LANDS: Beware any transfers

Letter writer Will Coggin (FORESTS: Need local control, March 2) attempts to provide cover for lawmakers inching toward the wholesale takeover of America’s public lands, while disparaging the integrity of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a group working to create real-world solutions to the challenges of public lands management.

These attacks are disingenuous and blatantly hypocritical. Coggin writes from the Environmental Policy Alliance, a front-group for lobbyists and PR spinmeisters who are paid by industry to roll back conservation, and yet he presumes to tell Idaho readers who the real sportsmen are and what we should support.

The TRCP is beholden to no funder. The only litmus test we ever apply is what science indicates is good for fish and wildlife and, therefore, what is good for America’s sportsmen. And that is why we raised the alarm with hunters and anglers across the country at the mere discussion of public land transfer among our national lawmakers.

I urge your readers to see through these attacks and question why Coggin so desperately wants to weaken the voice of hunters and fishermen.

COBY TIGERT

Pocatello