Vic Legler, former LAND board member, sent me a brochure that epitomizes why LAND exists. The brochure is printed by the North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department. It has an attractive front cover with a prairie coneflower amidst bluestem grass and is titled "Our Natural Heritage." The inside cover quotes Adrian Forsyth, "Within one human lifetime, the prairies have passed from wilderness to become the most altered habitat in this country and one of the most disturbed, ecologically simplified and over exploited regions in the world..." The rhetoric gets worse!

Those listed on the brochure are the ND Parks and Recreation Department are Ducks Unlimited, ND Game and Fish, ND Wetlands Trust, The Nature Conservancy, USDA/NRCS, and USFWS.

The point of this brochure is to communicate that humans are a threat to the survival of the earth. But don't fret, all these organizations are working for you and I (mostly with our tax dollars) to protect the natural beauty of the prairie from clumsy and evil humanity. Do you agree with me that the thought process communicated by this brochure is just as skewed as the thought process of those who crash planes into buildings and mail anthrax to innocent people? If those listed in the brochure get their way, North Dakota's ag economy dies a slow death as opposed to the more rapid methods of the Trade Tower bombers.

President Lincoln dealt with people with skewed thinking in his second inaugural address. His message was so short it is engraved an the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Written during the Civil War it has relevance to dealing with today’s economic and political terrorists.. "Both sides pray to the same God, but by the very nature of the conflict, He can only answer the prayers of the one." Basically, Lincoln said both sides are sincere but one side is sincerely wrong.

A private organization can think and say whatever they want, but those supported by tax dollars should not be allowed to spew forth this environmental venom. The Parks and Rec. Dept., ND Game and Fish, ND Wetlands Trust, NRCS and USFWS all need to be taken to task for misrepresenting the public trust by supporting the language of this brochure.

Did you know that the ND Game and Fish Department has $20 million in reserve?