Letters to the editor for Sunday, March 22, 2015

Save sports at WNC

My name is Kevin Marcella. We need to save the sports program at Western Nevada College. It helps the city when visiting teams come, and it also helps the college.

It is for young women and men who love sports very much. When they are in the classroom, their grade-point averages are high. It helps their teammates. They can depend on the teammates for help.

If you have a daughter or son who is finished with high school and they want to go to the college for the baseball team or softball, there will be no sports after 2016.

We just need to save sports at the college. I am very much a supporter. We need to get involved.

Kevin Marcella

Carson City

Amodei right on sage grouse

My family has been in Nevada since the 1930s. I grew up surrounded by sportsmen, ranchers and builders, and have lived in and explored our beautiful state for more than five decades.

I have memories of this bizarre, yet beautiful bird on our hunting trips that I later learned was the sage grouse. And while I don’t consider myself a conservationist per se, I think all sensible Nevadans can agree that it’s our obligation, and, for some of us, our birthright, to preserve the wildlife that share this land with us.

I am glad to see Rep. Mark Amodei tell the Legislature in Carson City that we have nothing to fear from the federal government, that we can all work together to preserve the sage grouse and our rural economy. I couldn’t agree more.

Sincerely,

Bonnie MacQuarrie

Fernley

Bill to raise speed limit is a bad idea

Wow, what a great idea to raise the speed limit where drivers feel they don’t have to obey the law and ignore the speed limit.

Let’s see, maybe it would be just as good an idea to raise the speed limit coming down the hill from Topsy south, as no one pays attention to the silly 55 mile-per-hour limit.

Oh, and while we are at it, let’s see about changing the 25 mile-per-hour speed limit in Gardnerville and Minden, since even Nevada Highway Patrol and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office feel 40 is better.

Gee, that way no more tickets, more pedestrian deaths, and the officers who are supposed to enforce the law won’t be hypocrites when they do bother to stop speeders.

Oh, and forget the 25 that is supposed to be obeyed in neighborhoods where there are children, pets and more pedestrian. Let’s all just go like a bat out of hell since we are so special we don’t need to obey laws.

Thelma W. Rogers

Minden

Manage ourselves, not the coyotes

Coyotes whelp in the spring. This means that the big, brave, testosterone-ridden, salivating-all-over themselves hunters will either be killing pregnant females, or the pups are left parentless in their dens, abandoned to starve to death.

Rabbits are one of the coyote’s main food source, as well as mice, and they will multiply by the thousands within a couple months, to say nothing of the ground squirrels.

If a desert-dwelling human, living on the land first occupied by the coyote, is idiotic enough to leave little fluffy Fido unattended or walk it on a long leash instead of keeping it close by, well, guess it’s called payback. Coyotes do not know the difference between pets and wild prey.

I lost a cat to the coyotes. Was I sad? Of course. Did I want retribution? Not at all. Both animals were being exactly what they were meant to be. The cat out at night hunting, and the coyote out at night hunting.

I’ve always believed that I’d rather have a cat with a short, happy life then one with a long, jailed-in-the-house-for-human-amusement, bored life.

The human arrogance of killing whatever gets in its way nearly left our Great Plains without buffalo, all but annihilated the beautiful timid (unless starving) mountain lions. Opportunistic black bears and raccoons get punished because there’s a creature living on their land that throws out enough tempting food to feed a Third World country.

We need to manage ourselves, not the coyotes. Left on her own, Mother Nature has a way of taking care of her own.

CJ Ojanpera

Minden

Heller wrong in violating Logan Act

When I heard about Sen. Heller’s signing of an open letter to Iran, I was one of the first to consider it treasonous. I didn’t actually think what they did was legally counted as treason. So imagine my surprise when I found out the government was looking into if they had violated the Logan Act, which states:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.”

Our senator tried to influence the government of a foreign nation on its relations with America. It is the president’s sole responsibility to delegate foreign relations with other nations. The president is elected by the populace of the United States to be our representative. Sen. Heller and the other 46 Legislators who signed this open letter should be tried for violating the Logan Act, as what they did was irresponsible and destructive to the nation.

Jarrod Morrow

Carson City