Opinion
A4
Saturday, February 5, 2022
OUR VIEW
The mystery of
the bills with
no sponsor
e would like our Oregon legislators to
join us in a whodunit. The mystery is:
Help us fi nd out who are the legisla-
tors behind certain bills.
Most bills this session or any session have a
chief sponsor, maybe even a bunch of regular
sponsors. They make it clear which legislators
wanted their fellow legislators to consider a bill.
Their names are right there on the bills.
But there is a subset of bills without any such
clarity. The residents of Oregon can’t know by
looking at a bill who is behind it.
We went through the bills that were scheduled
for some mention during the legislative session
on Tuesday, Feb. 1, and found three, Senate Bills
1521 and 1522 and House Bill 4031.
SB 1521 would prohibit a school district from
fi ring their superintendent for acting in com-
pliance with state or federal law. This bill was
introduced, at least in part, to prevent superin-
tendents from being fi red for complying with
pandemic restrictions, such as masking and dis-
tance learning. It was apparently introduced at
the request of the Senate Interim Committee on
Education. All the members of the committee?
One of them?
SB 1522 has so many disparate pieces it’s
hard to sum up. It’s 20 pages long. It also has
to do with education. It covers access to con-
tact information for graduate students, requiring
school districts to allow students to apply cer-
tain credits toward graduation, requirements for
homeschooled students to participate in athletics
and more. It was also at the request of the Senate
Interim Committee on Education.
House Bill 4031 establishes a state goal that the
percentage of diverse employees employed by the
Department of Education refl ects the percentage of
diverse students in public schools. This one comes
from the House Interim Committee in Education at
the request of the Department of Education.
Now why would legislators allow bills to be
introduced without putting a legislator’s name on
it? It’s not because legislators are dissolute, lazy
and work-shy or too busy.
It’s, in part, because they can. The rules of
the House and Senate allow it. It’s Rule 12 in the
House Rules. But legislators make those rules for
introducing bills. So they must want it.
We aren’t particularly worried about any of
these three bills. The concern is the mystery
that enables legislators to conceal what they are
doing from their constituents. The power to act
in hiding and set in motion new laws in secrecy
is great power. And that has no place in a govern-
ment that is supposed to be transparent. It has no
place in the Oregon Legislature.
W
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I’m always rooting for the underdog
BILL
ANEY
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND
his year, I want to see a white-
headed woodpecker.
This medium-sized wood-
pecker is a handsome bird, with a
fully black body and striking white
head, and the males sport a red nape
patch. They have been recorded in
Umatilla County, but it is one of
those species that is rare enough
that local birders get excited when
a sighting is reported. The Pend-
leton Bird Club keeps a running list
of birds reported by their members
each year, and in 2021 there were
268 species recorded in the county.
But no white-headed woodpeckers.
Why? It’s been reported in the
past, and it uses ponderosa pine for-
ests, which are abundant on the
Umatilla National Forest. So why is
it so hard to see one?
As with a lot of wildlife ques-
tions, it comes down to habitat. The
preferred habitat is not just pine for-
ests, but a certain type of ponderosa
pine forest that is in short supply due
to current management practices.
These birds build nest cavities
close to the ground in large dead
trees (average 26 inches in diam-
eter) and feed heavily on ponderosa
pine seed — meaning they require
stands of large mature or old growth
T
ponderosa pine. These are econom-
ically valuable trees, and past log-
ging has made them rare on private
timberland and not very abundant
on the National Forest. That’s one
of the reasons that there has been a
general prohibition on logging large
ponderosa pine on National For-
ests in the Blues since the 1990s.
These old growth forests are much
less common than they were before
European settlement, with all sorts
of eff ects on wildlife species that use
this habitat.
More than just large pine trees,
the white-headed woodpecker
prefers open stands. Forest inventory
records from the early 1900s
commonly described pine stands so
open that one could easily drive a
horse and buggy through the forest.
Try that nowadays and you’d soon
get bogged down in dense growth or
high-centered on logs. Our century-
long war on wildfi re coupled with
timber management practices has
left an unnaturally dense understory.
Why do these woodpeckers
prefer open habitat? One theory is
that areas with undergrowth pro-
vide cover for squirrels that prey on
woodpecker nests. An open forest
fl oor makes squirrels more vulner-
able to their own predators (hawks,
owls, cats, coyotes) and so less able
to search and destroy white-headed
woodpecker nests.
See, it’s complicated.
Complicated ecosystem man-
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
REPRESENTATIVES
GOVERNOR
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court St.
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
Bobby Levy, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-376
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.BobbyLevy@state.or.us
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agement principles can sometimes
be boiled down to a few guidelines
– like rooting for the underdog, fol-
lowing nature’s lead, and keeping all
the pieces. To root for the underdog
in this case means paying special
attention to species that are rare or
declining in numbers, like the white-
headed woodpecker.
Following nature’s lead means
understanding how natural
processes, like fire, create habitat.
It is easy to visualize how frequent
low intensity fire can create and
maintain open stands of large
diameter ponderosa pine. Happily,
this is the type of habitat that
management can help create by
heavily thinning out smaller
diameter trees, leaving the big old
trees and applying fire.
So this spring I have another
reason to head into the Blues, as
if hunting turkeys, searching for
morels, or getting in an early season
camping trip weren’t reason enough
for getting out of town. I’ll have to
fi ne-tune my search image for the
right habitat of open stands of large
pine, but I can already think of a
few places that fi t that description.
Maybe, just maybe, fortune will
smile on me and I’ll spot a white-
headed woodpecker.
Wish me luck.
———
Bill Aney is a forester and wild-
life biologist living in Pendleton and
loving the Blue Mountains.
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