Where’s the oversight?
Dear Editor:
We enjoyed the past weekend in the Methow visiting friends and enjoying the community. However, one of my primary reasons for being there was to monitor U.S. Forest Service management of the Libby Creek watershed, as I have been doing since moving our home there in 1998. Since 1998, I have observed continuous degradation of the spawning and rearing habitat of wild populations of spring chinook salmon and steelhead by permitted cattle grazing.
This May the Forest was to initiate the Mission Restoration Project with commercial logging as a cumulative added adverse habitat affect to that produced by the cattle. To date, the Forest has not provided the opportunity for any on-the-ground public oversight surveys of their plans or activities in the “treatment” areas. A planned June “tour” was canceled. As we traveled through the watershed on Friday and Saturday I was pleased that the cattle have not, as yet, been added to the surface disturbance which will accompany planned logging operations. However, where roads are scheduled for major changes to facilitate logging and hauling equipment accompanying surveying is underway.
Residents have seen the surveying completed in Chicamun Canyon and evidence of road construction in the Ben Canyon and Mission Pond areas. With no activity on Saturday we attempted to view roads within the areas planned for initial logging activities and found the road closed with a document stating that unapproved travel on the road to these public lands would result in $10,000 fines; public oversight was legally blocked. Since the Forest Service has indicated that their funding is inadequate to monitor logging operations those activities and the accompanying fish habitat degradation will have no public oversight.
Don Johnson
Libby Creek Watershed association
Help for biochar
Dear Editor:
Thank you for the front page article updating our Methow Valley citizens of the progress so far of C6 Forest to Farm and our quest to produce viable byproducts from our Forest Restoration and our Community Firewise thinning projects.
I was out in my forest in Mazama last week doing some more of my Firewise thinning on our 40-year-old planned development. I was really bummed that I could not take those branches and treetops down to be “cooked” into biochar. As it is right now, until C6 can find a big site for our operation and the millions of dollars we estimate that it will take to set this all up and running, you, DNR, Okanogan County, USFS and I are having to burn our wood wastes out in the open, adding to the valley’s and the planet’s CO2 problem.
We went to the elected two years ago and Hawkins, Steele, Goehner, Rolfes and Franz, along with the help of our county commissioners (bipartisan effort here) got C6 $150,000 to get started. But we are running out of that money and we need your help to keep going towards our objective and mission. C6 has a great board with lots of experience, including retired forest rangers, contractors, big business managers, scientists and political advocates. But, we need your help here in the valley to raise money and then find a feasible site for our operation.
Please go to www.c6f2f.org and help us — and you — with our mission and making us all breathe easier. Happy trails.
John Willett
Mazama
Setting priorities
Dear Editor:
Regarding the proposal to open 50 miles of county roads to ATVs, although I understand that the use of public lands needs to satisfy multiple interests, I think that we need to prioritize protection of these fragile environments above everyone’s enthusiasms and recreational preferences.
Examined objectively, ATVs simply do not have the same impacts as non-motorized, passive forms of recreation. I walk and bike Lester Road and Bear Creek Road — both proposed for ATV use — often. It is always a pleasure to greet other people who are similarly enjoying the amazing experience of being out in these lands. However, there is nothing that I or anyone else is doing — by walking, biking or fishing — that detracts from the joy and appreciation and peace of my neighbor’s experience of the outdoors.
Others may — and I’m sure they do — have varying opinions on what constitutes intrusion. But I’m sure I am not alone in believing that — in this instance — someone else’s right to a certain type of recreation amounts to a deterioration of my enjoyment of the Valley. Strolling along to the sound of the roar of ATVs, breathing the dust, jumping aside to allow their passage, calming my dog are not the only negative aspects. There is the sadness of seeing wildflowers covered with dust, watching meadowlarks fly away from the noise and deer startled and running. This is not to mention the long-term erosion and habitat degradation from illegal off-road (impossible to enforce) use of ATVs.
I think we need to prioritize protecting our home. I think we need to keep in mind that first and foremost we are guardians and custodians. Making precious areas off-limits to ATVs is the least we can do.
Barbara Zaroff
Brian Russell
Winthrop
Kudos for chamber festival
Dear Editor:
Anyone who wasn’t at the Methow Valley Chamber Music festival for one or all of the six concerts over the last two weeks missed a truly remarkable series of performances by amazing world class musicians.
This was music worthy of the most prestigious concert stages, and happened within a few feet of the listener, not a nose-bleed section away from the stage as otherwise it would have been for most of us. This valley is truly blessed to have such a festival and everyone who has even a passing interest in music should attend! It’s over for this year, but keep an eye, and an ear, out for next year.
A huge thank you is owed to the many dedicated people who donated both time and dollars, from the festival’s founding in the 1990s to the present, to bring this music by these amazing artists to the valley. Also, the venue this year, at the Twisp Terrace Lodge, couldn’t have been more stunning, with unusually excellent acoustics, lovely grounds for strolling and eating before the music, with beautiful views of the mountains, valley, and sunset thrown in for good measure.
But the music outshone everything, and special thanks is due to the musicians who traveled here to play their hearts out for us. It is humbling, inspiring and thrilling to be in the presence of such talent. Don’t miss it next year.
Kathleen Learned
Twisp
Free thinking
Dear Editor:
Population Connection (http://Populationconnection.org) is a monthly magazine we’ve found useful for keeping up on this long overdue subject. My Planned Parenthood lapel button served nicely as an introduction to my future professor, Starker Leopold, at a U of C Berkeley student faculty mixer, years ago. He was wearing one too! That was before Population Connection had changed their name from the somewhat too obscure ZPG.
Now I find the pin I received from the Freedom From Religion Foundation to be a better conversation starter. Really now, how’d they think I needed one? It simply has the still very obscure initials ffrf under the words “free thinker,” but since I no longer wear any lapels in this informal valley, the pin has to go on my hat.
Eric Burr
Mazama
Contradictory
Dear Editor:
In regards to the fire-affected trails/areas article in last week’s paper: I find it curious that the U.S. Forest Service called out mountain bikers and their “high rate of speed” causing further damage and erosion issues to sensitive post fire areas/soils.
Mountain bikers ride the same area of maintained and compacted tread each time they ride a trail.
On the other hand, the Forest Service is selling permits and handing out maps to commercial mushroom pickers to harvest morels in recent burn areas. None of the pickers — locals, out-of-towners or commercial pickers — got ticketed for indiscriminately treading on these post-fire, erosion prone soils. Thousands of individual boot prints are allowed on this fragile soil/area while mushroom hunting. But Forest Service was issuing tickets to bikers in the exact same area, on the bike/hike/ride trails that are being so closely monitored to make sure they meet Forest Service requirements to reopen again.
This is contradictory rhetoric, in my opinion.
Kat Werle
Winthrop
Just say no?
Dear Editor:
By all means say no to WATVs, after all some say they are noisy, although less noisy that than the motorcycles that roar into the valley. They are unsafe on the roads as they travel at slower speeds than the vehicles, unlike bicycles. For WATV’s to travel on the roads they must meet strict criteria to be road-worthy, licensed drivers, insurance, registered with the state and properly/appropriately licensed for on-road use and have to follow all traffic regulations, unlike bicycles.
An expressed concern was that they could possibly damage the flora and fauna or to a precious pansy should one go off road, even though the county commissioners are only proposing access to county roads, yes there could be a rogue operator that goes off road or trail but the same can be said about mountain bikers, dirt bikers or even backpackers.
But first and foremost, say no to WATVs because it would prevent a possible/probable influx of tourists money into the two towns that depend heavily on tourist spending, but the local restaurants, retailers and gas stations don’t need or want the added income they could provide.
Yes, say no to WATVs but also say no to motorcycles, bicycles, scooters, E-bikes and tourist spending money.
Vern Herrst
Winthrop
