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August 18, 2022
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4, 2022
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THURSDAY EDITION
PA GE 3
Taste
Melon
Fest
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Pione y e
Da
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H ER ITAG
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STAT IO
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AN N UA
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PA GE 8
Police
make
arrest
in hit
and run
Elijah Ward
arrested in
connection to
weekend death of
Maison Andrew
By ISABELLA CROWLEY
The Observer
LA GRANDE — Law
enforcement arrested a La
Grande man Tuesday, Aug.
16, in connection with the
hit-and-run death of Maison
Andrew, according to a press
release from the La Grande
Police Department.
Elijah Ward, 26, was
arrested after offi cers
located the car parked out-
side his residence at 609 Y
Ave., according to Police
Chief Gary Bell. During the
course of the investigation,
police connected the hit-
and-run with a white 2009
Mitsubishi Galant.
The investigation began
after La Grande police
responded to a report at
5:30 a.m. Aug. 13, of a dead
male on the side of 16th
Street. La Grande police offi -
cers responded and imme-
diately confi rmed the indi-
vidual had died.
The investigation revealed
that a vehicle traveling
south on 16th Street struck
Andrew as he was walking
on the street sometime during
the night, according to La
Grande police Lt. Jason Hays.
The driver fl ed without con-
tacting emergency services.
Ward was taken into cus-
tody without incident and
booked in the Union County
Jail, according to Bell. He
has been charged with sec-
ond-degree manslaughter
and failure to perform the
duties of a driver to an
injured person. So far, Ward
has cooperated with the
investigation, Bell said.
The investigation is
ongoing and additional
charges may be fi lled. La
Grande police also urged
anyone with pertinent infor-
mation to contact Sgt. Ryan
Miller at 541-963-1017.
KEEP HISTORY ALIVE ON PIONEER DAY AUG. 20
PA GE 7
Listen
Jazz
Trio
PA GE 4
g new
omethin
at
HATCHED
to be wild
Why Tribes are
pursuing a
controversial salmon
recovery strategy
By COLE SINANIAN
Columbia Insight
E
LGIN — Rick Zollman
stands at the edge of a
rectangular, concrete
pool, peering into the water
below. Tens of thousands of
juvenile chinook salmon rush
toward him, their speckled backs
and silver bellies glistening in
the afternoon sun.
Zollman waves and smiles
at the fi sh as they leap from
the water to greet him, condi-
tioned to expect food when they
sense the presence of their loyal
caretaker.
Each of the 18 pools — or
raceways — at Northeast Ore-
gon’s Lookingglass Hatchery,
outside of Elgin, holds roughly
65,000 juvenile chinooks,
totaling nearly 1.5 million fi sh.
The fi sh were hatched here in
January from parents collected
in one of fi ve of the region’s
rivers, then transferred to the
raceways in spring. They’ll
remain here for a year, growing
and maturing until ready for
release into the wild.
Shaded by towering lodge-
pole and ponderosa pines, Look-
ingglass Hatchery sits along
Lookingglass Creek in the his-
toric homeland of the Nez Perce
Tribe.
The Nez Perce have exclu-
sive fi shing rights to Looking-
glass Creek, one of the Tribe’s
traditional fi shing spots. For cen-
turies, Nez Perce families have
gathered here to harvest salmon
returning from the Pacifi c.
The tribe uses the hatchery
to restore the area’s natural pop-
ulation of wild chinook, in the
Cole Sinanian/Columbia Insight
Rick Zollman checks in on a pen full of broodstock at Lookingglass Hatchery, outside of Elgin.
hatchery.
The goal is to ensure that the
fi sh released from the hatchery
are from the same genetic lin-
eage as the wild stock, so they
can return to spawn natu-
rally, eff ectively making their
off spring a part of the wild
population.
Many scientists and
hopes that they may one day
reach levels that support consis-
tent harvest.
The hatchery dilemma
In a controversial practice
known as “supplementation,”
Lookingglass managers take
mature wild fi sh from the area’s
streams and spawn them at the
conservationists have pointed
to hatcheries as a contributing
factor to the demise of wild
salmon stocks in the Pacifi c
Northwest. Releasing hun-
dreds of millions of domes-
ticated hatchery fi sh into the
watershed each year allows for
See, Salmon/Page A7
Johnson submits petitions in bid for Oregon governor
By GARY A. WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Oregon governor
candidate Betsy Johnson sub-
mitted petitions to
the Secretary of
State on Tuesday,
Aug. 16, to qualify
her insurgent bid for
governor in the Nov.
8 general election.
Johnson
The campaign
for Johnson, the
former Democratic state senator
from Columbia County, delivered
boxes it said contained petitions
with 48,214 signatures to Sec-
retary of State Shemia Fagan at
noon Tuesday.
The county by Johnson’s cam-
paign would be twice the min-
imum number of valid signatures
required and even with the usual
attrition of invalid signers would
be “well over the number nec-
essary to qualify,” said Johnson
campaign spokesperson Jennifer
Sitton.
Democrat Tina Kotek and
Republican Christine Drazan won
their parties’ May 17 primaries
and will also be on the ballot.
Fagan’s offi ce is in the Public
Administration Building in Salem
while the nearby Capitol under-
goes extensive renovations.
Oregon Public Broadcasting
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reported Johnson made a brief
appearance at the event, thanking
supporters for the eff ort.
“Why did they do this?” she
said. “They love Oregon. They
want a better Oregon, free from
partisan paralysis.”
OPB reported Johnson
did not take questions
from the press who had
gathered to cover the peti-
tion drives’ ending. Aug. 16
was the deadline that Fagan
had set to give her offi ce enough
time to validate the signatures
by the Aug. 30 deadline to add
Johnson to the November ballot.
The next step will be for Elec-
tion Division offi cials to validate
Full forecast on the back of B section
Tonight
Friday
63 LOW
93/58
Partly cloudy
Very warm
signatures by checking a random
sampling suffi cient to show any
problems with the overall signa-
ture eff ort.
If Johnson were to win elec-
tion, she would be only the second
governor elected without a
major party nomination.
Julius Meier, an indepen-
dent, was elected to one
term in 1935.
Johnson (or Drazan)
would be the fi rst non-Dem-
ocrat woman elected governor.
Gov. Barbara Roberts was the
state’s fi rst woman elected gov-
ernor, in 1990. She and Kate
Brown, the current governor, are
Democrats.
CONTACT US
541-963-3161
Issue 99
3 sections, 20 pages
La Grande, Oregon
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