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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 13, 1976)
Environmental footnotes Oregon legislators propose desert trail By E G. WHITE-SWIFT Of the Emerald Sagebrush Hiking: Two Oregon legislators have intro duced a bill in Congress to study the possibility of creating a desert trail through the western United States. The study would include parts of southeastern Oregon, as well as arid sections of Arizona. California, Nevada and Idaho. It would focus on a route crossing almost entirely public lands ad ministered by state agencies or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The proposed Desert Trail would provide hikers a choice of three border-to-border trail sys tems in Oregon. The Pacific Crest Trail along the timberline of the Cascades is already completed. The Oregon Coast Trail has one completed section from Astona to TiHamook Bay and is the prionty project of the Oregon Recreation Trails Advisory Council. A desert trail would provide ac cess to different terrain and ecosystems, while offering alter natives to hikers when the moun tain trail is snowbound and the coast trail waterlogged. It would be relatively inexpensive to de velop as it would utilize existing trails, primitive roads and follow a corridor of stone cairns across open stretches of eastern Oregon sagebrush. The bill's sponsors include Sen. Mark Hatfield and Rep. AJ Ulknan It would authorize expansion of the National Trails Act which now designates the Pacific Crest and Appalachian Trails as scenic routes. The study for the Western De sert Trail would be added to 14 other potential new trails now under review. Hatfield states that none of the trails now being studied for addition to the act cross a predominantly desert en vironment. In Oregon the suggested route would be from Homestead to the lower edge of the Malheur Na tional Forest near Drewsey, down the Malheur River to Malheur cave, across Diamond Craters and into the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Page Springs. From there, the trail would climb across Steens Moun tain, drop to the AJvord Desert, and proceed to Demo, Nevada. Cuckoo Hunt: One of the pro jects of the Southern Willamette Ornithological Club (SWOC) is a hunt for yellow-billed cuckoos in ttte valley Last week Larry Mc Queen, a Eugene ornithologist and bird illustrator, invited me to accompany him on one of the hunts. The cuckoo has been found in Oregon before, but none have been reported in the Willamette Valley in five years. Its preferred habitat is the thick riparian de ciduous forest adjacent to streams. As that type of dense habitat is forbidding to the aver age hiker and seldom inventoried by birdwatchers, it is hoped that a thorough search will turn up the elusive cuckoo. A similar effort in California last year produced sev eral birds. Armed with the weapons of any good bird hunt, binoculars, cameras, and a tape recorder, we spent four sunburned hours checking a 150-acre island near the confluence of the Willamette and McKenzie rivers. After wading a slough and the Willamette, fight ing through Himalayan blackberry brambles that the Sasquatch would find unbearable, and muck Students, profs receive Fulbright study grants Seven University students, along with a department head and two associate professors, will crown their studies with Fulbright grants for research abroad during the 1976-77 academic year The students are Charles Smythe, anthropology; Peter Picerno, music; Jilda Warner, comparative literature; Robert Johnston, romance languages; Mark Patterson, English; Kristine Kaufman, German, and Gail An drews, dance. Their awards cover transporta tion and cost of living allowances for the grant year abroad. Each of the students will pursue individual research projects. Smythe will study anthropology at the University of Sydney, Au stralia; Picerno will study music at the University of Bologna in Italy; and Warner will study compara tive literature in Portugal. John ston will study literature in Spain; Kaufman and Patterson will go to Germany to study German litera ture and history, respectively. Andrews will use her award to study folk dance at the University of Tampere in Finland. This is a familar campus for her since her father. University Mathematics department head, Fred Andrews, served as a visiting Fu (bright lec turer there in 1969-70. In addition to being mathema tics department head. Andrews is currently the acting head of the University's computer science department and also received a Fulbright grant for the 1976-77 academic year. He will use the award to teach and conduct re search at the University College of Cork in Ireland. The two University associate professors who also received Ful bright honors are Roger Chicker ing and Alan Kimball, both in the history department. Chickering will use his $9,000 award to spend the year in Bertin, studying radical national organi zations in Germany prior to World War I. He was in Germany in 1970-71, gathering material for a book on the pacifist movement in Germany between 1892 and the start of World War I. Kimball, who has an $11,000 award, will be in the Soviet Union studying social organizations and public opinion in the capital city of the Russian empire in the late 19th century. ing across racoon-tracked mud flats, we called it quits empty handed. Although the taped yellow billed cuckoo calls did not arouse any cuckoos, they were answered by great blue herons, a valley re sident. The great blue herons are communal nesters, gathering in a colony commonly referred to as a rookery. We observed a large rookery, with numerous adult and immature birds sitting in the trees. This rookery, one of the largest in the valley, contains about 100 nests, each stick nest about three feet across. The most disturbing observa tion of the wild cuckoo chase oc curred while scanning the inha bited river bank across from the nparian island. One of the resi dents. who probably paid a fancy price for his house along the river, was carefully sorting through his garbage. A very careful polluter, he selected only certain objects from his trash to throw into the river. Briefs: •Carroll Littlefield is the first re cipient of the Alfred Cooper Shel ton award offered by the Southern Willamette Ornithological Club. Shelton was a student at the Uni versity from 1916-19, wildlife col lector for the University’s Museum of Natural History, and published one of the first checklists of birds of the valley. Littlefield was awarded for his study of the sandhill crane in Oregon. His current investigation involves determination of its status as a possible endangered or threatened species. His 1976 study will include population counts, nest searches, reproduc tive success studies, banding, and fall migration counts. •Spoke Folk, an informal as sociation of bicyclers, is sponsor ing a bike and camping trip Friday and Saturday to Sharp's Creek; for more information call Riley McClain at 342-4878. •Swimmers and canoeists can begin posting "no motorboats” signs along the Willamette River from the Belt Line Bridge up stream to the Highway 126 bridge in Springfield. The state Marine Board voted to ban motorized water vehciles from that stretch of river each year from May 15 to Sept. 15. •In 1950, the U S Army sprayed the bacteria Serratia marcensens along the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco to study wind and water currents. According to Prevention Magazine, this is now blamed for a sharp increase in a rare and usually fatal heart valve disease, acute bacterial endocarditis, among residents of the Bay area. The infection, which has been noticed especially among drug abuse patients, is occurring at about three times the rate for any other metropolitan area. EMU Rec Center OPEN UNTIL 10:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri. Enter thru Print Shop Doors
