TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2021
FROM PAGE ONE
THE OBSERVER — A5
DEER
HELPING
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
“There’s a risk to getting
a ‘free lunch,’” Levi said.
of Ram’s life story more
inspiring than Biggs
anticipated.
“They were so
impressed by his story
that they now honor Bali’s
birthday to show respect
for him,” Biggs said.
Nshimiye has also had
T-shirts made in recogni-
tion of Ram.
Interactions among
predators
While looking specifi -
cally at the impact of preda-
tors on ungulates, Ruprecht
said the study provided
a unique opportunity to
learn something new about
carnivores.
“Generally predators are
studied solely on how they
infl uence prey, but how they
infl uence and interact with
each other was my interest,”
Ruprecht said.
The research showed little
interaction with the other
two carnivore species in the
study — black bears and
bobcats. Based on photos,
kill site investigations and
the lack of elk found in their
scat, Starkey bobcats never
scavenged on cougar kills.
Ruprecht said bears vis-
ited half of the cougar kill
sites monitored, but only
about one-third of the bear
scat surveyed contained
elk. No bears were found
killed by cougars, leading
researchers to believe there
was little competition
between those two predators.
“They are scavenging, but
not like coyotes,” Ruprecht
said. “My guess is because
they use so many other food
sources there is less moti-
vation to incur the risk by
potentially encountering a
cougar.”
One of the takeaways,
Ruprecht said, was why cer-
tain species do scavenge.
“There is risk involved
and decisions are made
under imperfect knowl-
edge of the proximity of a
cougar,” he said.
In some cases the coyote
knows the cougar is there,
Ruprecht said.
“An animal who is
starving is going to take
more risk to get a meal,”
Ruprecht said.
Study expands on
previous Starkey
research
Another reason coy-
otes may be more prone to
scavenge is they are a pack
the Hutus.
“Tutsi people are still
killed just for no reason,
still they always smile,”
Nshimiye told Biggs in one
of his emails.
Nshimiye manages
to see the bright side of
having to live in a camp
with austere conditions
in an environment where
one’s life is at risk the
moment they leave.
One reason he said is
the attitude of the camp’s
residents.
“This life of living
in camp inspires me to
have much love instead of
having much depression or
aloneness,” he told Biggs.
She said Nshimiye does
not seem to be resentful
of the life he has had to
endure in a refugee camp.
“Life isn’t waiting for
the storms to pass; it’s
learning how to dance in
the rain,” Nshimiye wrote
in a message to Biggs.
Motivated by his
friends, family and Biggs,
Nshimiye is now pursuing
a degree from the online
school University of the
People. He is doing so with
major help from Biggs,
who bought him a laptop
and is helping him pay his
tuition and other expenses.
He has to leave his ref-
ugee camp to study online
in order to get access to
electricity to operate his
laptop.
Biggs said she will not
be able to continue helping
Nshimiye at the level she
is now and is encouraging
others to assist her. She
said that anyone who is
interested in contributing
to supporting Nshimiye
should email her at novels-
byterrie@gmail.com.
“His whole life will be
so changed by being able
to go ahead and get his
education,” Biggs said. “I
think he will do big things
for his country.”
Learning how to
dance in the rain
Jim Ward/Contributed Photo
A study looking into predator-prey interaction at the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in Union
County, conducted from 2016-2020, fi nds coyotes are eating the remains of elk at cougar kill sites.
U.S. Forest Service/Contributed Photo
Research at the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range in the Blue
Mountains of Northeastern Oregon is looking into the predation on
deer and elk. Mike Wisdom, Starkey ungulate ecology team leader
with the U.S. Forest Service, suggests reducing the prey base of elk
there could mean cougars switch to eating more mule deer.
animal while bears and bob-
cats are not.
“It’s the ‘many eyes,
many ears’ hypothesis,”
Ruprecht said. “They take
turns scavenging and take
turns keeping watch — and
they communicate to alert
others of a potential risk or
hazard.”
Levi said the study is
part of a larger body of work
the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife and the
U.S. Forest Service are con-
ducting that includes popu-
lation dynamics and nutri-
tion as well as the drastic
culling of Starkey’s three elk
herds, through hunting and
transplanting.
Mike Wisdom, Starkey
ungulate ecology team
leader with the Forest Ser-
vice, said the predator
research related to earlier
studies from the 1990s and
2000s that indicated inter-
ference competition between
deer and elk.
“One species might
intimidate another into being
displaced,” Wisdom said.
A series of analyses and
publications indicated elk
used the landscape in a way
that met their needs while
mule deer were avoiding elk.
Over time, elk changed their
use of the landscape, and
mule deer moved to other
areas elk were not using.
“It became a concern in
the fact that mule deer are
declining in large areas at
Starkey, throughout Eastern
Oregon, and across other
areas of the U.S.,” Wisdom
said.
Increasing elk popula-
tions might be causing dis-
placement and reduction of
mule deer populations as
well as reducing the carrying
capacity of the landscape to
support them nutritionally.
Now that the elk popu-
lation is a fraction of what
it was a few years ago,
Wisdom said there are a lot
of diff erent possible out-
comes among the preda-
tors and prey — improved
nutrition and body condi-
tion, behavioral use of the
land, direct interactions and
changes in predation.
“Predators could dissipate
and lessen their use, par-
ticularly cougars, but if we
reduce that prey base of elk
there may not be a positive
response — cougars may
just switch to eating mule
deer,” Wisdom said.
Darren Clark, Starkey
Wildlife Research Pro-
gram leader with the Oregon
Department of Fish and
Wildlife, said for the last
seven years the big picture
has been to assess com-
petition between elk and
mule deer. Over the last
three years the elk herd was
reduced from 550 head to
75 to see how the mule deer
respond.
According to previous
work, Clark said, the forage
available to the Starkey mule
deer doesn’t have suffi cient
calories to meet a doe’s ener-
getic demands during peak
lactation, resulting in poor
body condition.
“If deer shift habitat use,
will their body condition and
fawn survival increase?”
Clark asked.
With the elk herds
reduced by 80%, Clark said
Fish and Wildlife will gather
its fi rst data set next year
from fawns collared in 2021.
The refugee camp
Nshimiye has spent most
of his life in is austere. It
consists of thousands of
9-by-12-foot wooden shel-
ters that families live in.
Refugees receive very
limited support from the
Rwandan government,
Biggs said.
Kiziba is one of four
camps in Rwanda estab-
lished by the United
Nations High Commis-
sioner for Refugees to
house 17,300 Tutsi Con-
golese. They live in the
refugee camps to pro-
tect themselves from the
Hutus, who were respon-
sible for the 1994 geno-
cide massacre of the Tutsi
Congolese. The genocidal
campaign began April 6,
1994, and ended approx-
imately 100 days later.
The massacre left between
800,000 and 1 million
Tutsi Congolese dead,
including both of Nshimi-
ye’s grandfathers.
Innocent and his twin
sister were born in Kiziba,
the fi rst of seven sib-
lings. Their family lives
in two of the small shel-
ters because of so many
children.
The Tutsi Congolese
stay in camps when they
can, to protect themselves
from random shootings by
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POPULATION
Continued from Page A1
number of children per
woman, there aren’t enough
babies to replace the pop-
ulation. Now, women in
Oregon are expected to
have, on average, 1.4 chil-
dren. They must have at
least 2.1, on average, to
replace themselves and the
father.
Gemmill listed an
assortment of factors poten-
tially contributing to the
decline in birth rates nation-
ally and in Oregon over the
last 10 years.
One contributor is a dra-
matic fall in teen pregnan-
cies. Birth rates among
Oregon girls and women
ages 15 to 19 dropped
nearly two-thirds from 2005
to 2019 — the ninth-largest
relative drop of any state.
Births are down for women
20 to 24 too, accounting for
about 17% of all births last
year, compared to 22% of
all births a decade ago.
Another possible expla-
nation for the fall in births
among teens and adults,
Gemmill said, is the wide-
spread use of contracep-
tives in the state. Oregon is
fi rst in the nation in contra-
ceptive use among women
at risk of pregnancy, with
eight in 10 sexually active
women younger than 50
using some form of contra-
ception, federal data show.
Gemmill said there have
also been less easily mea-
sured changes in society.
There’s more of a sense of
despair about the future
of the world among young
people, she said, along with
more fi nancial barriers to
raising kids.
“Things are just getting
worse,” she said.
And there is less of a
stigma around not having
children.
“It’s now acceptable for
people to say they don’t
want kids,” Gemmill said.
But the million-dollar
question for Gemmill is
whether the drop in births
is permanent. The fact
that women are having
fewer kids doesn’t mean
they won’t have kids at all.
The experience in Europe,
which has demographic
patterns a few decades
ahead of those in the United
States, indicates there could
be a rebound, Gemmill
said.
But it could be decades
before it’s clear if that hap-
pens. In the meantime,
Oregon will continue to rely
on people migrating into the
state to increase its popula-
tion and workforce.
Migration
If it weren’t for people
moving to the state, Ore-
gon’s economy would be in
a tough spot.
“In the long run, without
migration, Oregon’s popula-
tion will decline,” said Kan-
haiya Vaidya, a demogra-
pher with the Oregon Offi ce
of Economic Analysis who
forecasts population trends
for the state.
The declining birth rate
has outpaced Vaidya’s past
forecasts. Five years ago,
Vaidya said by 2040 more
people would die than are
born in Oregon. Before the
pandemic, he revised his
forecasts to say it would
happen by around 2027 or
2028.
Vaidya said he isn’t par-
ticularly worried about
the declining birth rates in
Oregon.
In a worst-case scenario,
there could be an imbal-
ance in the economy, with
a lot of elderly Oregonians
needing services that the
workforce simply cannot
meet. For that to happen,
there would have to be an
economic downturn long
enough to reverse the trend
of working-age people
moving to Oregon, Vaidya
said.
Duy, the University of
Oregon economics pro-
fessor, said that, indeed,
with current trends, there
could be greater constraints
on economic growth and
smaller labor force growth
in the future. If it’s hard
to fi nd workers, then com-
panies will either increase
their productivity per
employee or look for alter-
natives to Oregon, he said.
Interestingly, migra-
tion among working adults
appears to have put Wash-
ington way ahead of Oregon
in its child population —
and perhaps could serve as
a road map for growing the
kid count.
Washington began 2010
with about 67,500 more
children than a decade ear-
lier, and it began 2020 with
nearly 100,000 more chil-
dren than the decade before.
There’s a straightforward
explanation, said University
of Washington demography
professor Sara Curran.
In essence, tech com-
panies — Seattle-based
Amazon, in particular
— have over the last two
decades gone on a hiring
frenzy, drawing thousands
of people a month, at times.
Usually hiring younger
people who are nimble and
able to move states, those
people are now older and
having children.
“That cohort is settling
down,” Curran said, “and
reproducing.”
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