FROM PAGE ONE
Thursday, december 2, 2021
“It didn’t want to fight me. it just wanted
to leave. It tried to defend itself, and once
it realized it could get away, it did.”
BEAR
Continued from Page A1
He was treated in the
emergency room and
released.
Beckner, who has lived in
Sumpter for about a year and
a half, said he’s convinced
the bear felt cornered when
it initially tried to flee and
ran into a shed near his front
door.
“It didn’t want to fight
me. It just wanted to leave,”
he said. “It tried to defend
itself, and once it realized it
could get away, it did.”
Brian Ratliff, district
wildlife biologist at the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife office in Baker
City, said he interviewed
Beckner about the episode.
Based on Beckner’s
description, and in particular
that the bear fled as soon as
it no longer was confined
by the shed, Ratliff said he
hasn’t set up any traps in
Sumpter to try to capture the
bear.
Ratliff said he would have
taken a different approach if
SALMON
Continued from Page A1
Becky Johnson, produc-
tion division director for
the tribe’s Fishery Resource
Management, was there
when nearly 500,000 smolt
were released into the Los-
tine River in 2017. She
described the release as
“awesome.” The results were
almost immediate — the
next year, two coho were
caught in the tribe’s weir.
Then, in 2021, 88 fish were
caught in the net.
“Salmon are a really
amazing, resilient creature,
and if you just give them
half a chance, if you pro-
vide the right conditions, the
habitat and the clean water
— I’ve been impressed with
what they can do,” Johnson
said.
To be sure, not every
coho released into the Los-
tine would return — pre-
The ObserVer — A7
Beckner said he’s seen
bears several times in
Sumpter, including near
his home on Ibex Street,
up the hill and about
three blocks east of Mill
Street, the town’s main
thoroughfare.
“Bears are constantly
walking through Sumpter,
every night,” he said.
But Beckner had no
reason to think about bears
when he walked out his
front door in the last hour of
Thanksgiving.
He didn’t hear anything
— he was just going out-
side. The bear was about 5
to 6 feet away.
“I’ve seen a fair amount
of bears, and I recognized it
immediately,” Beckner said.
The bear turned and ran,
but its route was blocked by
a shed that’s just outside the
front door.
Then it spun and ran
toward Beckner.
“It slashed at my face but
I moved out of the way and
it just nicked me,” he said.
The bear then stood on
its hind legs.
Beckner, who is about
5-foot-9, said the bear was
slightly taller than he is.
He said he “wrestled
for a little bit” with the
bear, during which the bear
briefly bit his shoulder.
Beckner said he then
punched the bear. He said
the bear backed up slightly
and, once it realized its path
was not blocked by the shed,
it ran down the hill.
“I never saw it again
after that,” he said.
Beckner estimated the
incident lasted 45 seconds
or so.
Although the bear was
emaciated, Beckner, who
has competed in wrestling
and grappled with oppo-
nents up to 250 pounds, said
he’s “never felt a human so
strong as that.”
He said he understands
that leaving food or trash in
accessible places can entice
bears, and he strives to
avoid such situations on his
property.
Beckner said he thinks
he was simply unlucky, and
the incident didn’t make him
more fearful of bears.
“If it had not been for the
fact that it got cornered it
wouldn’t have attacked me,”
he said.
stock collected at the Bon-
neville Dam. The next phase
of the Lostine coho program
will use returned fish as
brood stock for the next gen-
eration of salmon, hoping
to make use of the fish
that made the long journey
home.
“Those fish have sur-
vived,” Johnson said.
“They’ve not only migrated
out as juveniles for 600 or
so miles over eight dams to
the ocean, but then they also
turned around and came
back up those eight dams
over those 600 miles, so we
want to use those genetics,
you know that stamina from
those adults for the next gen-
eration. That’s what we did
on the Clearwater, and it’s
been pretty successful.”
At the same time as the
record-breaking coho run, a
smaller number of chinook
and steelhead runs have
made their way back up the
rivers. Steelhead trout, espe-
cially, were returning in
much lower numbers than
before.
Just 39,359 steelhead
have made it past the Lower
Granite Dam this year,
in contrast to its 10-year
average of 59,147, according
to the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. The 2020 num-
bers for steelhead were
55,307, according to the
same data.
But the reason for the
coho’s greater numbers have
flummoxed experts.
“Coho are bonkers all the
way up the West Coast, and I
don’t really know why to be
honest,” said Kyle Bratcher,
a fish biologist with the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife. “There’s some-
thing going on in the ocean
that’s changed that’s allowed
them to do well.”
The effects of the recent
drought, as well, could play
a part in the years to come,
Bratcher said, though the
effect will be muted by
regional environmental fac-
tors and the current La Nina
weather system.
It also will be some time
before the impact of the
drought can be accurately
gauged, as the life cycle of
chinook, coho and steelhead
vary — steelhead and chi-
nook can take up to six years
to make a return, while
coho’s much shorter lifespan
of two to three years means
that it can act as a bellwether
for ocean and weather
conditions.
“We get a little bit lucky
sometimes because we have
the Wallowa Mountains
here, we tend to still keep
a little cool water around
even when it gets pretty
bad,” Bratcher said. “We
didn’t see any of that this
year but where it’s going to
hurt us — the drought — is
probably in the next two or
three years, especially in the
return.”
— Noah Beckner, who was attacked by a black bear outside his
Sumpter home on Thanksgiving night
Noah beckner/Contributed Photo
Noah Beckner sustained wounds
to his face when he was attacked
by a black bear on Thanksgiving
night, Nov. 25, 2021, outside his
Sumpter home.
it looked as though the bear
had intentionally attacked
Beckner.
“It’s unfortunate that it
happened but the bear didn’t
seek (Becker) out and attack
him, and it didn’t come
back,” Ratliff said. “It was
trying to get away.”
Ratliff said he planned
to notify the Sumpter City
Council about the incident,
and to remind city offi-
cials about the need to urge
dation and harvesting take
their toll, as do natural dis-
eases and parasites. Many
more would return to dif-
ferent streams to spawn, in a
process called straying. Still,
the return is more than wel-
comed, and their journey
was a long one in both
length and time.
“We have a lot of work,
we’ve only just begun really,
but I know from our expe-
rience from over here in the
Clearwater that it can be
really successful,” Johnson
said.
Between 1980 and 1996,
a total of only 89 coho
salmon were counted at the
Lower Granite Dam. Due
to the reintroduction efforts,
the fish have returned to the
Snake River in higher num-
bers — though far removed
from their previous num-
bers, before the construction
of the eight dams between
the Pacific Ocean and the
confluence between the
residents not to keep food
sources, including coolers
or refrigerators, as well as
trash, outdoors in places
easily accessible to bears.
Ratliff said he will con-
tinue to monitor the situation
in Sumpter.
“My biggest concern is
that this bear is going to
choose not to den up,” he
said.
Ratliff said Beckner
described the bear as very
skinny, which suggests that
the bear isn’t in condition to
hibernate.
Bears aren’t uncommon
in Sumpter
The historic gold mining
town, population 200, is in
the midst of a ponderosa
pine forest about 27 miles
west of Baker City.
Clearwater River and the
Snake River at Lewiston,
Idaho.
“I want to put it in con-
text, though,” Johnson said,
“because you know coho
used to be very abundant
up here just like spring chi-
nook and fall chinook and
steelhead. Historically,
there were probably about
200,000 coho that returned
here (to the Lostine River).
So we’re super excited —
happy to see this return of
coho this year, but also want
to contextualize that this is a
mere fraction of what it used
to be like here.”
According to Johnson,
the program to reintroduce
coho to the Lostine is based
on the tribe’s success in the
Clearwater Basin. The tribe
reintroduced the salmon to
the Clearwater and Snake
basin areas in the late 1990s.
Before then, the fish were
extinct in the area.
The fish were bred from
During the late summer
and fall of 2017, ODFW offi-
cials trapped and killed three
bears in or near Sumpter.
During that period, a
Sumpter resident shot and
injured a bear on his front
porch. The same bear later
entered a home in Sawmill
Gulch near Sumpter through
an unlatched door.
That bear was one of the
three that ODFW employees
trapped and killed.
Ratliff said he’s had only
a couple reports of bears in
Sumpter this year.
“It’s nothing like the
level that we had a few years
back,” he said.
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