Russian River Times October-November, 2015 To The Editor
To The Editor:
If Californians want to get a hard look at destructive greedy air-poisoning coastal development, hope on a plane and visit all the Mediterranean countries, the state of Florida, Hunting Beach south of Los Angeles and any location that was once a haven for birds, fish and clean air.
I am begging the citizens of Sonoma County to stop coastal development of any kind including single-family homes-before it is too late.
The audacity of these greedy grapegrowers is going to be the death of most of the wildlife and eventually the rest of us.
Listen up! Visitors/tourists come to the coastal locations in Sonoma and Mendocino counties because there is nothing like them where they were born, live and try to work breathing filthy air, and driving daily on congested, treeless roadways.
Entire families of visiting Chinese tourists are to be seen on occasion standing near wind swept beach and all family members looking up to the sky. We asked them if they were birding? No. They were so shocked to find the sky was blue; they thought it was dyed.
Death by attrition: one well-scraped green desert (vineyard), one more row of downed trees, a Roundup-Ready loss of weeds and diverse plants that good bugs and birds eat, and it will be mostly over…..
Protecting the last remaining wildness in Sonoma County; Don’t pimp it out to the highest bidder. Don’t vote for politicians whose relatives are all stacked on sellout boards to approve disastrous tourist-driven development, cement laden projects, scraped hillsides; destroyed forests and privatization of public parks, coastal trails and most of all, save some of the wildness that you don’t value at all, for the birds-if you don’t care about people.
George & Beverly Wilson