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