Letters to the editor for Friday, April 10, 2015

How does evolution flaw explain continental drift?

Pursuant to March 28 religion page, “Exploring Evolution’s Flaws,” does Ben Fleming and the entire creationist community consider the National Geographic Society with its magazine to be an agent of Satan? Similarly your Nevada State Museum? (Check out the primary top-floor display mapping continental drift through hundreds of millions of years).

Larry Taylor

Carson City

Don’t compromises Nevada’s greatest asset

As a fourth generation Nevadan, I have enjoyed, benefited from and greatly appreciated Nevada’s public lands. Those lands have been a heritage in my family, many of whom were ranchers and all of whom were shaped by a sense of the open spaces and freedoms that was and is synonymous with living in Nevada. Even today, my father, who is 90 years old and still hunts and traps, takes weekly rejuvenating jaunts into our public lands. That heritage is threatened by those who support transferring Nevada’s federal lands — public lands — to the state.

Such legislation would serve to boost the political currency of a few legislators among a small constituency by forever sacrificing the unique character of Nevada and allowing its public lands’ cultural, aesthetic, historical, and economic asset to fall prey to short-sighted, selfish, profit-driven, political interests. The scenarios that are used to promote such transfers mask or completely ignore both the short and long-term impacts.

As is the case in much legislation, the unforeseen and unanticipated consequences are regrettable only in hindsight, which allows no remedy and rarely even evokes a mea culpa from those responsible.

I adamantly oppose land transfer bills such as Congressman Amodei’s HR1484 and the recent state legislature bills SJR1 and AB408. These bills will compromise the integrity of Nevada’s greatest asset, its federally managed public lands.

Robert McGinty

Washoe Valley