Several points discussed in your paper stirred my interest. In a discussion about wolves in southeast Washington, I noted one rancher stated this was not wolf country and they were introducing animals that did not belong there.

I am fairly neutral on the wolf issue, but I did note in some history of the Walla Walla area: Cora Clark stated, “Father brought his cattle up from Oregon and located on the Walla Walla river two and one-half miles from Touchet in 1859” and — in her discussion of the terrible winter of 1861-62 — “This was the most terrible winter ever experienced in the valley. The snow drifted so deep that many cattle were frozen standing up. Out of 300 of ours, two cows and a calf, which we fed, were left. The timber wolves killed a good many cattle that winter. One day a wolf attacked a calf …”

Also, in the article about Bend’s average wage. Average is a poor indicator. It would be of much greater interest to know the mode and median incomes since this would be likely to show you where the majority of worker incomes lie. You can have a group of very high wage earners that would tend to distort the actual income of most of the people when you use a mean or average value.

Gene McMullen

Bend