Straighten Up

It was refreshing to read "Free the Mississippi," by David Gessner (Spring 2011), a great retort to the "we are not worthy" creed of environmental journalism that I have grown accustomed to reading. He who can align our instincts and hungers with a better outcome for the planet will effect change a hundredfold over he who seeks to change our human nature.

Paul Hughes
Chelmsford, Massachusetts

Gessner reports serious problems resulting from the Army Corps of Engineers' straightening out the Mississippi River. Didn’t they also cause havoc damming rivers and reengineering the Everglades? This in addition to irrigating deserts in the west in such a way as to lower the water table? Perhaps it is the Army Corps of Engineers that should be straightened out or drained.

Richard Schulman
New York, New York

Nutria-Palooza

I am distressed by "If Ya Can't Beat 'Em, Wear 'Em," by Barry Yeoman (Spring 2011), which advocates killing nutria for fur to deal with damage they do to marshlands. Humans created a problem by introducing a non-native species into Louisiana to make money from the fur trade. The nutria may be doing harm to the marshes, but that pales in comparison to destruction by humans, such as filling in wetlands and building offshore rigs that explode in the Gulf. Can't these defenders of marshlands come up with something more creative than killing animals?

Richard W. Weiskopf, M.D.
Syracuse, New York

It is truly disheartening that an environmental magazine would applaud the idea of using one of our ecological mistakes as a sales gimmick for a moneymaking scheme to sell useless high-end fur coats, teddies, and iPad covers. How about "blackbird hats for clean energy" or "feral cat purses to save the rain forest" for next year's runway? There are loads of "environmental pests" on the hit lists of various segments of the population, whether agricultural or urban. It’s likely no one would buy these especially ugly furs unless they came with the feel-good bonus of saving an estuary.

Linda Kelson
Encinitas, California

Lost in the Wood

I was delighted by the poems "Bringing in the May/Maybe Not," by William Greenway, and "After the Snows," by Elton Glaser (Spring 2011), but dismayed to find that neither Mr. Greenway nor the magazine's editors had checked the Macbeth reference to determine that the moving wood in the play was "Birnam" and not "Burnham." Thanks, anyway, for a great issue and for the continuing fine work done by NRDC.

Averil Kadis
Washington, D.C.