Letters to the editor: Feb. 21, 2024 – print only

Published 4:00 am Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Joe Biden is becoming physically frail because his job is costing him everything. Yet he is a man of good character, whose mind is still sharp. Best of all he loves our whole country with his whole heart.

I, for one, would vote for him any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Renee Lovejoy

Hermiston

Carlisle Harrison wrote “Don’t blame hatcheries for the declines in wild fish” (Other views, Jan. 24). While I respect Mr. Harrison’s many years of experience, sometimes it pays to look at new information rather than thinking that what we’ve always done is correct.

Hatcheries are necessary when reintroducing species like Lostine River coho and can provide a fishery in rivers that no longer have the habitat to support wild populations. However, the evidence shows that relying on hatcheries to make up for dams, invasive predators, habitat loss and climate change isn’t working.

Mr. Harrison’s statement that hatcheries are necessary because “leaving sperm to the outside chance it can find an egg is slim in most situations” is the epitome of hubris. He’s right that fertilization rates are better in a controlled hatchery environment. Unfortunately, the problems come afterward.

Hatchery fish are adept at gobbling food pellets thrown into their tanks but fare poorly in the real world. Attempts to correct this by releasing more smolts have come at a cost to the wild fish uniquely adapted to our rivers. Yes, anadromous fish of all kinds have been extirpated from many ancestral spawning waters. The remedy is to restore those natural habitats rather than assuming we can do better than nature.

Selective breeding for 40-pound “meat for the table” fish sounds great, but decades of treating salmon like cattle created populations that are one-dimensional and vulnerable. Nature hedges her bets and produces fish with many different sizes and characteristics. Natural selection allows smaller fish to populate smaller streams at lower waters. This is an even more important adaptation with the decrease in streamflows forecast due to climate change. Diversity is key in an unpredictable world.

A 2022 study found that hatcheries, which supply 80% of the Columbia River salmon returns, spent between $250 and $650 for every hatchery salmon that returned (www.propublica.org/article/salmon-hatcheries-government-climate-change). Yet after 80 years, native steelhead are crashing and salmon are endangered. Hatcheries aren’t solely to blame but are part of the problem. If we want a different result, it is time to try something new.

Kevin March

La Grande

A recent editorial asks, “Should Oregon require people to vote?”

We might better ask, “How would you feel if your own carefully considered vote were sure to be rivaled by that of someone who ‘just punched something on the ballot’ to avoid being fined?”

Do we really want to coerce many such disinterested persons to vote (in reluctantly random ways perhaps), solely because they’re required to? Voting is a right and a privilege, and should be respected as such.

Some (let’s hope most) of us take our thinking and voting seriously, and hope others will, too. Compelling anyone to vote is hardly the way to nurture that responsibility.

Patricia O’Day

Bend

What’s driving the labor shortage?

With the looming election this year it seems that everyone who wants a job has a choice of many options. In fact, many firms are having difficulty finding workers, even though there are crowds of potential workers gathered at our borders.

The unemployment rate in 2017 was 4.8%. In 2019, it was 3.6%. In 2023, it was 3.7%.

The construction industry averaged more than 390,000 job openings per month in 2022, the highest level on record, and the industry unemployment rate of 4.6% in 2022 was the second lowest on record, higher than only the 4.5% unemployment rate observed in 2019. National payroll construction employment was 231,000 higher in December 2022 than in December 2021.

The agricultural workforce is shrinking and has been for some time. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually, but there has been a drastic decline in workers each year.

Most hospitals say they have had to reduce capacity due to a lack of staff, a new Kaufman Hall report finds. Shortages figure to be a long-term issue. Hospitals and health systems continue to face staffing challenges, and many say it’s a factor in their inability to run at full capacity.

What is causing the labor shortage?

A labor shortage occurs when demand for workers exceeds supply, often leading to unfilled jobs, delayed services and potentially higher wages. With 3 million more jobs than people, a tight labor market has put employers in a difficult position to fill vacant jobs and conduct operations as planned.

This, while the MAGA Republicans are refusing admittance to immigrants seeking work in the United States. Republicans have gone to the extreme of building a huge fence and separating parents (who were deported) from their children in an effort to prevent entry; many of these separated families still have not been reunited, four-plus years after separation.

Immigration was capped at 675,000 in 1990 for immigrants and refugees. Executive orders subsequently have only increased border security. Donald Trump claims immigration would be poisoning the nation’s blood? He may have borrowed a prior dictator’s playbook; it seems he values specific immigrants more than others.

There are many refugees qualified to fill available openings. How about filling some openings in the IRS?

A “vermin” voter and proud of it!

David Ebbert

Enterprise