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Post Op-Eds Attack Endangered Species Act Within a span of seven days, two different liberal columnists in the Washington Post took strong pro-resource-user positions in the paper's op-ed pages. On July 5, Richard Cohen, approving the Interior Department's decision to kill the Clinton administration's effort to introduce grizzly bears into the Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana, notes that "the funny thing is that this pro-bear. . . argument is advanced by some of the same people who drink only bottled water and avoid risk of any kind." Mr. Cohen concludes: "Now back to The Washington Post's handy bear tips. To 'slowly back away' and-ha ha-'remain calm,' I add another: Write to your representatives in Congress." Then on July 11, in the same paper, Michael Kelly published a very warm-hearted column on the Klamath Falls, Oregon water crisis, in which a preservationist lawsuit withdrew federally granted water rights from 1,400 farms by successfully arguing that the protected "suckerfish" upstream had priority during a drought. On the Endangered Species Act, Mr. Kelly finds, "it has been exploited by environmental groups whose agenda is to force humans out of lands they wish to see returned to a pre-human state. Never has this been made more nakedly, brutally clear than in the battle of Klamath Falls." At length, he puts the political situation of the farmers with blunt irony: "I am more urban myself, and I do want to see the countryside more natural. And I am not friends with anyone in the tiny minority of those who make a living off the land. So I suppose I may cheerfully join in the crushing of the Klamath Basin farmers." Back to "News" Forest Resources Association
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