144TH YEAR, NO. 133
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017
ONE DOLLAR
Technology
may offer
struggling
timber hope
Two mills test panels
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
and PHUONG LE
Associated Press
RIDDLE — John Redfield watches with
pride as his son moves a laser-guided preci-
sion saw the size of a semi-truck wheel into
place over a massive panel of wood.
Redfield’s fingers are scarred from a life-
time of cutting wood and now, after decades
of decline in the logging business, he has
new hope that his son, too, can make a career
shaping the timber felled in southern Ore-
gon’s forests.
See TIMBER, Page 4A
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
A crew works on CREST’s Columbia-Pacific Passage Habitat Restoration project located along Highway 401 on Thursday in Washington.
Reconnecting the
river with the past
Fish-passage work
brings Megler Creek
back to the time of
Corps of Discovery
Shielded
sites thrust
into debate
over dams
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
ISMAL NITCH, Wash. — Beset by
wind, rain and thunder, the Corps of Dis-
covery made camp Nov. 12, 1805, near
Dismal Nitch at the foot of a small, unnamed
stream, today known as Megler Creek.
Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal of
how the Corps, trying to replenish stocks of
pounded fish, killed at least 15 salmon in the
stream to supplement their meager rations.
Until recently, the creek where the Corps
encamped more than 210 years ago ran under a
damaged 48-inch culvert beneath the rock rip-
rap of Washington State Route 401, limiting
fish passage to a trickle during high tides.
But a partnership between the Lewis and
Clark National Historical Park and the Colum-
bia River Estuary Study Taskforce will soon
restore Megler Creek to its historic levels of
fish passage.
AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus
John Redfield, chief operating officer
of D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. in Riddle,
poses for a photo as he shows an ex-
ample of a cross-laminated timber, or
CLT, panel that underwent a flammabil-
ity test. D.R. Johnson is one of just two
companies in the United States current-
ly able to produce the panels.
D
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
The Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce’s Columbia-Pacific Passage Habitat
Restoration project hopes to restore salmon passage to Megler Creek.
A project by the Co-
lumbia River Estuary
Study Taskforce and
National Park Service
is replacing a damaged
48-inch culvert through
which Megler Creek
travels under Wash-
ington State Route 401
with a 12-foot concrete
culvert. The project will
improve fish passage
and create miles of
cold-water spawning
habitat similar to what
the Corps of Discovery
encountered more than
200 years ago.
Piercing the armor
“Research has indicated that nearly 80 per-
cent of juvenile out-migrants are using this
Washington shoreline as they’re migrating out
to sea,” said Jason Smith, a habitat restoration
project manager with CREST overseeing the
culvert replacement.
Juvenile salmon migrating out to sea need
off-channel rest stops as they acclimate to
salty water, just as adult salmon need habitat to
spawn eggs in when coming home. But along a
9-mile stretch of waterfront between Knappton
Columbia River Estuary
Study Taskforce
See CREEK, Page 7A
Native American sites
caught up in fish fight
By KEITH RIDLER
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — A little-known federal
program that avoids publicizing its accom-
plishments to protect from looters the thou-
sands of Native American sites it’s tasked
with managing has been caught up in a big
net.
The Federal Columbia River System Cul-
tural Resources Program tracks some 4,000
historical sites that also include homesteads
and missions in Oregon, Washington state ,
Idaho and Montana.
Now it’s contributing information as
authorities prepare a court-ordered environ-
mental impact statement concerning strug-
gling salmon and the operation of 14 federal
dams in the Columbia River Basin.
See DAMS, Page 7A
Researchers explore sea lion feast at Bonneville dam
Sea lions spread
salmon-eating
behaviors
Columbia Basin Bulletin
A new study used the same
kind of models that scientists
use to track disease to instead
examine how some Califor-
nia sea lions have learned to
prey on salmon gathering to
ascend fish ladders at Bonne-
ville Dam.
Although sea lions com-
monly feast on fish, their pre-
dation on salmon at Bonne-
ville Dam on the Columbia
River poses wildlife man-
agement challenges. The sea
lions that gather on the Colum-
bia each spring are protected
by the federal Marine Mam-
mal Protection Act, while the
salmon they are eating are pro-
tected by the Endangered Spe-
cies Act.
In 2008, NOAA Fisheries
authorized Oregon, Washing-
ton state and Idaho wildlife
authorities to begin trapping,
removing and sometimes
euthanizing sea lions shown
to repeatedly prey on salmon
at the dam. The removal pro-
gram was designed to reduce
impacts on protected salmon.
NOAA Fisheries recently
authorized the states to con-
tinue the removals over the
next five years.
The new study exam-
ined the effectiveness of the
removal program, employ-
ing epidemiological models to
assess how the behavior of eat-
ing salmon at the dam passes
among sea lions.
The research concluded
that the removal program has
successfully slowed the trans-
mission of the behavior among
sea lions, but would have been
more effective if it had started
sooner.
Intervene early
The findings highlight the
need to act early “from both a
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
See SEA LIONS, Page 7A
Water flows through the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia
River near Cascade Locks.