Letters

Wolf control needed

I have lived and hunted in Idaho for a good portion of my life, and until recently there has never been the mentioning of a wolf. Wolves were re-introduced in 1995 to Idaho and have not looked back. Today more than 700 wolves roam Idaho with a growth rate near 30 percent a year. With no signs of slowing down, the wolf population in Idaho needs to be regulated to keep a proper balance in our ecosystem. But on top of our ecosystem changing drastically with the wolf kills on big game, wolves are also attacking livestock and domestic animals.

Opening a hunting season on wolves will not adequately adjust the wolf population. They’re elusive. That is why they are thriving, and nothing is regulating them at the moment. Idaho Fish and Game has done what it can, but that is only so much.

The federal government needs to address the issue and build a real plan for the regulation of wolves in Idaho. And if nothing is done in the near future there will be a bigger problem than the wolf being on the endangered species list.

Elroy C. Turnbow

Cheney

Bus shelters for Highway 2

Spokane Transit Authority, listen up, please. There really needs to be some waiting shelters for the bus-riding folks who wait by the stops along Highway 2 between Spokane and Fairchild Air Force Base.

These good folks have to wait out in the weather, right alongside zooming cars (and sometimes there are little run-about children). Sometimes I see they’ve hauled over Wal-Mart carts to sit on.

Please, STA, listen up! Perhaps ask Wal-Mart to co-sponsor a wait-shelter? And ask Airway Heights the same? These shelters are really, really needed.

Donna Potter Phillips

Spokane

Sex lessons on point

Raquinn Bohannon wrote that our schools need to be teaching sex education because in her words, “parents aren’t doing anything” (Letters, Nov. 25).

Providing our young people with the sexuality information that will keep them safe and healthy is a shared responsibility. As parents impart values, they are the primary sexuality educators of their children. But, as Ms. Bohannon explains, schools have a responsibility as well. It is our schools’ responsibility to support parents by supplying medically accurate and factual information to our young people.

I therefore want to congratulate Spokane Public Schools for their adoption of a 10-session sexuality curriculum for ninth-grade health that meets the requirements of the Healthy Youth Act. In addition, the curriculum meets best practice standards in encouraging youth to not only delay sexual activity but to use protection when they do eventually become sexually active.

Kudos to Spokane Public Schools. You are providing our young people with information, tools and skills to live responsible, safe and healthy lives. This is a reason to be thankful this holiday season.

Margaret Mount

Spokane

It’s the parents’ job

In response to Raquinn D. Bohannon’s interesting comments in “Sex education failing” (Letters, Nov. 25), I have to ask, “You’re kidding, right?” You tossed out some great statistics and a couple moving comments deriding the school systems’ failure to teach the kids adequately about sex and contraception, but you surprisingly missed the most irrefutable fact: The responsibility for the teaching of today’s youth about abstinence and safe sex lies solely with the parents. Yes, that’s right, I said the parents.

It’s the whole personal accountability thing that people today struggle so hard to avoid. And, as usual, because people/parents have abdicated their responsibility and failed to act as leaders and teachers in their own homes, the government assumed yet another role in “helping” us manage our lives.

Here’s a suggestion: If you want “change” and don’t like the way the government/school system is teaching your/our children, try taking responsibility for the sex education and the raising of your children firmly in your hands. That way there’s nobody to blame but yourself.

Edward Hiler

Spokane