Natural resources

I live with my family in Polebridge, on the west side of the Rockies, and my brother and his family live on the Rocky Mountain Front outside of Augusta. We are strong supporters of every measure, law or initiative that helps to maintain these and all of the other areas adjacent to them in the most pristine condition possible.

It is true that once the wealth of Montana lay in its minerals, its timber, its livestock and its agriculture, but this is no longer the case. All of these industries played a huge part in Montana’s economic development for decades, as the state’s resources were previously untapped and no doubt appeared endless. This is no longer the case.

The continuing insistence on furthering these activities is putting in jeopardy the only real remaining treasure our state possesses, our unmatched natural wild beauty and the lives of the creatures that inhabit those places, “last and best,” as they are called.

There is a reason that they came by that moniker. They are the last and the best, and if we are bound and determined on digging them up, chopping them down, grazing them bare, draining them dry and squeezing the last drop of value from what remains, we will soon have ruined the things which, properly protected, could last forever and forever benefit the working citizens of this state and a lot of the other people of this nation.

We need to develop a new economic model for Montana.

Carol Edwards

Polebridge