Appeal Tribune
| WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2020 | 1B
OUTDOORS
State parks officials made the decision to close many state parks ahead of spring break this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19. ZACH URNESS / STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE
Parks director talks
COVID-19 shutdown, wildfires
Zach Urness Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Even during a year packed with dra-
ma, the weekend that shut down Ore-
gon’s outdoors remains asurreal mo-
ment in state history.
Beginning in the coastal town of War-
renton, where mayor Henry Balensifer
declared tourists a “clear and present
danger,” all of Oregon’s recreation desti-
nations would eventually be closed for
nearly two months due to concerns
about the spread of the COVID-19 pan-
demic.
Lisa Sumption, the director of the
Oregon Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment, was in the middle of that moment
and more during what’s been a chaotic
2020 for Oregon’s outdoors.
The czar of 257 state parks and recre-
ation sites, including many of Oregon’s
most beautiful places and most popular
campgrounds, Sumption navigated the
shutdown, reopening and economic im-
pact of COVID-19, along with historic
Oregon Parks and Recreation Director Lisa Sumption. PHOTO COURTESY OF OPRD
wildfires and wind storms.
Last week, Sumption and OPRD as-
sociate director and longtime spokes-
man Chris Havel joined the Statesman
Journal’s Explore Oregon Podcast to
talk about why the parks were shut
down, how they’ve been impacted and
what comes next — including when
yurts and cabins will reopen.
The podcast also featured Havel,
Sumption and I talking about our favor-
ite less-visited state parks.
Below are some highlights from the
conversation, but to hear the entire
thing, subscribe to the Explore Oregon
Podcast or find it on StatesmanJour-
nal.com/explore.
Zach: All right, so we’ve been having
these kind of conversations since 2014
and typically we’re talking about a
wide-ranging bunch of issues — crowd-
ing at state parks, drone use at Silver
Falls, where you could expand camping
on the Coast. This year, you faced a pan-
demic that required shutting down and
then reopening the entire state park
system, major staffing shortages, a his-
toric summer for people getting outside,
and then parks hit by wildfires. I guess
the question is, how are you going to re-
member 2020?
Lisa Sumption: This is the reset year,
this is the back to basics. Anything we
thought we were talking about before
See DIRECTOR, Page 3B
Of clams and rototillers, mushrooms and leafblowers
Fishing
Henry Miller
Guest columnist
At every monthly Oregon Fish and
Wildlife Commission meeting, there is
an agenda item known as the field re-
ports.
It’s a series of presentations from re-
gional managers, along with reports
about department initiatives and pro-
grams from sections such as Informa-
tion and Education and the Conserva-
tion Program about timely issues and
events around the state.
It’s all interesting and informative
stuff, which since March because of Co-
vid has been delivered virtually via
Zoom.
That’s a popular streaming service,
the use of which is no more difficult to
deal with than trying to get a bird’s nest
out of a bait-casting reel with a salmon
on the other end of a line.
For insight, ask a teacher … about
Zoom, that is, not the bird’s nest.
On a personal note, Zoom has be-
come the Hollywood Squares version of
family togetherness during the pan-
demic. RE: Hollywood Squares, ask your
grandparents.
Now where was I? Oh, yes.
The field reports.
Back in the day, I always found one of
the highlights of commission meetings
Not a rototiller in sight during a clamming outing on Siletz Bay, site of motorized
clam carnage in a long-ago item in the Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife
Division field report. HENRY MILLER/SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN JOURNAL
to be the presentations by the Fish and
Wildlife Division of the Oregon State
Police.
One unforgettable item grabbed ev-
eryone’s attention.
Along with various and sundry
poaching incidents, the uniformed pre-
senter reported that a couple of enter-
prising scofflaws had lugged, no kid-
ding, a gas-powered rototiller onto Si-
letz Bay at low tide.
To go clamming, producing a churn-
ing swath of sea-life mulch in the proc-
ess.
For the uninitiated, rototillers, trac-
tors with disk harrows, power augers
and other motorized gardening and
farm implements are not what are de-
scribed in the Oregon Sport Fishing Reg-
ulations as legal methods of take.
Nor are industrial-strength leaf
blowers for uncovering shitake mush-
rooms, another field reports highlight
from a different commission meeting.
Turns out there is another way to
keep up with what’s going on at the Ore-
gon State Police Fish and Wildlife Divi-
sion.
The section puts out a monthly
newsletter about the highlights and
lowlights, albeit usually about a month
behind, featuring everything from hunt-
ing and fishing violations to rescues of
people, critters and birds.
It’s free in PDF form, and best of all
doesn’t involve Zoom. Check it out at
https://www.oregon.gov/osp/pro-
grams/fw/Pages/Newsletter.aspx
TEXAS BOATING TALES - The cap-
sizing of five boats by the wakes of fel-
low participants during a July 19 on-wa-
ter parade for Trump on Lake Travis in
Texas reminded me about another Lone
Star fiasco involving a pleasure boat,
that one on the Gulf of Mexico near
Kingsville.
I joined a fellow Navy buddy for a
fishing junket to a pier to fish for sea
trout.
As an aside, the late and much-la-
mented Wayne “Skeeter” Singleton was
also known as “Duck Butt” for the wisps
of downy hair around the bald spot on
the back of his head.
Skeeter and I were alums of the Guid-
ed Missile Division aboard the U.S.S.
Hancock. Both of us finished out our en-
listments at NAS Kingsville after three
tours off Vietnam.
I digress.
Anyway, the pier was about 20 yards
from a boat ramp, and fishing being
somewhat lethargic, the half-dozen an-
glers on the pier were easily distracted
by a guy launching his boat.
See MILLER, Page 2B