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LETTER: Arrogant diatribe

| March 5, 2021 1:00 AM

John Fillmore’s Feb. 24 submission to “Readers Write” regarding the Blue Creek logging activity was regrettable in its arrogance.

Rereading the original story, Ms. Hicks (whom I do not know) did not challenge the project’s scientific basis. She did reference inconsistent messaging from the Bureau of Land Management which my wife and I also experienced when trying to obtain information regarding the logging work performed in Kit Price and Big Hank Campgrounds the last three summers. Like Ms. Hicks, we care about what goes on around us and we want the answers to which we are entitled as citizen taxpayers.

Mr. Fillmore was overwhelmingly arrogant in spending half of his diatribe personally chastising Ms. Hicks. The original story did not portray her as being a science-denier or otherwise ignorant, thus she didn’t warrant being lectured on how to be a more constructive contributor to the community. Doubling down, he criticized her use of the word “heartbroken.”

I submit that “heartbroken” is a very personal feeling and we have no business telling each other what circumstances merit that label. It should be no skin off his nose how Ms. Hicks feels about the logging work.

My wife is a native North Idahoan and camped at Big Hank countless times since it opened in the 1970s. While the logging work was scientifically necessary, the campground is aesthetically destroyed for at least the next 20 years — the time it will take new trees to reach any degree of maturity. It will not recover in her lifetime. She is heartbroken, and rightfully so.

MIKE HENGGELER

Coeur d’Alene