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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 2019)
B Friday, October 18, 2019 RECREATION REPORT Daily bag limit for Snake River chinook drops to 2 starting Saturday As of Saturday, Oct. 19, the daily bag limit for anglers fi sh- ing under an Oregon license in the Snake River will be 2 adult hatchery chinook salmon per day. This is reduced from the earlier allowance of up to 6 hatchery chinook per day. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Com- mission directed the Department of Fish and Wildlife to take the action to reduce catch-and-release mortality of wild salmon in the river. The fi shery remains open to retention of hatchery chinook through previously announced dates or until allowable Endangered Species Act (ESA) impacts for the fi shery are reached, whichever comes fi rst. The chinook regulations are as follows: • Through Oct. 31, or until further no- tice, the entire area of the Snake River from the Oregon- Washington border upstream to the deadline below Hells Canyon Dam is open for hatchery chinook. • Effective Nov. 1 through Nov. 17, or until further notice, the Snake River from Cliff Mountain Rapids (about 1.1 miles downstream of Hells Canyon Dam) upstream to the deadline below Hells Canyon Dam will be open for hatchery chinook. The Observer & Baker City Herald N EW T AKE ON O LD R OADS ■ The forests of Northeastern Oregon are criss-crossed by roads that are either not open to, or accessible by, certain motorized vehicles. But these routes can make for interesting hike or mountain biking routes The stump of the juvenile ponderosa pine nearly sent me sprawling, but I wasn’t particu- larly perturbed at barely avoiding what might have been a painful tumble. The pine wasn’t much of an obstacle, for one thing. Had I been paying even slightly closer atten- tion to where I was putting my feet I could have easily bypassed the stump. And I’m not what anyone would describe as nimble. (Anyone who’s ever watched me walk, anyway, an experience that tends to induce in spectators a kind of grudging admiration that I can get around under my own power.) But the reason I appreciated rather than resented my innocuous encounter with the little bit that’s left of that pine is that it reminded me I was fortunate to have this place to hike. Moreover, the episode clarifi ed a notion that’s been fl oating about, as it were, on the shoals of my subconscious for some time. Jayson Jacoby / Baker City Herald Old roads might not be well-suited to full-size rigs — and in many cases they’re blocked by ‘tank traps’ or other obstacles — but they often make for excellent hiking or mountain biking paths. ON THE TRAIL JAYSON JACOBY I was walking on a road. It’s a road that so far as I could tell hasn’t been navigated by a motor vehicle for at least a few years. But it was quite clearly a road — some- thing built to the dimensions required to accommodate log trucks. And it struck me, not long after the toe of my right shoe struck the stump, that this road is one of dozens that have been built over the decades in the publicly owned forests of Northeastern Oregon. Many of these roads are open to, and frequently traveled by, motor vehicles. But a fair number are not. Some have been blocked by gates, and others by “tank traps” — series of ditches that span the road bed. Of the latter group, some are still accessible by ATVs, which, with their tidy dimensions and supple suspen- sions, can often get through the tank traps that turn back pickup trucks and other highway-legal rigs. These roads constitute a network of routes that in parts of the region boast more mileage than the trails, where motor vehicles can’t legally go. See Roads/Page 2B Officials killing barred owls hoping to save spotted owls federal offi cials are resorting to kill- ing hundreds of federally protected CORVALLIS — As he stood amid barred owls. the thick old-growth forests in the The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coastal range of Oregon, Dave Wiens experiment, which began in 2015, was nervous. Before he trained to has raised thorny questions: To what shoot his fi rst barred owl, he had extent can we reverse declines that never fi red a gun. have unfolded over decades, often due He eyed the big female owl, her partially to actions by humans? And feathers streaked brown and white, as climate change continues to shake perched on a branch at just the up the landscape, displacing species right distance. Then he squeezed the and altering how and where plants trigger and the owl fell to the forest and animals live and thrive, how fl oor, its carcass adding to a running should we intervene? tally of more than 2,400 barred owls The experimental killing of barred killed so far in a controversial experi- owls raised such moral dilemmas ment by the U.S. government to test when it fi rst was proposed in 2012 whether the northern spotted owl’s that the Fish and Wildlife Service rapid decline in the Pacifi c Northwest took the unusual step of hiring can be stopped by killing its aggres- an ethicist to help work through The Triplicate (Crescent City, California whether it was acceptable and could sive East Coast cousin. Spotted owl Wiens is the son of a well-known be done humanely. ornithologist and grew up fascinated Just as with other conservation by birds, and his graduate research Act in 1990, earning it a cover on measures that involve killing one in owl interactions helped lay the Time Magazine, federal offi cials creature to save another, the pro- groundwork for this tense moment. halted logging on millions of acres of gram also prompted litigation and “It’s a little distasteful, I think, to old-growth forests on federal lands debate. go out killing owls to save another to protect the bird’s habitat. But the Federal and state offi cials, for owl species,” said Wiens, a biologist birds’ population continued to decline. example, have broken the necks of who still views each shooting as “gut- Meanwhile, researchers, including thousands of cowbirds to save the wrenching” as the fi rst. “Nonetheless, Wiens, began documenting another warbler, a songbird once on the brink I also feel like from a conservation threat — larger, more aggressive of extinction. To preserve salmon standpoint, our back was up against barred owls competing with spotted runs in the Pacifi c Northwest and the wall. We knew that barred owls owls for food and space and displac- perch and other fi sh in the Mid- were outcompeting spotted owls ing them in some areas. west, federal and state agencies kill and their populations were going In almost all ways, the barred owl thousands of large seabirds called haywire.” is the spotted owl’s worst enemy: double-crested cormorants. And last The federal government has They reproduce more often, have year, Congress passed a law making been trying for decades to save the more babies per year and eat the it easier for Oregon, Washington, northern spotted owl, a native bird same prey, like squirrels and wood Idaho and American Indian tribes to that sparked an intense battle over rats. And they now outnumber spot- kill sea lions that gobble imperiled logging across Washington, Oregon ted owls in many areas of the native salmon runs in the Columbia River. and California decades ago. bird’s historic range. The owl experiment is unusual After the owl was listed as threat- So in a last-ditch effort to see because it involves killing one species ened under the Endangered Species whether they can save spotted owls, of owl to save another owl species — By Phuong Le Associated Press and it may well be the largest killing program involving raptors. In four small study areas in Wash- ington, Oregon and Northern Cali- fornia, Wiens and his trained team have been picking off invasive barred owls with 12-gauge shotguns to see whether the native birds return to their nesting habitat once their competitors are gone. Small efforts to remove barred owls in British Columbia and northern California already showed promising results. The Fish and Wildlife Service has a permit to kill up to 3,600 owls and, if the $5 million program works, could decide to expand its efforts. Wiens, who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, now views his gun as “a research tool” in humankind’s attempts to maintain biodiversity and rebalance the forest ecosystem. Because the barred owl has few predators in Northwest forests, he sees his team’s role as apex predator, acting as a cap on a population that doesn’t have one. “Humans, by stepping in and taking that role in nature, we may be able to achieve more biodiversity in the environment, rather than just having barred owls take over and wipe out all the prey species,” he said. Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, fi nds the practice abhorrent and said humans should fi nd another way to help owls. “There’s no way to couch it as a good thing if you’re killing one spe- cies to save another,” Bekoff said. And Michael Harris, who directs the wildlife law program for Friends of Animals, thinks the government should focus on what humans are doing to the environment and protect habitats rather than scapegoating barred owls. “Things were put into motion a century ago. We really have to let these things work themselves out,” said Harris, whose group unsuc- cessfully sued to stop the killing and is now contesting an Endangered Species Act provision called an “in- cidental take” permit that exempts landowners who kill spotted owls during activities considered lawful, such as logging. “It’s going to be very common with climate change,” Harris said. “What are we going to do — pick and choose the winners?” Some see a responsibility to intervene, however, noting that humans are partly to blame for the underlying conditions with activities like logging, which helped lead to the spotted owl’s decline. And others just see a no-win situation. “A decision not to kill the barred owl is a decision to let the spotted owl go extinct,” said Bob Sallinger, con- servation director with the Audubon Society of Portland. “That’s what we have to wrestle with.” Barred owls are native to eastern North America but began moving West at the turn of the 20th century. Scientists believe they migrated to western Canada across the Great Plains in the early 1900s, using for- ests that popped up as people learned to manage wildfi res and planted trees around farms. They arrived in Washington in 1973 and then moved south into Oregon and California. See Owls/Page 2B
