To the editor:

The enviromentalists' unholy war against rural America continues to rage all across the nation.

Recently five U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists and two Washington state researchers were caught planting false evidence of endangered species in national forests. The had repeatedly planted endangered lynx hairs in areas where the animals did not exist.

The Forest Service conducted tests of the hairs and determined they matched those of a lynx living in an animal preserve and of a pet lynx belonging to a federal employee.

Had the fraud not been exposed, the planted lynx hairs could have paved the way to sweeping land restrictions against property owners, recreationists and workers in the affected regions.

Bans would have included skiing, snowmobiling, hunting, driving, logging, mining and livestock grazing.

The Reynolds and Iron counties AmerenUE power plant project of last summer is the most recent victim local victim to fall prey to the environmentalist war to depopulate rural America.

Government departments working through such people as Attorney General Jay Nixon and his Sierra Club support group think they can, in time, take over rural America. Personally, I don't believe them. Now is the time to recognize your real enemies and fight back.

ED STEWART

Middlebrook, Mo.