Letters to the editor for Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015

Feral cats shouldn’t be released

In response to the current feral cat issue, use common sense and say no to the release of feral cats. When these animals are allowed to live and kill our native wildlife, they negatively impact our environment. Wild birds and other wildlife are maimed and eaten by feral cats. Those of us who work in wildlife rehab see this tragedy on a daily basis. Baby birds are taken from nests by cats and adult birds — often caring for young — are also attacked.

These non-native cats disrupt our native wildlife in the same way that other non-native introduced species do. The public is strongly discouraged against releasing fish or reptiles into the wild, as they provide competition for needed resources — such as food — for our indigenous wildlife. How is the release of feral cats any different?

Right now, many species of wildlife are struggling to survive, and are facing possible starvation due to the drought. Feral cats eat rodents, which our local hawks and owls need to survive. The last thing our native wildlife needs is the additional pressure, competition, and predation caused by an introduced non-native species — feral cats!

Diseases can run rampant and unchecked through these cat populations. Feral cats can also transmit diseases to domesticated cats.

The feral cat problem is a human caused problem. People need to spay and neuter their cats, and keep them indoors! The solution to the problem is not to release these cats into the wild, thus transferring the problem to our native wildlife. Unfortunately, the only solution is euthanasia.

Suzette Feilen

Wildlife rehabilitator for Wild Animal Infirmary for Nevada

Women, make sure to get right ID

Women going to the DMV now to renew a drivers license are required to show legal documentation for every change of name. This means if you were born, married, divorced, remarried, widowed and married again you must prove with legal paperwork any change of name since birth. And if your birth certificate is not the original, you must show a certified copy deemed acceptable by the DMV.

If you don’t’ have or can’t get the documents required, you may renew but you cannot get the “Real ID gold star” license that everyone must have in five years. After 2020 no one will be allowed on a plane nor in a federal building (Post Office) without the Real ID drivers license.

If you don’t have all these documents, you’d better start getting them before 2020 because I’ll bet the Real ID license will become our voter ID and women won’t be allowed to vote without it.

I wonder if this is less about security and more about keeping women from voting.

Marilyn Madrigal

Carson City

Puhleeez, stop with new math bottleneck

Puhleeez, stop with the new road math! We currently have four traffic lanes and one turn lane. Old math says that equals five lanes — new math says four lanes to become three lanes. Old math says four traffic lanes become two traffic lanes. And no beautiful medians to boot. Thanks guys, we will think of you every time we are stuck in the new math bottleneck.

John Wood

Carson City

Best law firm in Nevada, I think not

After reading about what Attorney General Adam Laxalt is doing in an effort to make the Attorney General’s Office the best law firm in the state, I have to ponder and think about his intentions.

The Attorney General’s Office is supposed to uphold the laws and not break them. I’m referring to the withholding of evidence from plaintiffs’ cases and the courts. This seems to have been a pattern for the last two terms of our former Attorney General Katherine Cortez-Masto, and it is continuing to be carried forward under Laxalt.

In 2011 during the Discovery Process in a wrongful death suit I had against the state, I discovered that the office had withheld exculpatory evidence in a past federal case.

I sued and settled in the wrongful death suit. Part of the settlement was this evidence I discovered in 2011 wouldn’t be confidential in order to continue to move forward in the Estate.

The state breached that agreement. It struck all my public documents from the record in order to silence me.

In 2013, I filed suit for breach. In a Motion to Dismiss filed by the DAG Elizabeth Hickman, she states, “The Crime, according to Brown, was withholding of evidence in a federal case. Even if the alleged violations had hypothetically occurred in Mr. Klein’s federal case, a civil discovery violation does not constitute a crime.”

Really? Our laws say differently. It is now on appeal before the Supreme Court.

The best law firm in Nevada? I think not!

Tonja Brown

Carson City