COOGAN FLY FISHERS

Ms. Bennett Kessler

Sierra Wave

Dear Ms. Kessler,

We are a few of the approximately 40 active members of Coogan Fly Fishers who could be reached on short notice to sign onto this letter. Coogan Fly Fishers is a club whose members and families have stayed, fished in, enjoyed the wildness and spectacular landscape, and patronized the local businesses of Mono County for decades. Over the years our members, individually and collectively, have spent many tens of thousands of dollars in Mono County. We have fished every corner of Mono County, and still seek out new, secret spots. We are writing today to urge you to support the preservation of the wonderful cultural and natural riches of the Bodie Hills.

In our visits to Mono County and the Bodie Hills, we have had the great pleasure of experiencing and learning about the richness of Bodie Hills’s rich cultural geological, floristic, and animal resources and heritage. We respect that those who are privileged to live in Mono County also care deeply about this special country. Nonetheless, common sense and humility tell us that no one can possibly know or understand the full and irreversible extent of damage that development of a large gold mine in a place like the Bodie Hills could cause without years and years of careful consideration and scientific study. Even then, we do not believe that the short-term economic benefits of a mine will outweigh its environmental and economic costs. For this reason we urge your Board not to take a position in support of lessening existing protections for the Bodie Hills as has been requested by Cougar Gold, or in support of development of a gold mine.

We want Mono County and the Bodie Hills to remain the natural paradise that it is today, so that our children and our children’s children can continue to come to beautiful Mono County for the next one hundred years. We want our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren to be able to experience the pristine air, dark night skies, clean waters and trout-filled streams whether they visit Bridgeport or Tom’s Place. As the trustees of public lands that are cherished by people from all over California and the world, we are counting on you to help preserve and ably steward for the next generations the natural riches that you are privileged to live among and that the rest of us dream about.

Thank you for your consideration. We hope to continue to visit Mono County in the future.

Sincerely,

Coogan Fly Fishers

Individual Signatories:

Peter Adams

Danville, California

Christopher F. Allen

Hillsborough, California

Jim Arce

Tiburon, California

Ryan Broddrick

Sacramento, California

Anne Coogan

San Mateo, California

Sarah Coogan

New York, New York

Chris Couture

Paso Robles, California

Michael Hasley

Oakland, California

Fritz Lauritzen

Fresno, California

Robert H. Laws

San Francisco, California

Kheay Loke

Orinda, California

Cindy Martel

Dunsmuir, California

Cal Nakanishi

San Francisco, CA

Jerry Schultz

Bend, Oregon

Rob Simonds

Burlingame, California

Stephen S. Woolery

Redding, California