Have you picked up a seed packet at a garden store lately? If so, look at the zone map on the back, and you'll see that Minnesota's coldest, most northern temperature zone for growing has shrunk from anything north of Brainerd to a tiny area near the Boundary Waters.

The front-page Aug. 17 story, "A drastic strategy to rescue an icon," described the loss of our beloved moose across the northern stretches of our state, but never connects the true cause, which is the same warmer temps shown on the seed pack.

Why isn't the Department of Natural Resources just stating the obvious? Moose can't tolerate the warmer temperatures we now have.
The National Park Service and the DNR contributed dozens of different temperature charts and large amounts of information to the Will Steger Foundation's Summer Institute for teachers that I attended last week.

Warmer winter nights, warmer summer nights, longer periods of warmer days, warmer average temperatures. Now the DNR hopes to save the moose by stopping recreational deer feeding.

That's like stopping a hemorrhage with a Band-Aid to the knee. To save the moose, and probably thousands of other animal and plant species, we need to stop the warming, and that means first admitting that it's here.

ELLEN HADLEY, ANOKA

See the online article from the Star Tribune website - Aug. 21, 2011