Dear Editor:
I appreciated Susan Burt’s interesting, informative and thoughtful letter of January 30. Everyone should read it and consider the consequences of such neglectful attitudes of these corporations.
Yvonne Maas
Marlinton
Open letter to Senator Gregory Tucker
Honorable Senator Tucker:
We are writing to you to express our opposition to the designation of the Birthplace of Rivers National Monument in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
Our group has an average age of 83 years. We have spent a lifetime enjoying our natural resources in our county. We can no longer hike, hunt, cut firewood and dig ramps, but we enjoy drives through the National Forest and we still can walk a few accessible areas and can do a little fishing.
We do not understand why any organization or individual would want a designation that would restrict the activities on our Forest. Our culture is hunting and foraging and living partly off the land. We needed no permits other than licenses. There was no waiting for paperwork to clear. If we needed deer to feed our families, we could get one. If we needed ramps for a church fundraiser, we could dig them. If we wanted to fish the streams, we could do so. We did not have to spend money to park to go to Hills Creek Falls or Cranberry Glades.
What in the world is happening?
The Forest Service does not currently manage the Forest for multiple use as it was intended to do.
Logging is at an all time low, so our valuable timber is rotting down. Forest diversity is being lost so that wildlife will suffer and will diminish as it did in the past.
The Forest Service has completely lost its mission and it certainly does not have the expertise to manage a National Monument.
We are not buying into the promises of economic gain from the designation.
We are old enough to realize that the amount of Government owned land is an economic drain to our County and that more restrictions on the land would be even more devastating to our economy. We have more than enough land designated as Wilderness and we do not need more land off limits with even more restrictions. We don’t want to be a playground for the rich out of D.C. and surrounding areas. We want to have our God-given right to live here, raise our families here, and enjoy the freedom to use the Forest as our Creator intended.
A National Monument designation would take this away.
The voice of the people gets lost in the roar of the special interest groups that are assisting in destroying our Nation and are taking away our rights. Please don’t support this designation, and do support maintaining our freedom to use the land.
Hillsboro Senior Citizens
Betty Kershner, President
This letter was also sent to our state and federal elected officials, as well as the Supervisor of the Monongahela National Forest.