Curious about objections
Dear Editor:
After reading the initial article in the Methow Valley News about the North Central WATV club meeting with the county commissioners about opening some roads in the Methow to WATV use and seeing the letters to the editor, I am curious as to why some people are so opposed to opening the roads mentioned, to use by street legal, licensed WATVs?
I have read they are noisy, yes they are noisier than a bicycle but a lot less noisy than the motorcycles that visit the valley and use some the same roads mentioned in the article, or even some of the local cars and trucks.
I have read they could cause environmental damage to sensitive areas. We are talking about already existing public county roads, that already have motorized and non-motorized traffic.
I have read they could disturb the quietness and solitude of hikers using these road — are these the same hikers that are hiking with their earbuds stuck in their ears, oblivious to the sounds around them?
I have read if involved in an accident with a motor vehicle (car or truck) traveling at posted speed limit it could have devastating results. Would it be as devastating as a motor vehicle traveling at the same speed and bicyclists riding two and three abreast? Let’s be honest — you, I and everyone else knows they ride two and three abreast.
I have read that some oppose a reduction of posted speed limits. For the most part the roads in question the speed limit is already 35 and those that aren’t are heavily used by bicyclists, which for the safety of the bicyclists due to the blind curves, hills and traffic probably should be reduced.
Vern Herrst
Winthrop
Technical questions
Dear Editor:
Can technology cure the ecological problems that technology created?
Restoration projects are being initiated to create ecosystems in the future like those of the past. Will future limiting conditions (temperature, precipitation, water quality, species composition, etc.) match those of the past?
Will technological “restoration management” of our forests, being initiated by government agencies, bring a renewed or degraded environment? Can these “technological fixes” replace old-growth trees, ground cover, eroded soil, or summer streamflows lost to subsidized commercial logging and beef production?
Have high-tech hatcheries restored the salmon populations lost to habitat degradation?
This book would be an excellent student library selection: “The Fall of the Wild,” by Ben A. Minteer (2019). This information should be part of any “restoration” project evaluation. Some excerpts: “don’t let our tools run the show;” concern “ … that our technological proficiency would outstrip our ecological humility, caution, and self-possession;” “ … a larger and growing engineering agenda in biology and environmental science, an agenda that trumpets the potential of emerging technologies to address a range of ecological and human concerns, from species decline and extinction to urban and agricultural sustainability, human health, and global climate change.”
Don Johnson
Libby Creek Watershed Association
