Howard Copelan, Publisher
Howard Copelan, Publisher

At first we were sympathetic to the Goshutes.

Not that we thought that the Long Canyon Mine should be stopped because of some pottery shards and arrow heads but maybe there should be a greater effort to preserve what we could of the ancient past.

But then they had to go and mention the dace.

We don’t have anything against the dace. In fact we won a championship scrabble game with it. But come on now no one really cares about the dace and there is no danger of this little fish going extinct.

This is a fish too far.

If the Goshutes truly wanted to stop the mine they should have stayed with the appeal to preserve and protect their history. We can understand that and we can even sympathize. The artifacts those Paleo Indians left should be kept sacred.

But bringing up the dace is just piling on, grasping at straws and other wise making a nuisance of oneself.

It suggests that the Goshutes are less interested in stopping the mine than they are in wringing some concessions out of the BLM or Newmont or both.

Eventually we believe Newmont, the BLM and the Goshutes will come to some kind of understanding.

There should be a happy medium somewhere the ruckass the Goshute are now making and a certain number on a piece of paper that will make all those objections go away.