Letters for Aug. 1, 2024

Time to end bear baiting

Last month, a rare grizzly bear was shot and killed at a black bear bait station in the St. Joe drainage. According to media reports, the hunter thought the bear was a grizzly. He called Idaho Department Fish and Game to describe the bear’s features in an effort to verify its identity before pulling the trigger. Grizzlies are protected under the Endangered Species Act, and it’s illegal to kill them. After some back and forth, an officer with the department told the individual that what he was seeing was a black bear, and that it was OK to shoot.

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Idaho ruled that the state’s wolf trapping and snaring program was illegal because it was maiming or killing grizzly bears. As a result, the court strictly limited when and where traps and snares can be used in Idaho in order to protect grizzlies when they’re not denning.

I’m not an attorney or a judge, but common sense tells me that the next step in protecting grizzly bears in Idaho is to also ban black bear bait stations in grizzly habitat.

Brett Haverstick

Missoula

Gonzaga supports clean air for all

I applaud Gonzaga University for earning a grant to assist low-income folks of Spokane to acquire heat pumps and indoor air quality products. Heat pumps are energy efficient for heating and have the ability to cool the home, also. As for indoor air quality products, everyone can benefit from one or more of them. Air filtering products and systems, CO and smoke detectors, air purifiers, humidifiers, dehumidifiers and ventilation products all help people live healthier and safer indoors lives.

What every one of these items has in common is the need for proper application, installation, use and maintenance. With that said, in my HVAC career over 30 years, I have witnessed the largest reason for failure of these products is the lack of effort, money or both to maintain them. Homeowners, renters and building owners and operators need to at least monthly look over their HVAC systems to ensure they are operating properly as per the instructions given them by the manufacturer or their HVAC professional. They need to budget, at least monthly, to have money available or saved to pay for maintenance items such as air filters, humidifier pads and cleaning or servicing by an HVAC professional.

I am sure Gonzaga University, which is all about educating people in the first place, will educate everyone involved with the use of their entrusted grant money the importance of monthly maintenance of the products the partners will be installing and using for years or they may fail in months.

James Darby

Spokane Valley

Dr. Ruth deserves to go down in infamy

Regarding the recent death of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who was known as a sex therapist, I am one to believe she deserves to be remembered as infamous. In 1986, The Spokesman-Review ran her column for roughly one month. Former managing editor Chris Peck stated her column will disapprove of promiscuity and adultery. This statement couldn’t have been more false as Westheimer encouraged people to engage in immoral acts causing disrespect for others besides themselves. She was also no expert on the subject of human sexuality.

Shortly after the column started, more than 4,000 letters ensued, mostly from people who objected to it. This prompted Peck to conduct a poll of what readers thought. My late mother and I wasted no time casting our ballots saying the column was emphatically trash and had no place in a family newspaper.

Results of the poll were 3,138 against to 999 for canceling Westheimer’s column and placing above her picture the word “ruthless.”

Westheimer was a survivor of the Nazi holocaust of World War II only to become a supporter of another holocaust: that of abortion. Someone who had to go through what she did should have been courageous to have defended life in another regard.

The message of chastity and abstinence is what needs to be conveyed to teenagers and young adults.

Patrick Kirlin

Spokane