Regarding lead and eagles

The River Reporter’s Scott Rando’s recent article (“PA Game Commission: Bald eagle lead poisoning on the rise”) would lead readers to believe that hunters have a malignant role in the recovery of bald eagles. The truth is there are more eagles in Pennsylvania because of hunters and their voluntary efforts are contributing to healthy wildlife populations.

The article correctly reports that the Pennsylvania Game Commission cannot identify the main source of lead, yet the reporting implies it must come from hunters’ use of traditional ammunition. The report omits that hunters play a vital role in eagle recovery.

Hunters’ role in conservation is well established. Conservation in America has been funded by more than $11 billion since 1937 through excise taxes on firearms and ammunition products, including traditional ammunition, purchased by hunters and recreational shooters. These taxes funded programs that allowed eagles to recover from the endangered and threatened species lists to today’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimated of 10,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states and an additional 40-50,000 in Alaska. Pennsylvania alone is home to at least 240 nesting pairs.

In fact, today, hunters have, and choose to use, an increasing variety of alternative ammunition. However, this choice isn’t practical for all hunters.

Hunters are deeply invested in ensuring there are growing numbers of eagles for future generations. Marginalizing hunters and their contributions to conservation only serves to potentially harm the wildlife they have worked so hard to sustain. 

Lawrence G. Keane, Senior Vice President and General Counsel

National Shooting Sports Foundation

Newtown, CT

Bullies are losers

Just read the article on bullying in the Eldred school. That school is well known for hazing and bullying/harassment. The school should be permanently closed. Nobody would miss the place.

Please, people, pray for the Horne and Motta family, as well as the multiple other hazing and harassment victims at the Eldred school. Their voices need to be heard.

Furthermore, it would be great to see those young, bullying punks convicted and sent to a New York State correctional facility for no more than a year. Brand the punks with a felony conviction and make them have to overcome odds, just like Mr. Anthony Motta has to overcome fear in his daily life now. Bullies are clowns, losers and derelicts.

Robert J. Granowski Jr.

Kimbles, PA

Thoughts about the anthem protests

I have tried not to get upset about the lack of patriotism recently as demonstrated by the NFL players who kneel and lock arms during the singing of the national anthem. I have tried to understand their position. But I do not. It seems to me it is team peer pressure and another example of a football team bonding together over something bad like a molestation/hazing rather than over something good like visiting children in the hospital.

I have been pulled over by police and even have been arrested as a young man for fighting. But I will tell you, I never had a police officer act like a stewardess, waitress or hostess; he or she has always been assertive and authoritative. I found when I was compliant and behaved—for example, when I was told to pull over in a safe place, then sit motionless with hands visible on the steering wheel until being instructed to do something—then it all went well for me and the police officer. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a police officer; everywhere they go they deal with confrontation and possible violence. They are first on scene at fire and EMS calls often too. For anyone to broad-brush police as “bad” is just as prejudiced as to do the same with white, black, female, etc.

I have had anger and tears in my eyes as I have seen players I once respected kneel during our national anthem. But I had tears of joy as I watched the World Series, especially game six, when the Color Guard represented by all our military branches came out followed by four LA police officers (a Hispanic woman, black woman and two white male officers) who stood and sang our national anthem beautifully.

Have a happy Thanksgiving and remember, Jesus loves you.

John “JP” Pasquale

Livingston Manor, NY