Letter to the Editor: Recent cattle deaths illustrate need to ban livestock from Capitol Reef National Park

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OPINION — The recent news about the cattle starving to death in Capitol Reef National Park is heartbreaking. No one likes to hear of any creature suffering and dying like that, especially not in our national parks.

Read more: Cattle found dead, dying of starvation in Capitol Reef

We go to places like Capitol Reef as a respite from the world. To think that such a thing can happen in such a lovely place is shattering.

Coincidentally, Capitol Reef is now accepting comments on livestock management in the park. Cattle grazing has been grandfathered in with the understanding that it will be phased out over time.

Now, however, the park is proposing to allow livestock to trail through the park indefinitely. I’ve seen those trails, with their bare dirt, weeds and erosion. They don’t belong in Capitol Reef or any national park, especially if the livestock aren’t being cared for.

Cows have enough public land as it is. They don’t need Capitol Reef, too. Comments are being accepted until Aug. 17. Click here.

Submitted by LAURA WELP, Kanab, Utah.

Letters to the Editor are not the product of St. George News, its editors, staff or news contributors. The matters stated and opinions given are the responsibility of the person submitting them. They do not reflect the product or opinion of St. George News and are given only light edit for technical style and formatting.

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Letters to the Editor are not the product of St. George News, its editors, staff or news contributors. The matters stated and opinions given are the responsibility of the person submitting them. They do not reflect the product or opinion of St. George News and are given only light edit for technical style and formatting.

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2 Comments

  • Mike P August 2, 2018 at 2:20 pm

    Ban the livestock? How ’bout banning the rich cattle owners and fining them for cruelty to animals ? for Christs sake

  • General Seamstress August 2, 2018 at 11:49 pm

    Um OK shorty, it’s been discovered that cattle and horses poopies r good for the ground, and help reseed all the general areas, these animals r also great at eating dry rush which cuts down on fires and their spreading…the biggest plus is they help aerate the soil and get air and fertilizer down to roots of existing vegetation. We have been duped about cattle foraging and duped into destroying horse populations that took over dry brush cleanup that wasn’t getting done since Buffalo were wiped out. They already put blue water troughs out randomly in Washington county rural areas they can certainly do the same elsewhere! Instead of killing and sterilizing and penning up wild horse please God send them to California to eat down brush. I don’t even know if the wild horse populations can come back, they’ve damn neared sterilized all of them. The onlycresture we need to deter from national parks is the mighty American government official bond sellers that keep claiming our rural lands as national parks so they can give more of our lands to China with currency backed by national parks

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