Cut the rhetoric and get the facts straight

It’s ironic that Ken Thacker criticized the residents of Bonner County who voted against wilderness for supposed rhetoric and misinformation, yet his letter was composed almost entirely of made-up exaggerations and he bungled the date of the motorized restrictions in the Scotchman Roadless Area by 28 years. Whether Ken Thacker knows it or not, the old “it was managed as wilderness for decades” or “since 1987” was one of the famous falsehoods pumped by the wilderness supporters, leading to their embarrassing “wide-spread-support-and-essentially-no-opposition” county-wide defeat in 2018.

The 1987 Forest Plan, while recommending Scotchman for wilderness, did not restrict previous uses. At that time, the Forest Service apparently had local leaders who recognized that they did not have the legal authority to create wilderness. The motorized restrictions at Scotchman were signed into place with a closure order after the 2015 Forest Plan. If you prefer the facts, just ask the Forest Service or (with plenty of No-Doz) read the Forest Plans. Snowmobiling and cutting out elk hunting trails with chainsaws were legal until that closure order, despite the false information still being spread by the gang that can’t shoot straight. You’d think after the stinging election loss, that the wilderness supporters would try a new strategy, like cutting the goofy rhetoric and getting the facts straight.

STAN MYERS

Hope