Applegater Spring 2015
Applegate Valley Community Newspaper, Inc.
P.O. Box 14
Jacksonville, OR 97530
Photo by Dakota Kappen
www.applegater.org
Celebrating
Applegate Valley Community Newsmagazine
SPRING 2015
Volume 8, No. 1
1
Serving Jackson and Josephine Counties — Circulation: 10,500
Family Fun & Food!
Years
Look Who’s Reading the Gater!
Joint benefit for
the Applegater
and Cantrall Buckley Park
Sunday, May 31
3 – 6 pm
Applegate River Lodge
LIVE MUSIC
Lora Lyn Band
Rainy and the Rattlesnakes
Dinner at Tony’s Taverna in Malibu, California, was followed by a leisurely and
thoroughly enjoyable read through the Applegater by none other than, left to right,
Tony, the owner of this Greek restaurant, Josh Bratt, Greg Bratt, and
Benjamin Bratt, movie and television star (seen recently in Modern Family and Private Practice).
FACE PAINTING
and other kids’ activities
FOOD & BEVERAGES
BBQ hot dog, cowboy beans and potato salad $1
Complimentary chips and lemonade
Wine and beer
available for purchase
by jakob shockey
$15 Adult
$5 Kids
RAFFLE PRIZES
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT
Applegate Store • Hidden Valley Market
Ruch Country Store • Ray’s in Jacksonville
Joshua Morton: Hard-working
artist-teacher gives back
by diana coogle
A Williams resident since 2007,
Joshua Morton, artist and wrestler,
Grants Pass High School art teacher and
wrestling coach, is proof of Jimi Hendrix’s
declaration: “If there is something to be
changed in this world, then it can only
happen through music.”
The status of art scholarships was
something that needed to be changed, at
least in the world of Joshua’s community.
The few art scholarships available were
of $100 or $150 value. It was music that
made Joshua act on that need.
Joshua loves live concerts—
the crowd, the waiting in the parking
lots, the people he meets before the
show, the festival atmosphere: “the whole
amazingness of it all,” as he puts it. “It’s
like Christmas—everyone is in a better
mood. Everyone is more helpful, nicer.”
That atmosphere of generosity at the music
concert made him want to be like that in
the real world.
So three years ago he started
the One Sweet World Fund, under the
umbrella of Josephine County Educational
Fund, for an annual scholarship to be given
to a Grants Pass High School graduating
senior who has taken an art course from
Local Postal Customer
High extinction risk
for Applegate coho
see joshUa MoRTon, page 23
Nonprofit Org
US Postage
PAID
Permit #125
Medford OR
ECRWSS
In November 2014, the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released
their final recovery plan for our region’s
coho salmon. These southern Oregon
and Northern California coastal coho,
often referenced as the “SONCC Coho”
to avoid top-heavy sentences, inhabit
only the watersheds of our mythical
State of Jefferson. The plan is heavy with
nomenclature and population recovery
modeling, and I’ve already had to use two
acronyms in as many sentences just to
introduce it. However, it is also the story of
a survival struggle—within our watershed,
on our properties, and by a neighbor whose
family has lived in the area much longer
than we have.
Talk to an old-timer or read
historic field journals on the Rogue
Basin, and you will hear the stories
of salmon “so thick you could walk on
their backs and fish with a pitchfork.” As
this Final SONCC Coho Recovery Plan
states: “Not long ago, these watersheds
provided conditions that supported
robust and resilient populations of coho
salmon that could persist under dynamic
environmental conditions.” However,
both inadvertently and by design, we have
changed the conditions of our region’s
watersheds over the past 150 years, and
today these populations have reached a
tipping point.
This point, labeled a deposition
threshold in the NMFS plan, can also be
called an extinction spiral. This is when
a species goes from “limping along” to
a dramatic decline, when the numbers
of returning coho spawners are so few
they can no longer find each other in
our tributaries to mate. The deposition
threshold for the Middle Rogue and
Applegate Rivers is estimated at 734
spawners, while a healthy run would be
at least 2,400. Two of the last four years
surveyed have been well below that 734
spawners threshold, and there has been
an 11 percent annual population decline
for the past 12 years. These and other data
led NMFS to classify the Middle Rogue/
Applegate River population of SONCC
coho as at “high risk for extinction.” We
are witnessing the tipping point for this
region’s native coho salmon.
What went wrong? Salmon, after
all, are known for being tough, resilient,
and independent. In this, they have
come to signify the spirit of the Pacific
Northwest. Yet salmon are dependent on
a functioning riparian habitat, and therein
lies the problem.
It’s hard to visualize how much we’ve
changed this habitat as we have settled into
this watershed—how much our baseline
for what a creek looks like has shifted over
the generations of settlement. The native
Takelma people once called the Applegate
River valley “the beaver place.” These
beavers were trapped out and their ponds,
once grouped along our streams like beads
on a thread, disappeared.
Gold mining further altered
the hydrology of our streams, and
conifers were cut away from the creeks
as the most accessible timber. With
agriculture came levees to straighten and
contain our river and streams, and dams
to divert water.
Woody debris was cleaned out of the
creeks to prevent logjams, while invasive
species slowly crept into the riparian
forests, choking out young trees and thus
eventually increasing sunlight on the creek.
The water heated up. Nitrogen runoff from
fertilized fields, septic systems and cattle
see coho eXTincTion Risk, page 2