, mortars and rockets. We havent had any car bombs yet but the others are an almost daily occurrence. The hard part to explain is that the sheer randomness of it is what makes it dangerous and aggravating. During Easter week they stood and fought a couple times and we devastated them. Thats when they stand and fight, otherwise they fire a few times then bolt and we cant catch em, so really there is a lot of luck involved. Im out at the check points on towers almost daily. My ammo job is watching that our guys are kept supplied and have what they need. I go on patrols periodically for different things but primarily to resupply folks. My day doesnt really have a regular start or end time. It just depends on whats going on. We live on a Base Camp in trailers. There are latrine and shower trailers. Most of the time when you finish the day you take a shower and call it a day. We get together and play cards or BS sometimes to break the monotony. The rockets and mortars hit the heart of our camp also, but you can tell how close or far they are by the sound. Weve had several close calls but so far so good. E. Say Moab . . . dont want this to scare you but what the press doesnt tell about is the number of roadside bombs (IEDs) we find every day before they go off or that go off and dont do any damage. Same for the rockets and mortars they fire at us damn near every day but dont go off or miss anything of significance. I guess they dont consider it news unless we get killed or severely injured. I cant lie, at times it gets nerve racking but we try to adapt and drive on. Everything that can be done is being done and we keep at I it and put massive effort into catching the bastards and shutting them down. Some days are better than others. For the most part nothing has changed but attacks are less than when we got here. In April they (the bad guys) acted up so we hit them hard and set them back. Ive got to get going, I will stop for now and end this letter on a better note. I love you both and each day my thoughts are with you. Looking forward to my return and visit with you. One of the guys came by. He needed to vent. It's times like that I feel the most useful. We all deal with the stress in different ways. This morning was a 4 a.m. day. It hurts, but such is life. In a few days I get to go to the Green Zone for a couple days. There is a pool there and that sounds so inviting after the 128j days here. Its a break. Well, I want to get this in the mail. Take care of yourselves. Im fine. Try not to worry too much. With Love, your son, Chuck Remember our Troops Charlie and Lynda Catron Moab Look in the mirror to see what's wrong Letter, I felt sick at heart after I read Mr. Frandsens editorial, Whats wrong with our We need look no further forests ? (TI than our own mirror to discover what is really wrong with our forests, our oceans, our rivers, with the very air that we breath. To date, we humans have destroyed over 5 billion acres of forests. Not only does this contribute to fouling our own nest, it kills off many other living things. Because everything is linked, the less healthy the natural world is, (of which we are part), the less healthy we are. Forests are recyclers of water, and givers of oxygen, among other things. Cutting down more trees instead of fixing the real problem is only adding fuel to the fire. I invite you to read The Last Americans, Environmental collapse and the end of civilization by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond. It appeared in Harpers Magazine in at http: June of 2003 and can be found www. geocities.commarcschindlerl Hiamnnd.ht.Tn- If you dont have Internet access, I would be happy to provide you with a copy of this article. Mr. Diamond makes many good points in this article. Of chief importance is this: Some of us are inclined to dismiss the impor on-li- - ne . . . tance of a healthy environment, or at least to suggest that its just one of many problems facing us - an issue. That dismissal is based on three dangerous misconceptions. Foremost among these misconceptions is that we must balance the environment against human needs. That reasoning is exactly upside-dowHuman needs and a healthy environment are not opposing claims that must be balanced; instead, they are inexorably finked by chains of cause and effect. As I prepare to enter my 50th year, I have discovered that my fife only has meaning when it is connected in a healthy way to the world around me. I heard the following on Larry King Live one day and found it to be a marvelous d biologist point to ponder - a remarked If all the ants living on the planet today were to die, the world would perish within five years. But if all the humans living on the earth were to die, the world would flourish within five years. As I come to fully appreciate that sentiment, I strive to be at least as useful to the. earth as an ant! n. world-renowne- Sincerely, -- Sara f Melnicoff Moab ki clear cut. The Hayman fire in Colorado burned through logged forest, thinned forest, forest treated with prescribed fire, and forest previously burned in a wildfire. When President Bush helicoptered into the Biscuit Fire in Oregon he landed on a burnt ridge to announce his Healthy Forests Initiative. He failed to mention that just down slope the fire burned through a thinned belong. -- Caryl at healthy forests . . . area. Partial cutting done historically typically aggravated the fire hazard and made things worse when fire came along, said one Forest Service researcher. Another university researcher stated, Theres no reduction in wildfire from past logging. We havent seen it. Not all forests respond well to thinning including the spruce and fir forests which are suffering from drought and beetles in Utah. These forests have seen this all before. They have seen it for centuries. It is just a shock to people who have only been here for 150 years or less. Many of the forests on the high plateaus of southern Utah saw this same situation about 100 years ago. The forests are still here and human management has not had much to do with it. In fact thanks to human management huge parts of our forests are gone. Much of our ponderosa pine is gone because of silvicultural treatment. Mr. Frandsen ignored something else. After a year or two dead trees do not pose much threat as a source of fire but the slash of limbs and twigs left on the forest floor from logging pose a very serious threat of forest fire. Such slash is a great source of fuel for igniting and feeding fires. Forests cannot be designed to be fireproof. Fires bum up hill more than down hill. Fires burn faster up hill than down hill. Could we design our forests so there are only down hill slopes? Weather determines when, where, and how big a fire will be. Fuels in the forest might modify the behavior of a fire locally but it is not the limiting factor in fires. Even the Forest Service recognizes the value of dead and dying trees to the forest. The Forest Service published a text on the value of dying and dead trees to forests called The seen and unseen world of the fallen tree. (Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-164- .) Finally the forests are not dying. The next time you drive through a forest of dying trees look closely. What is most surprising the luxuriant growth beneath those trees. Aspen are sprouting from declining stands of spruce and fir. Young saplings of all kinds are rushing to replace the old and dying trees. That older generation of trees is no more harmful to the forest than old folks are to our youth. Those dead and dying trees create the nutrient cycle necessary for the regrowth of the forest. There are some places where humans may need to intervene to make the forests more resilient but we must be realistic about how much we can do to achieve that goal. As another Forest Service technical report states, following a large-scal- e outbreak, managers may have the opportunity to return the landscape to one that is less susceptible to future outbreaks by following a no action treatment plan. There are places where we should do some thinning of the forests. But we should not expect miracles from thinning. If you have a home in or near the forest (even the pinionjuniper woodlands) you should check out FIREWISE.ORG on the web. Qr you could look up the work of fire researcher Jack Cohen. There is no guarantee that you can fireproof your home but you should assess your risk for fire. V An example of how medians would created a hazard . . . Dear Editors, Yesterday, August 16, 2004, I observed something on Main Street that leads me to believe that medians on Main Street would not be a very good idea. In fact, they would create a hazard. I saw a Moab City police car, with its siren wailing and lights flashing, come rushing south on Main Street through the intersection at 100 North. It was definitely going somewhere in a hurry. Cars were moving to the right lane near 100 North, but at Center Street the light had turned red, so some cars still in the left lane were unable to move to the right. The police car could not proceed in either the left of right lane. So, before reaching the middle of the block, the police car moved into the middle turning lane and sped to Center Street. At Center, it turned right, crossing in front of the Main Street lanes on the right. The Main Street middle turning lane provided a clear, open lane for the police car to go around the traffic and make the turn into Center Street. This is the same lane where the city has proposed to place a median. If the median had been in place, the police car would not have been able to use the length of the turning lane that it needed to go around the cars in the two lanes to its right. Police cars need to be able to move safely through the center of town. Clearly, the placement of medians would interfere with police cars and other emergency vehicles that are trying to proceed rapidly while avoiding existing Main Street traffic. -- Sarah M. Fields Changing Jeep Safari date wo Id Dear Adrien, I am writing in response to the article in the August 5 concerning the Red Rock Wheelers Four of changpossibility As director Safari. race of the the date Jeep ing for the 30th Annual Canyonlands Half Marathon, I totally support the date change to May. Our event traditionally takes place the third Saturday of March. Next year, we are changing the date to avoid conflict with Jeep Safari. Moving Jeep Safari to May would alleviate potential conflicts and overlaps between two of Moabs most popular events. Times-Independe- nt Moab alleviate conflicts Sincerely, Times-Independen- t, newspaper published weekly, with breaking news updated on the web at www.moabtimes.com -- Ranna Bieschke Rim Rock Roadrunners Get the scoop from a reliable source The your community . . . |