Dixie Chicks’ sweep of the Grammy Awards
Re: “Grammys, Chicks make nice,” Feb. 12 news story.
You can criticize the president and still win five Grammy awards without compromising your principles! Maybe a few of our representatives could take a clue from the Dixie Chicks, have some guts, and take Thomas Jefferson’s admonition to heart: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” As for the rest of you who hounded the Dixie Chicks off your know-nothing radio stations and whooped and hollered for CD-burning parties: In your face.
Pete Klammer, Wheat Ridge
Elk hunt in Rocky Mountain National Park
Re: “Park’s cull of the wild; State to push for public hunt of RMNP elk,” Feb. 9 news story.
Wildlife Commissioner Rick Enstrom’s proposal that hunters cull elk in Rocky Mountain National Park is a terrible idea. Even worse, Rep. Mark Udall, usually a thoughtful advocate of good environmental management, supports it.
The rationale is that hunters would be a source of income. The National Park Service has so little money, it can’t even fix potholes, let alone hire a full staff of rangers. And as demonstrated at “safari farms,” a lot of “hunters” will gladly pay thousands to shoot a trophy bull elk as tame as the family dog.
If this precedent is set, every hunting organization in the country will be declaring wildlife in national parks to be in “excess” and forcing National Park Service biologists to explain why there shouldn’t be culls of, for example, Dall sheep in Denali National Park or grizzlies and buffalo in Yellowstone.
Instead of supporting a cockeyed scheme to sell national park wildlife for sport killing, you’d think Udall would be working to get the National Park Service the budget it needs.
Suzanne Wuerthele, Denver
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Re: “Public hunt in park a bad idea,” Feb. 13 editorial.
Your editorial on the problem with elk overpopulation was skinny on facts and fat on bias. The Denver Post favors “professional culling” instead of allowing trained hunters under the close supervision of park staff to thin the herd to maintainable levels. You did not mention the price tag that these professional hunters will cost the Park Service as opposed to civilian licensed hunters, who will pay the Park Service to fill their freezers. In effect, these fees will offset and pay for the cost of the program.
Professional hunters will cull the elk in the same manner as supervised civilians will, with the same tools, in the same meadows and forests, except they will cost an already strapped Park Service money it does not have, passing the burden on to you and me as taxpayers. Yes, you are right that this idea of letting citizen license holders shoot elk is far from fair chase hunting, but they will use the meat to feed themselves and their families as opposed it being buried or burned, which is just wrong.
Jack Junkala, Lakewood
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I found your editorial on the proposed elk hunt in Rocky Mountain National Park to be quite accurate in all aspects. I do think there may be another possibility to combine both proposals. In Europe (specifically Germany), game management is much more thoroughly controlled, with less haphazard results. There the hunt master/game manager or his representative accompanies the hunter to make sure that the only animals taken will be those which will result in a stronger herd. Why not do the same in RMNP? Sell a limited number of licenses and require that the tag holder accompany a Park Service employee or contractor who would approve the kill. This would provide revenue to help offset the program cost, add income to the local economies and appeal to the hunting community. By using it as a systematic and scientific method to improve the park ecology, perhaps it would convince (at least part) of the PETA crowd that Bambi isn’t being wantonly slaughtered.
Larry Fielden, Westminster
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The statement that “people come to the park looking for harmony with nature, not to see a slaughter in progress” is the silliest thing that has been said yet about the elk crisis in Rocky Mountain National Park.
If we’d paid any attention to natural harmony in the last few decades, we would not have eliminated the wolf from the park and would not now be witnessing the current pathetic herd of undernourished, self-destructive animals. Why not a compromise? Ask the Division of Wildlife to run a carefully directed public hunt and at the same time to re-introduce two or three pairs of wolves to the park? Unfortunately, one more bit of human intervention is probably needed as well: a systematic restoration of the beaver habitat the elk have devastated – vital to practically every other species people come to see in this beautiful but severely diminished place.
Bill Hamilton, Denver
Idea on road repair
Re: “Cost of spring road repair,” Feb. 10 Open Forum.
After reading the letter about the inevitable cost of repairing our roads from snowstorm damage, it occurred to me we have resources available that can reduce both the time and the cost to repair. Why not use illegal aliens and prisoners to fix the problem? Illegals require neither health care nor minimum wage. Prisoners (and the guards) are basically paid for already. We could send our regular road-repair crews to supervise the laborers and ensure quality, all without demanding excessive overtime of that more expensive resource. And, with the large resource pool of illegals and prisoners, the repair time could be significantly reduced. I’d like to hear the logical arguments against this proposal.
John Tomasik, Littleton
Crisis in education
We the people of the United States of America are facing a growing intellectual crisis. We lag behind nearly every other developed nation in science, mathematics and history. Why is this? I believe state Senate Bill 138 can shed some light on the subject.
SB 138, the so called “religious bill of rights,” states that no one, teacher or student, has to put up with anything that contradicts their religious beliefs. If you want to believe that two plus two equals six, that the world is flat, and that Jesus, not gravity, makes apples fall from trees, then you are free to do so and face no ill consequences. The Bible also states that it is quite all right to own slaves from other tribes, and that you can beat them mercilessly (just don’t hurt the teeth or eyes). This might make discussing the Civil War awkward in the classroom.
The educational standard reflects a growing social standard of general happy ignorance, and the nation is suffering for it. Soon enough the U.S. will become a giant airplane that’s crashing because no one is smart enough to fly it any longer.
Nick Gossert, Denver
State tourism campaign
Re: “Colo. ads dig deep,” Feb. 13 business news story.
How disappointing that the Colorado Department of Tourism has chosen an out-of-state agency to place the upcoming $6.9 million campaign. Somebody help me understand the message that this sends: Please come visit our wonderful state, which apparently has no capable advertising agencies within its borders.
Nancy McDonald, Denver
Colorado Voices
Like to write and have something to say? Then we invite you to apply for Colorado Voices, a column-writing program we created in 1999 as a forum for contributors from across the region.
Send us two sample columns, 600 to 700 words each, along with a cover letter describing your background, your interest in Voices and whatever else you think we need to know.
Deadline for entries is 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 20.
Send them to us by e-mail at voices@denverpost.com, or by mail to Mary Idler, Denver Post Editorial Page, 101 W. Colfax, Suite 600, Denver CO80202. Provide your address, phone numbers and e-mail address.
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