REIbuttal
It's most disappointing to read Brooke Coleman's attack on REI in the Summer '99 issue of the Journal. I hope you'll share REI's statement on this matter with the same vigor Mr. Coleman pursued in criticizing REI. I had called Mr. Coleman in February to request that he correct an inaccurate comment he made in the Winter/Spring issue of the Journal about REI "profiting from snowmobile use," which is wholly untrue. Rather than correct his initial inaccuracy, Mr. Coleman decided to further editorialize about REI's former involvement in a group called the Recreation Roundtable and extrapolate for readers his opinion about REI's motivation for being involved in the organization. In addition to misinterpreting REI's involvement, he also chose to leave out my rebuttal of his suppositions and inaccurate conclusions.

The fact is that REI has worked for years supporting the outdoors. We've worked for trail budgets, we've supported wilderness efforts and we've funded projects to keep rivers wild and free. One would be hard pressed to find an outdoor retailer who has done more for longer than REI. In all of our work, whether as members of organizations, as project grant funders or through direct actions, our intent is always to support and represent muscle-powered recreation.

Michael Collins
REI Public Affairs Manager

Brooke Coleman responds:
We applaud REI's decision to step down from the American Recreation Coalition's Recreation Roundtable. It is vital that members continue to protest user-fees, a program REI still supports "conceptually." This program unfairly charges for land access we have already paid for, and remains directly attached to legislative riders which motorize, privatize, and commercialize public lands. While the "concept" of the program is harmless, the program itself will prove destructive.

In regard to Mr. Collins' attack on the Journal's article, during our conversation he was given every opportunity to clarify REI's position on motorization, commercialization, and privatization of public lands, or disassociate REI from the wise-use agendas communicated by co-members of the Recreation Roundtable. He chose not to. We hope REI's resignation from this group shows a change of heart, and we welcome their help in protecting our public lands from exploitation.

Ivory trade
Regarding your item "CITES approves ivory sale" [Summer, 1999 EIJ] I agree that the question of how best to use local resources is not an easy one. However, the only reason the current trade deal between Southern Africa and Japan can be considered "controversial" is because of the suppression of pertinent facts by CITES and others.

In Japan, a thorough investigation by Japan Wildlife Conservation Society revealed what observers of the Japanese wildlife trade have long known - mechanisms for controlling illegal ivory trade are flimsy at best. Japan has upwards of 50,000 individual ivory outlets, well beyond the ability or concern of the government to monitor. According to JWCS surveys, potential ivory demand in Japan is at least twice what the current ivory deal and previous stocks render in legal ivory. This presents an ideal opportunity for laundering the illegal stuff in from Asia and Africa.

CITES claims that Japan has made enough improvements in their laws to let the deal go through, but small ivory chunks that supply the bulk of the domestic market (for signature seals) are exempt from meaningful regulation. For CITES and countries involved to claim that the ivory trade system is carried out "under strict conditions" reveals the level of corruption and dishonesty that now rules it.

Richard Wilcox
Tokyo

Won't. Won't.
No! I don't like the "new look" of Earth Island Journal. Less info. Hardly anything on nukes. Very very disappointing. Used to read every word on every page. Now I don't even want to peruse it. Give us back the old one or…well, we won't renew, won't get our friends to share, won't pass it around, won't, won't. No cutting edge news at all! No!

Willa Bluesky
Kingman, Kansas

Finally, some cutting-edge news
Your summer 1999 issue was good reading. Congratulations on running several stories focusing on bioinvasions as a threat to biodiversity. (Finally!) It is ironic how slow the conservation community and their funders have been to respond. The federal government has been ahead of environmentalists, not because Clinton is prescient, but because hundreds of top scientists petitioned Al Gore in 1993 and 1997 to do something about alien species.

I was elated that you printed Linda Winter's story about the impact of cats on wildlife. "Cats Indoors!", the American Bird Conservancy campaign to keep cats inside homes, is ambitious, considering that over 30 percent of American households have one or more cats. It will be a slow sell. The least we could do in the short term is to stop the maintenance of cat colonies on public lands as advocated by Alley Cat Allies. TVAR (Trap, Vaccinate, Alter and Release) is a travesty.

Leif Joslyn
Kensington, California

Litter to the editor
You stated in your reply to Louise Holton of Alley Cat Allies that you do not scapegoat cats. Yet you carry an article by Linda Winter that seems to continue the scapegoating. Since no one knows the quantity of cats it is a calculated guess as to the numbers. Without knowing the numbers and the kills of each individual the damage done is a guess also. It sounds like someone watched a "hunter" and recorded the kills and extrapolated that information to the estimated 65 million cats.

It is too bad that the researcher did not use some of my thirty-some cats for the calculations. There are only four that are "hunters" and they only get an occassional kill, usually an anole or skink. Rarely do they get a bird (and we have lots of feeders hanging around) or a squirrel. This over a period of fifteen years. The "hunters" were feral cats that we now take care of - the others ignore the wildlife. So the numbers may be a bit phony. I feel that "information" such as these cat figures is being used to hide the real culprits.

Don Idemeister
Middleburg, Florida

Editor's Note:
To clarify: Winter's piece stated that there are about 66 million pet cats in the US, and an additional 40-60 million strays. It is puzzling that the handful of readers who objected to Winter's article said that we'd ignored the "real causes" of bird population declines, and thereby "scapegoating" cats. In fact, Winter's article ran with a longer article by Joe Eaton describing a wide range of causes of bird mortality, some more devastating than predation by outdoor cats.

Want to speak your mind?
Send your letters to the Earth Island Journal, 300 Broadway #28, San Francisco CA 94133 or e-mail them to <journal@earthisland.org>. Letters will be edited.