Opinion
A4
Thursday, July 7, 2022
OUR VIEW
Change of
heart about
VA plan is
good news
G
ood news from Congress is often hard
to come by but the recent announcement
from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden’s offi ce that
a plan to modify the Jonathan M. Wainwright
Memorial VA Medical Center in Walla Walla into
an outpatient clinic is no longer an option was a
bright spot among the usual fare of depressing
information that leaks from the nation’s capital.
Wyden said in a press release last week he
“welcomed the news” that a group of bipartisan
senators will block the plan originally confi gured
by the veterans Asset and Infrastructure Review
Commission. That plan would have shut down
the 31-bed residential rehabilitation and treatment
program and moved it to Spokane.
Wyden, in a recent town hall meeting, reported
he’d heard from veterans about how the plan to
turn the facility into an outpatient clinic would
make a negative impact.
All the gratitude for the decision can’t rest with
Wyden, of course, as a number of other promi-
nent senators also chimed in to stop the plan from
becoming a reality. Yet, Wyden’s infl uence was
surely a factor and we thank the senator for that
assistance.
The fact is the concept was a bankrupt one
from the very beginning. Why the federal gov-
ernment would want to shortchange our veterans
on any issue is not only a mystery but grossly
unfair. Surely money had a lot to do with the
decision. It is no secret the costs of the Veterans
Administration continue to climb at an unprec-
edented rate. Taxpayers are ultimately billed for
those costs, just like taxpayers end up footing the
bill for any confl ict the nation fi nds itself in.
Caring for our veterans is one of those unseen
and often not talked about aspects of our foreign
policy. When the call erupts across the nation
to let slip the dogs of war, the upfront costs are
always high. Yet when a confl ict is over, those
costs continue as the men and women who shoul-
dered the burden need long-term, costly care.
We owe our veterans a great deal, including
excellent health care. The fact the plan to turn the
Walla Walla clinic into an outpatient center has
been abandoned is good news.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the
opinion of The Observer edito-
rial board. Other columns, let-
ters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the
authors and not necessarily that
of The Observer.
LETTERS
• The Observer welcomes letters
to the editor. We edit letters for
brevity, grammar, taste and legal
reasons. We will not publish con-
sumer complaints against busi-
nesses, personal attacks against
private individuals or comments
that can incite violence. We also
discourage thank-you letters.
• Letters should be no longer
than 350 words and must be
signed and carry the author’s
name, address and phone
number (for verifi cation only).
We will not publish anonymous
letters.
• Letter writers are limited to one
letter every two weeks.
• Longer community comment
columns, such as Other Views,
must be no more than 700 words.
Writers must provide a recent
headshot and a one-sentence
biography. Like letters to the
editor, columns must refrain from
complaints against businesses or
personal attacks against private
individuals. Submissions must
carry the author’s name, address
and phone number.
• Submission does not guarantee
publication, which is at the dis-
cretion of the editor.
SEND LETTERS TO:
letters@lagrandeobserver.com
or via mail to Editor, 911 Jeff erson
Ave., La Grande, OR 97850
A signal we should all pay att ention to
NORM
CIMON
OTHER VIEWS
T
hanks to The Observer for
publishing a range of views
about forest management.
Those articles have focused on how
trees store carbon, and the per-
ceived value of forest collaboratives.
There’s a bigger picture that needs
to be understood, one that touches
on both.
It’s well known that a changing cli-
mate can take us down a path we can’t
quickly return from. That’s the evi-
dence from core samples drilled deep
into ancient ice. Regular cycles have
warmed and cooled our Earth over the
last 400,000 years. Very rapid tran-
sitions to a much warmer Earth are
followed by a slower return to cooler
periods that can last thousands of
years.
Now that we humans are pulling
the climate strings, there’s no
knowing where this might lead. The
wild gyrations we’ve been seeing,
from blistering hot for days on end to
a spring that only recently arrived, are
a message we need to heed. That may
signal even bigger changes.
That variability also reworks eco-
systems. Climate records show that
forests develop, expand and contract
under specifi c conditions of precipi-
tation and temperature. Once estab-
lished they can persist and thrive even
through climate swings.
In the Wasatch Range, which dom-
inates the skyline in northern Utah,
thick groves of gambel oak are every-
where at higher elevation. But when
the ground fi nally warms, it’s too
dry for trees to reproduce from seeds
— though they easily germinate in
a lab setting. The oaks we see are,
instead, part of one large organism,
a root mass that corkscrews its way
up mountainsides. It sends up a thick
growth of leafy stems above ground,
visible to us as small trees. The
clones, as they’re called, can be tens
of thousands of years old. In all like-
lihood, they migrate with the climate,
seeding out successfully when condi-
tions allow, hoarding resources under-
ground when they don’t.
A similar story plays out here
in the interior Nothwest. Stringers
of trees work their way down from
the slopes, forming a thick carpet in
north-south running canyons like
the Lostine. Direct sun only visits
that realm for a few hours every day.
The deep dark spruce-fi r forest that
results harbors a very diff erent plant
community from the one just a few
miles north, where the Lostine River
spills out onto the open prairie.
Such deeply shaded old-growth
forests can sustain an ecosystem
through hotter and drier periods,
even over centuries, till cooler tem-
peratures and plentiful rainfall
return again. They do so as David
Mildrexler has written about, also in
The Observer: by creating their own
ecosystem reality. They tap water
underground, and move it closer to
the surface, which hosts plant com-
munities dependent on that moisture.
Water is also pumped to the very
top of those big trees that transpire
it into the canopy above the forest
stand, maintaining the microclimate
Norm Cimon, of La Grande, is a member of
Oregon Rural Action, a nonprofit, but his
column represents his opinion only.
STATE 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
STATE SENATOR
Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-415
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
STAFF
SUBSCRIBEAND SAVE
Subscription rates:
Monthly Autopay ...............................$10.75
13 weeks.................................................$37.00
26 weeks.................................................$71.00
52 weeks ..............................................$135.00
█
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
NEWSSTAND PRICE: $1.50
You can save up to 55% off the single-copy
price with home delivery.
Call 800-781-3214 to subscribe.
they’ve created. That’s something
anyone who’s found cool refuge in
such a forest on a hot summer day
understands instinctively.
Because mature trees can be quite
old — those that grow in the North-
west are some of the longest-lived
of their kind — they can hold on
until favorable climate conditions
return again, taking advantage of
the changes to expand their range.
Seen this way, the ecosystem is a
sort of super-organism, growing and
changing over time.
Older trees also store very large
amounts of carbon. In wetter for-
ests those trees can be covered with
lichens and mosses that add even
more to the storehouse. Log the big
trees from those stands and there
is no guaranteed return path to that
wetter ecosystem. The water isn’t
going to be as available to younger
growth, the new vegetation will be
hotter and drier, and the forest open-
ings will no longer support the same
plant community. It could be a very
long time before conditions allow for
reemergence of that ecosystem. The
microclimate has vanished.
That brings focus back to Los-
tine Canyon, a very wet place. That
cool refuge off ers us a humble lesson
we should take to heart. We live on
the margin of wet and dry. Over
thousands of years, our forests have
adapted to that reality. We need to
do the same by keeping them intact.
That’s a signal we all need to
heed.
Anindependent newspaper foundedin1896
www.lagrandeobserver.com
Periodicals postage paid at Pendleton, Oregon 97801
Published Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays
(except postal holidays) by EO Media Group,
911 Jefferson Ave., La Grande, OR 97850
(USPS 299-260)
The Observer retains ownership and copyright
protection of all staff-prepared news copy, advertising
copy, photos and news or ad illustrations. They may
not be reproduced without explicit prior approval.
COPYRIGHT © 2022
Phone:
541-963-3161
Regional publisher ....................... Karrine Brogoitti
Home delivery adviser.......... Amanda Turkington
Interim editor ....................................Andrew Cutler
Advertising representative ..................... Kelli Craft
News clerk ........................................Lisa Lester Kelly
Advertising representative .................... Amy Horn
Reporter....................................................Dick Mason
National accounts coordinator ...... Devi Mathson
Reporter...........................................Isabella Crowley
Graphic design .................................. Dorothy Kautz
Toll free (Oregon):
1-800-781-3214
Email:
news@lagrandeobserver.com
POSTMASTER
Send address changes to:
The Observer,
911 Jefferson Ave.,
La Grande, OR 97850
A division of