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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 6, 2017)
Appeal Tribune Wednesday, September 6, 2017 3B Little damage during eclipse weeks leading up to the eclipse. The National Park Ser- vice brought in incident management teams from parks around the country to help control the crowds and keep them away from sensitive areas. While the park did get quite crowded with eclipse visitors, Hall said, there were very few prob- lems. She credits all the extra planning and sup- port staff. “Everything went very very smoothly,” she said. “I’m really relieved be- cause I was afraid I’d be sitting at this point think- ing of all these horrible things that happened and none of it happened.” There were no fires, no medical emergencies or car accidents. “All those things we were going through — all the what-ifs during the planning,” she said. “None of those things hap- pened.” Jude McHugh, spokes- woman for the Willamette National Forest, said de- spite smoky skies and some closed areas includ- ing the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, many visitors still came to the forest to watch the eclipse from high peaks and open prai- ries. But they didn’t leave much behind, she said. “There was only one escaped campfire,” she said, “indicating most vis- itors respected the camp- fire ban.” Chris Havel with Ore- gon State Parks said he saw a similarly rosy pic- ture. “We had good crowds,” he said. “People got in and got out without any prob- lems. Of course, there was some traffic on the way out, but overall things went surprisingly well. I was expecting a big long list of issues, but no. We’re all sort of scratching our heads, like, ‘What did we miss?’ ” Hall said she doesn’t agree with people who ar- gue that the whole event was over-hyped and that there was actually noth- ing to worry about. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s like Y2K,’ and I don’t think that’s the case,” she said. “I think lots and lots of people did come, but we planned well and people behaved well. People just wanted to come and expe- rience the eclipse, and it was a very cool experi- ence.” CASSANDRA PROFITA OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING PRINEVILLE - Patrick Lair with the U.S. Forest Service drove into the Ochoco National Forest to see how things looked af- ter hosting thousands of eclipse visitors. He drove the same road on Aug. 23 that more than 30,000 people took to get into the massive Sym- biosis Festival on Big Summit Prairie — a patch of private land in the mid- dle of the national forest. “At one point, we had bumper-to-bumper traf- fic from the prairie out past Prineville,” he said. “I’m kind of amazed not to see more trash on the sides of the road.” With all the festival-go- ers — plus additional eclipse visitors looking to camp in the path of total- ity —officials worried about people trampling vegetation and driving off-road through the for- est. With dry conditions and late-summer heat, they were especially wor- ried about people acciden- tally starting wildfires. Anticipating up to a million eclipse visitors statewide, public land managers prepared for the worst. Now, as they survey the damage, they’re finding many of their fears of environ- mental destruction never came to pass. The road into the Ocho- cos is littered with some discarded bottles, the oc- casional strand of toilet paper and several aban- doned vehicles. But con- sidering how many people traveled through here, Lair said, it’s looking real- ly good. “I think we all were ex- pecting the worst, and when it didn’t happen we all were pleasantly sur- prised,” Lair said. “Not that there aren’t impacts — there will certainly be trash to pick up.” Clean campgrounds, few fires Lisa Clark with the Pri- neville District of the Bu- reau of Land Manage- ment is also along for the drive. She said her agency oversees more than a mil- lion acres of public land in Central Oregon and was prepared to see up to 500,000 visitors for the eclipse. We stop at a large campsite in a wide-open PHOTOS BY MOLLY J. SMITH/STATESMAN JOURNAL Thousands of tents, RVs and other shelters sit in the dusty landscape at the Symbiosis eclipse festival east of Prineville at Big Summit Prairie on Aug. 20. The weeklong festival drew people from all over the world for solar eclipse viewing. somebody would have made that mistake.” Environmental impacts? A woman dressed as a version of Alice in Wonderland pins roses to festival attendees at the Symbiosis eclipse festival east of Prineville at Big Summit Prairie on Sunday, Aug. 20. clearing that was full dur- ing the eclipse on Aug. 21. But there’s no evidence of all the people who were here just a couple days ago. “It looks like someone came through and did a really nice cleanup job,” Clark said. Federal agencies had encouraged to see visitors stopping in at their infor- mation booth in Prineville to unload extra trash they cleaned up from neigh- boring campsites, Clark said. She also suspects they saw less than half the number of visitors they prepared for. She checks inside the bathroom for any hidden trash. “It’s always good to check inside outhouses and port-a-potties,” she said, pulling open the met- al door. “I am absolutely amazed. There’s a little bit of toilet paper left and no trash. It looks clean.” Even more amazing? Over the past week, her agency has only gotten one report of a fire that hadn’t been fully extin- guished. That’s less than she’d expect to see on a normal summer weekend. “In general, abandoned campfires and escaped campfires are our num- ber one cause of human caused wildfires on For- est Service and BLM land,” she said. “So our ex- pectation would have been - with just the sheer number of people we had - With campgrounds filled up, another concern was the environmental impacts of dispersed camping in the forest. Finding those impacts falls to Forest Service hy- drologist Rob Tanner, who leads a team of experts called a Resource Assess- ment and Mitigation Team. “So this is kind the next stage — post-eclipse,” he said. “We’re calling it the RAM team.” On Aug. 23, after giv- ing visitors time to clear out of the woods, Tanner gathered up his team be- gin to assess environmen- tal impacts in the Ocho- cos. The team will go to the places where they know people went off- road to camp and see if the soil, plants, waterways and wildlife were negativ- ely impacted. “Initially, before the eclipse, we put together a fairly large team because we just didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “We have soil scientists, ar- chaeologists, aquatics folks — which are hydrol- ogists and fisheries biolo- gists — wildlife biolo- gists, engineers looking at the roads and a few other folks as well.” They’ll decide where they’re most needed after reviewing aerial videos collected during the eclipse. But Tanner said they might not have a whole lot of work to do. “We know we had less visitors than anticipated, so, we’ve kind of ratchet- ed back,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what’s out there, but we’re hop- ing less visitors equals less potential resource is- sues.” On Thursday, the team found trash, abandoned vehicles, messy camp- sites and human waste dumped from an RV. Un- pleasant? Most definitely. But overall, from the Painted Hills in Eastern Oregon to Marys Peak in the Coast Range, officials seemed to agree that pub- lic information cam- paigns paid off with hun- dreds of thousands of visi- tors doing very little dam- age to public lands. 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