Letters
Shred like a Grown-up
Bucky McMahon's positive take on snowboarders ("The Happy, Wholesome, Hip-Hop Life of the Mammoth Teenage Death-Dwarfs," November) was refreshing. I'm a 47-year-old who took up snowboarding two years ago after 25 years of skiing, and although I don't do jibs and bonks, I've found a snowboard to be graceful, rhythmic, the perfect vehicle for cruising. Unfortunately, the snowboard industry's emphasis on the rebellious outlaw image compounds prejudice among skiers and ski resorts toward snowboarders. There's nothing inherently evil in the act of snowboarding, it's not just for teenagers, and I was encouraged to see you dispelling the shredder-punk stereotype.

Stewart Kriss
Latham, New York

Fritillary Feud
Outside rarely fails to be entertaining reading, though we would suggest that it is not an appropriate forum in which to resolve ostensible disagreements among scientists. David Quammen's attempt to generate fresh controversy from our technical research ("Dirge for a Butterfly," Natural Acts, November) did little justice to our paper about the likely fate of the imperiled Uncompahgre fritillary. Quammen contends that we're calling for endangered species "triage," with this butterfly an appropriate casualty. We defy him to find in our writings any call to abandon sensible conservation measures. In graduate student Amy Seidl, Quammen found a strong advocate for the butterfly's protection -- and then misinterpreted Seidl's studies as conflicting with our unequivocal message: The Uncompahgre fritillary is being pushed to extinction by long-term warming trends in montane western North America. Quammen and Seidl -- if she agrees with him -- are simply wrong. Quoting seemingly everybody about our work except us is unfair to our science and to the Uncompahgre fritillary, whose fate concerns us all.

Hugh Britten
Peter Brussard
University of Nevada at Reno
Dennis Murphy
Stanford University

David Quammen replies:
Outsidecertainly is an appropriate forum for discussing disagreements among scientists -- at least when those disagreements involve an endangered species and its management on public lands. I have great respect for Peter Brussard's lifetime of work in conservation biology, and I can understand why he and his colleagues may have found my essay annoying. Despite what they claim I "contended," the real point of my piece was to bring to light the significant evidence that Britten et al. had omitted: Amy Seidl's recent data. These data contradict one of the Britten group's linchpin assertions -- that the butterfly has been extirpated from Mount Uncompahgre. I urge the curious to read the original paper by Britten et al., in the March 1994 issue of Conservation Biology, and my little "Dirge," and then to make their own judgments.

Grouse Misrepresentation
Since that's my butt on the line in the photo that accompanied John Galvin's article on our protest climb of Time's headquarters ("Greenpeace Posts a Route," Dispatches, October), I'd like to set the record straight. Bringing attention to Time's use of deadly chlorine-bleached paper is not "grousing." Chlorine has been implicated in breast cancer, reproductive disorders, and the growing ozone hole -- just to name a few effects. It was more arduous to climb through your slippery rag than it was to scale the Time-Life Building.

Nadine Bloch
Washington, D.C.

CORRECTIONS: As we hurtle down the information superhighway, we sometimes find ourselves flummoxed by the simple telephone -- and recently managed to print some phone numbers incorrectly. The correct numbers are Body Glove, 310-374-4074 (October, page 160); Open Road Publishing, 202-667-2440 (November, page 183); and Force 10 Expeditions, 800-922-1491 (December, page 78). We regret the errors.