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Show Don't Characterize Rural Residents A recent political cartoon on the opinion page of the Salt Lake Tribune Trib-une depicted a vast expanse of southern Utah desert with a one . lane back-country road in the foreground. fore-ground. On the road was a pickup truck facing a sport utility vehicle with mountain bikes cn the roof headed the opposite direction. The cowboy in the truck was saying "this land ain't big enough for the two of us." The implication is that it is rural residents, cowboys,' that are unfriendly, intolerant and exclu- sive. If this impression had not been the intent of the cartoonist, then the balloon would have had two tails pointing to both vehicles. It is unfair and incorrect to characterize charac-terize rural residents as the ones intolerant of others. Consider the facts over the past twenty years. The southern Utah timber industry has essentially disappeared dis-appeared while entire mountain sides stand thick with insect killed timber that cannot be harvested. Cattle have been shot. Line shacks have been burned. Water and feed troughs have been burned and otherwise oth-erwise destroyed. Expensive county road maintenance equipment has been vandalized. The coal industry from the Alton coal fields to the Kaiparowitz Plateau has been exterminated. ex-terminated. The mining industry has been destroyed and not just due to foreign competition. New exploration ex-ploration for oil and gas has dropped to ten percent of what it was twenty years ago. The compa-. compa-. (See LETTER on page 5-A) LETTER From page 2-A nies have take their business to friendlier countries. The poorest counties in the state have been sued relentlessly in an effort by some to exhaust their resources and their resolve to defend the public's right to travel safely on county roads. Closing the roads is part of locking up fourteen thousand square miles of public land for elitist primitive wilderness recreation that demands and receives solitude enforced by law. Who is excluding whom? It is not the quiet and resilient folks in the pickup truck. They have no idea how to file a writ, or an amicus brief or an appeal of an agency decision. They also do not have organized special interest groups with million dollar annual budgets with which to hire corps of attorneys to litigate and swarms of lobbyists to infest the marble halls of Washington. No, the people in the little truck never had and don't have any of these things and they never made any demands on others except maybe to "please" close the gate so the cow can't get out. The same cannot be said for the folks symbolized by the sport utility vehicle which, at one time, may have sported a "Sierra Club" or "Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance" Alli-ance" or "Save the American Cockroach" Cock-roach" bumper sticker. You don't see the bumper stickers much any more. There may be a good reason for that. No, not fear. Shame. Paul Young St. George |