To the Editor
Idaho County Commissioner Jim Chmelik’s opinion piece in the July 14 Chronicle raises local hot-button issues: he, like many others, hates the federal government and wolves.
But when he writes about “the spirit that makes us great,” he becomes harder to understand. I gather that he believes we are great to the extent we are totally free to grow food and build shelter and do whatever else we feel we need in order to make a living in our rural county.
Unfortunately, those freedoms were much abused when we had them.
He claims that before the feds reintroduced gray wolves, "they were not endangered, they just did not populate our region." However, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of wolves were poisoned with strychnine from the 1860s until 1940, by which time there were almost none left in the U.S.
Also, wanton clear-cut logging in the nineteenth century laid waste whole forests and led the public to demand the creation of what later became National Forests.
Is Commissioner Chmelik ignorant of this history, or does he just not care?
Bill Salmon
Elk City
 

Home

Classified Ads