outdoors

Great story on a Great American. We all owe a great debt to Ms. Carson.

Very good article. I am not a hunter or an angler, but I hope those who are will take the lead on helping all of us to become better conservationists.

I would love to see a bunch of deer camps talking about this and realizing how much a few people like Rachel Carson have meant to conservation. Unfortunately, I spent to many nights around those campfires realizing that these things are so far from the average deer hunter that it makes me wonder if we will ever get it. It's way more fun to talk about killing wolves, how Obama will take our guns and really important stuff like that. The world is better without DDT, but I'm not sure that would happen again. Go try to find a weed in a cornfield.... Chemicals are not gone, they have just been reformulated.

I think too, it’s important to consider the source and foundation of American capital at gatherings: the forced annexation of American Indian land, natural resources and water resources. Its absurd to speak of conservation, ethics and the environment while always ignoring the people most indigenous as well as aboriginal land title. People are most important and not just the ones you favor.

I agree that the time has come when it is difficult to pursue conservationists' and an environmentalists' goals independently. This is not occuring due to a change in perspective by either camp, but that each camp is getting closer to the core of the solution that lies within a functioning ecosystem. In time, it will be difficult to pursue ecologists' and economists' goals independently for the very same reasons; that the solutions for each, reside within a functioning ecosystem.

On the other hand, while the environmental movement has made great progress, it has long since embraced a public persona that shrieks a "sky is falling" attitude toward every issue it can. This, in turn, has caused a large group of the public to turn their ears off when they hear EPA, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, etc. I know I have been quite discouraged by the constant drumbeat of doom regarding the climate and every other new impending crisis just around the corner that needs funding. Scientists as a group have lost their image as purveyors of knowledge and have become beholden to the mighty buck. Even DDT could have been continued to be manufactured, if some reasonable control standards would have been established. It's estimated that the DDT ban has cost the lives of an estimated 25 million people in the 3rd world due to insect borne diseases, such as malaria. It's ban has continued for political reasons, while much more deadly poisons are used successfully under strict controls.