LETTER TO THE EDITOR

3-18-04

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Dear editor,

Shame on you, Marcia Andre and the other officers of the U.S. Forest Service, for your handling of the Kit Laney incident.

You and every officer should be hiding your faces in shame, plus be turning in your badges and guns.

The U.S. Forest Service and their god syndrome has won, but the people, who you should be working for, have lost in a big way. The U.S. Forest Service at its inception protected ranchers, like Kit Laney's grazing rights, but now look at what you do.

Shame on you.

It is no different on what is being done with your "controlled burns," where you destroy thousands of acres of forest each year. I can remember when the U.S. Forest Service put out fires and did not start them.

Your lumbering policy allows millions of board feet of lumber to go unharvested and rot away. Just think what lumbering could do to help our economy, plus the number of jobs it would create. We did at one time have the U.S. Forest Service supervise this industry before we became victims of all the "tree huggers" who infiltrated your ranks.

It is a shame what the U.S. Forest Service has become, because it did, at one time, service the people and was one of the few public agencies that paid its own way.

Now look at the way you do business.

Shame on you!
(s)Bill Stephens
Silver City