LAT: Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle

[DeepModem Mom]

Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle
National monument official was distraught at shift she said favored grazing over grasslands.

By Julie Cart and Maria L. La Ganga, Times Staff Writers


CARRIZO PLAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. — First she killed her dogs, shot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver and covered the two bodies with a quilt. Then Marlene Braun leveled the blue steel muzzle three inches above her right ear and pulled the trigger.

"I can't face what appears to be required to continue to live in my world," the meticulous 46-year-old wrote in May in a suicide note. "Most of all, I cannot leave Carrizo, a place where I finally found a home and a place I love dearly."

Braun had come to the Carrizo Plain three years earlier, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management placed her in charge of the new national monument — 250,000 acres of native grasses and Native American sacred sites, embraced by low mountains, traversed by the San Andreas Fault and home to more threatened and endangered animals than any other spot in California.

About 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Carrizo Plain National Monument is largely unknown to the outside world. But in Braun's short tenure as monument manager, the plain had become a battleground between conservationists and the Bush administration over the fate of Western public lands.

What began as a policy dispute — to graze or not to graze livestock on the fragile Carrizo grasslands — became a morass of environmental politics and office feuding that Braun was convinced threatened both her future and the landscape she loved....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-carrizo20aug20,1,1424770,full.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

[arwalden]

1. That's Horrible!

The whole thing is just fucked up and very sad.

[Waya]

2. Are we sure this was a suicide?

Seems to me that this lady went thru an awful lot of details before she supposedly killed herself. Having studied a lot of suicides that upon further scrutiny turned out to be homicides, this makes me kind of suspicious.
Ranchers, BLM and Environmentalists can be a lethal mix at times.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Stop it.

[pitohui]

8. she was on four medications for depression & anxiety

two different doctors

anti-depressant meds carelessly given & monitored can cause paradoxical reactions in some people, including murder & suicide

i don't believe if she was in her right mind she would have killed those dogs

she was very ill

it is esp. sad to read of the long letters she wrote & also of the way she kept giving stuff away, saying, i won't need it any more, i'll never use this again

hello, people, these are classic warning signs of suicide

talk abt a cry for help, no one heard

very sad

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Thanks for an important reminder, pitohui - don't dismiss warning signs...

in troubled people whose stories might end like this.

[hatrack]

3. If anyone had any doubt how "economy vs. environment" issues will go . . .

at least in the reign of the Simian Prince, just read this article.

[flamingyouth]

5. What an incredibly sad and awful story.

:(

[DeepModem Mom]

6. PLEASE see this GD, Greatest post for more on this story --

Posted by Nothing Without Hope, with comments and pictures of the landscape:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4404751

[OKthatsIT]

7. Was it suicide?

Should we include her on the list?

[anotherdrew]

9. who benifits? if bushco stands to gain then they deserve to own this

That's all it takes for moral (at least) culpability. Since when do we graze cattle on protected lands? does protected even mean anything anymore? The people trying to despoil this land need to be run out of their jobs and soon.

[Judi Lynn]

11. A CONSERVATIONIST'S SUICIDE:Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle

August 20, 2005

A CONSERVATIONIST'S SUICIDE
Suicide Casts a Shadow on Conservation Battle

National monument official was distraught at shift she said favored grazing over grasslands.

By Julie Cart and Maria L. La Ganga, Times Staff Writers


CARRIZO PLAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. — First she killed her dogs, shot them in the head with a .38-caliber revolver and covered the two bodies with a quilt. Then Marlene Braun leveled the blue steel muzzle three inches above her right ear and pulled the trigger.

"I can't face what appears to be required to continue to live in my world," the meticulous 46-year-old wrote in May in a suicide note. "Most of all, I cannot leave Carrizo, a place where I finally found a home and a place I love dearly."

Braun had come to the Carrizo Plain three years earlier, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management placed her in charge of the new national monument — 250,000 acres of native grasses and Native American sacred sites, embraced by low mountains, traversed by the San Andreas Fault and home to more threatened and endangered animals than any other spot in California.

About 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Carrizo Plain National Monument is largely unknown to the outside world. But in Braun's short tenure as monument manager, the plain had become a battleground between conservationists and the Bush administration over the fate of Western public lands.

What began as a policy dispute — to graze or not to graze livestock on the fragile Carrizo grasslands — became a morass of environmental politics and office feuding that Braun was convinced threatened both her future and the landscape she loved.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-carrizo20aug20,0,2801950.story?coll=la-home-local
(Free registration required)



Marlene Braun

[tocqueville]

12. she pointed the gun in the wrong direction...

[applegrove]

13. Gosh that is sad. Courage people. One should take a break and

stop fighting "the good fight" if things get so serious that you start to think like that.

We need all of us. We cannot loose one more fighter. But I hope we all know that to live to fight another day...we need to take care of ourselves. Pace. Seek help if things get to hard and things start to unravel. The planet is a smaller place for her departure (and her dogs too).

Let this not happen again.

Sorry for her loved ones.