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Commentaries and editorials

Let's Get Started Saving Resources

by Paul Haeder
Roundtable, Spokesman Review, October 18, 2002

Restoring part of the Snake River salmon watershed so diverse fish with their multifaceted wild genes can recover to 1950s numbers - several hundred thousand in spring and fall runs, as opposed to the millions during Lewis and Clark's time running the Columbia and Snake River basins - will take guts.

Sustainability is not a concept meant for the distant future. It is about dealing now with our failing marine fisheries, estuarial habitat loss and millions of annually bulldozed and burnt down wild lands.

Sustainability must be implemented in the present so Eastern Washington's air, water and wildlife resources, including fish, do not tumble into irreversible biological meltdown.

Hydroelectricity without strong personal and corporate conservation measures is meaningless - and unsustainable.

To advocate killing off salmon species to sustain the economies of overuse and waste is illogical because these worthless dams and an impounded one-directional waterway limit true economic growth and sustainability.

Get on with joining the 21st century, Spokesman Review. Take off your lens cap and look to other states and nations for examples of innovative action that uses bioregionalism and ecological sustainability as lynchpins to helping current and future generations live fairly, equitably and cleanly.

The treasures we have in Washington are forests, streams, fish, bear and the people who want to integrate a spiritual as well as economic value with nature. Unsustainable practices give us dead water, dead land and dead fish.


Paul Haeder, Spokane
Let's Get Started Saving Resources
Spokesman Review, October 18, 2002

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