Collaboration offers great opportunity for Lincoln County

To the Editor:

As a local environmental and community service organization, we're excited about the historic range of agreement regarding the North Lincoln County Community Development package.

We believe that such bipartisan collaboration offers an unprecedented opportunity to meet our county's current and future needs — social, educational, environmental, and economic — and are proud to be part of that historic agreement.

We understand we will be coming under some criticism from "hard-liner" environmentalists, some of whom may doubt our resolve and commitment to the need to secure wilderness for many of the last roadless lands in the Yaak. We know also there will be environmentalists and others who would prefer that we stop the community development package entirely, including a multimillion dollar Community Forest, by choosing instead to argue over the semantics of wording for how we achieve permanent wildlands protection for the Yaak's most special places.

But we prefer instead to move forward in good faith and with trust that we can discuss the needs and merits of each individual roadless area, and we believe that our collaborative partners will likewise meet us with similar spirit in these discussions: all for the betterment of Lincoln County.

Robyn King

Executive Director

Yaak Valley Forest Council