INSIDE
OREGON WILL SEE FEWER OMICRON-LINKED HOSPITALIZATIONS THAN ORIGINALLY FEARED |
OREGON, A6
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
December 31, 2021
WEEKEND EDITION
BAKER COUNTY
$1.50
LOOKING AHEAD
Campaign
aims to
protect
bighorns
City, county officials
hopeful for what is
to come in 2022
Illness continues to
threaten future of
Baker County’s two
bighorn sheep herds
By DAVIS CARBAUGH and DICK MASON
The Observer
NION COUNTY — Coming
off another diffi cult year in
which COVID-19 impacted
the way we go about everyday
life, many are ready to turn the
page to 2022. While the omi-
cron variant presents yet another unknown,
local public offi cials are optimistic about the
coming year.
“My hopes are defi nitely for less COVID
and that we can get past this pandemic that
we’re in right now,” Union County Commis-
sioner Donna Beverage said. “Hopefully a
lot of our businesses that have been strug-
gling can get back on their feet.”
Beverage is not the only one ready for
the pandemic to ease in the coming year, as
2021 saw an array of mandates that came
and went. Union Mayor Leonard Flint said
he is eager for COVID-19 to disappear from
the scene.
“I would like to see life get back to
normal again after two years,” he said. “It
has been a long haul.”
Cove School District Superintendent Earl
Pettit hopes that COVID-19 will not be the
disruptive force it has been.
“I hope that we are able to focus on
school and education. We have spent the past
two years focusing just on operating. I would
like to see us move forward again,” he said.
While 2021 saw varying opinions on
mandates and other matters throughout the
county, Beverage believes local government
can be united in serving the constituents to
the best of their ability.
“Hopefully we can have less partisan pol-
itics and more talking about what issues are
important to us as Americans,” she said.
La Grande School District Superinten-
dent George Mendoza said he would like
people to continue to treat each other with
U
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — As the heli-
copter fl ew over the ridges and
canyons of eastern Baker County
recently, Brian Ratliff was seeing
more bighorn sheep than he
expected.
But the news wasn’t exclusively
of the good variety.
It was the sheep Ratliff didn’t see
during the fl ight over the Lookout
Mountain unit — lambs — that
defi ne the continuing threat to the
future of Oregon’s biggest herd of
Rocky Mountain bighorns.
Ratliff , the district wildlife biol-
ogist at the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife’s Baker City
offi ce, counted just four lambs
during the aerial census.
All of those lambs, born in 2021,
were in small groups of sheep in
the northern part of the unit, which
is bordered on the north by state
Highway 86 and on the south by
Interstate 84.
The scarcity of lambs shows that
a bacterial infection remains wide-
spread in the Lookout Mountain
unit and puts the long-term health
of the herd in peril.
ODFW biologists believe all of
the 65 to 70 lambs born in the unit
in spring 2020 died due to the same
strain of Mycoplasma ovipneumo-
niae bacteria.
It was fi rst detected in the
Lookout Mountain herd, which
included about 400 bighorns, in
February 2020 when dead sheep
were found near the Snake River
Road above Brownlee Reservoir.
Lab tests of tissue samples from
dead sheep confi rmed the strain of
bacteria, the fi rst time it had been
found in bighorn sheep in Oregon.
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
Ashley O’Toole, left, and Tyson Brooks set up the New Year’s Eve ball and sign on top of the Phoenix
Apartments building on Depot Street in La Grande on Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021.
dignity, respect and compassion. The edu-
cator also hopes that COVID-19 will have
less of an impact on our lives.
“We’re in a historically diffi cult time.
Hopefully, 2022 will bring back opportuni-
ties for normalcy,” he said.
Projects in 2022
Elgin Mayor Risa Hallgarth is looking
forward to the city of Elgin boosting its
infrastructure in 2022.
“I hope that we can get to a lot of the proj-
ects we have grants for. I also hope that 2022
is a better year for everyone,” she said.
Hallgarth referred to projects such as road
paving work and the replacement of a bridge.
Island City Mayor Dave Comfort said
he is eager for upgrades to be made in the
Island City Area Sanitation District’s col-
lection system, which pumps wastewater to
La Grande for treatment. The sanitation dis-
trict has received a loan from the Oregon
Department of Environmental Quality for
this work.
The past year in Union saw the opening
of the Catherine Creek Community Center,
a local venue that preserved the historic
former Union Methodist Church. Beverage,
a board member of the community center,
stated that the building will continue to host
more events and be utilized by the local
community. For instance, the Elgin Opera
House plans to host several of its traveling
shows at the Catherine Creek Community
Center in 2022.
“Seeing that move forward and being
used more and more every day is exciting,”
Beverage said.
Draws for the community
Another renovation on the horizon in
Union County is the Liberty Theatre, which
is approaching a potential opening in 2022.
Ashley O’Toole, board chair of the Liberty
Theatre Foundation, noted that the progress
on the historic venue is nearing the fi nish
line.
“The overall progress of the theater is
reaching that point where we’re making the
decision about fi nish work — fl oor covering,
light fi xtures,” O’Toole said.
The downtown La Grande theater has
See, Ahead/Page A5
Study: Nearly 1 in 5 Oregonians have no plans to get vaccinated
By FEDOR ZARKHIN
REVISED PROJECTIONS
The Oregonian
SALEM — Nearly half of Ore-
gonians know someone who died
from COVID-19, yet their famil-
iarity with the disease doesn’t
make them more likely to get vac-
cinated against it, University of
Oregon researchers have found.
That’s just one of the illumi-
nating bits of information to be
gleaned from the research, which
is based on responses from a rep-
resentative sample of more than
700 Oregonians.
The researchers’ fi ndings
about unvaccinated Oregonians
are particularly pertinent now,
given that the highly contagious
omicron variant is expected to
sweep the state in the coming
weeks.
Dr. Benjamin Clark and
Robert Parker, from the Uni-
versity of Oregon’s Institute for
Policy Research and Engage-
ment, surveyed 722 Oregonians
on a host of COVID-19 sub-
topics. The researchers tried to
get to the bottom of, among other
Half a herd
During an aerial count in late
2018, biologists counted 403 big-
See, Bighorns/Page A5
A new projection from Oregon Health
and Science University shows COVID-19
hospitalizations peaking at about 1,250
in mid-February, driven by a surge in
the omicron variant. That’s a signifi cant
drop from earlier forecasts. Page A6
Alex Wittwer/The Observer, File
Demonstrators outside of La Grande City Hall protest against vaccine mandates
on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021.
things, people’s perceptions of
the virus, who is and is not get-
ting vaccinated, and the impact of
disinformation.
Their fi ndings, published last
week, showed that while vacci-
nations have climbed in recent
months, there are stubborn
pockets of resistance that appear
unlikely to budge.
“Despite a high vaccination
INDEX
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WEATHER
rate, parts of Oregon will struggle
more than others in the coming
months,” the researchers wrote.
There are signs, though, that
vaccination numbers could con-
tinue to climb. Namely, the share
of Oregonians who say they defi -
nitely won’t get shots dropped to
18%, down 4 percentage points
since the researchers’ last survey,
in spring. The diff erence falls
See, Vaccine/Page A5
CONTACT US
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OSAA WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIPS ON THE MOVE
just outside the sample’s margin
of error, so there is a chance the
results don’t refl ect a signifi cant
change in attitudes in the real
world.
The greatest vaccination chal-
lenge, per the researchers, centers
on the rural-urban divide. The
researchers’ statistical analysis
confi rms that counties with the
lowest vaccination rates have the
highest COVID-19 death rates.
Those counties also happen to
be exclusively rural and include
Lake, Malheur, Harney, Grant
and Gilliam counties.
About 1 in 3 rural Orego-
nians hasn’t had even one shot
of the vaccine, compared to
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2 sections, 12 pages
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