Letters to the editor for Friday, May 9, 2014

Every agency has its own endangered list

After reading an internet story that Harry Reid had a hand in the BLM roundup to help his son get a contract for a Chinese company that wanted to build a solar panel field in Southern Nevada, I read comments from Snopes.com and Factcheck.com. I don’t consider them to be the final word on any subject because they tend to quibble. However, both said that the Chinese withdrew their request before the BLM action. My interest piqued, I researched information on the endangered list.

I found that there is no single federal endangered list. Every federal agency has their own. One international group, the IUCN, has 4,727 species and plants on their “Red” list. From all I could determine, the BLM may be the only agency that has the desert tortoise on their list.

The desert tortoise website states that their primary habitats are the Mojave and the Sonora deserts, not Southern Nevada. The natural listed predators are ravens, gila monsters, kit foxes, badgers, roadrunners, coyotes, and fire ants. No mention of cattle. They also suffer from various diseases from human contact. Yet it is legal to adopt desert tortoises and one study indicated that adopted and captive tortoises can be a source of disease to other wild desert tortoises because they escape or are returned to the wild at the rate of 4,400 per year.

I am not convinced that this fiasco was not some corrupt government attempt to chase Bundy off grazing land for some other purpose.

Don Gurney

Carson City

Lisa Helget is caring, genuine and effective

Concerning Lisa Helget as a candidate for Board of Supervisors, good people of Carson City, please know Lisa Helget is a good woman! She is strong, deeply caring, highly motivated and reliable in matters of importance! People, she is also as down to earth and genuine as they come!

Lisa is the primary volunteer and leader of Saints of the West Rescue in Reno. She is instrumental in contacting adoptees with their wonderful purebred St. Bernards for get-togethers at PetCo in Reno, an upcoming St. Bernard July fun day at Washoe Lake State Park so the public can get to know and appreciate these great dogs first hand!

Lastly, Lisa Helget freely and generously drove me to Reno to Saints of the West Rescue to select my beautiful St. Bernard. She then drove met to Placerville, Calif., to pick up my dog. Lisa then came to my home on two occasions to fix my gate and check on us both! Just so ya know!

Judi Muller-Hannon

Minden