Dear Editor,

In regards to recent reports that Grant County residents are objecting to the use of herbicides for a proposed forest thinning project on state and federal lands in the Gila and near us, I would like to submit this humble opinion, please.

This is so crazy. I oppose ALL use of herbicides in Grant County, in New Mexico, and in the United States. No politician in all of New Mexico should support this poison being spread, to breathe and be tracked into homes, schools, and livestock. Glyphosate/Round-Up is a carcinogen. None of these herbicides belong in our food, soil, wildlife, or water. Next, your surrounding wells will be like the poor PFAS veterans. This will be another Agent Orange catastrophe for our people, who will suffer, like my own cousin Randy, who was drafted for Vietnam and died from it.

What "thinned" and "cleaned" the forests in the 1930s with no fires was local logging jobs and small logging roads, which are "fire breaks." At no cost to the taxpayers.

Jim Cain
Grant County author of All My Secrets of Organic and Container Gardening So Far
and
Pacific War P.O.W.: A Few Remaining Skeletons (A Bibliography of Personal Accounts of American WWII Prisoners of the Japanese with Book Reviews)