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7A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2017 Birds: Godwits travel thousands of miles on their migrations Continued from Page 1A “Most likely they got caught in a weather system that trans- ported them across the Pacific and here instead of north into Alaska,” Lowe said. “No one really knows but obviously this is unprecedented.” Birders spotted four bar- tailed godwits in Newport at the end of April. “And we fig- ured that was interesting,” said Patterson. “At the time four was a big deal.” People kept reporting a sighting here, a sighting there. “By the time I finally found them it was kind of, ‘Well, it’s about time,’” Patterson said. He has seen bar-tailed godwits before, but never in the spring. For these birds, being blown off-course means they might not make it up to Alaska in time for the breeding season. They’ll need to rebuild fat reserves, Lowe said, a process that takes weeks, assuming they can find the right kind of food here. “I suspect it would be way too late and take too much energy to breed this year,” Lowe said. The godwits travel thou- sands of miles on their annual migrations. They fly from New Zealand to China, stopping at the Yellow Sea’s tideland Mike Patterson/Submitted Photo Mike Patterson spotted 17 adult bar-tailed godwits on a stretch from Gearhart to the Peter Iredale shipwreck on Wednesday. flats in March to fatten up for a month, then proceeding on to Alaska and then back to New Zealand. Birds fixed with sat- ellite tracking gear have logged upward of 7,000 miles in a sin- gle nine-day slog. Throughout much of their migration, “they’re lucky if they see an island enroute,” Lowe said. ‘Big as a chicken’ Bar-tailed godwits are fairly large. Patterson describes them as “big as a chicken” with long legs and a very long bill “that turns up at the end like Bob Hope.” If you know what you’re looking for, he says, they are very distinctive even when compared to other god- wit species. Lowe is used to seeing the adult birds somewhere else entirely — in China, on fragile tidal wetlands along the Yellow Sea between China and North Korea and South Korea. He has traveled there seven times, since he retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2015, as a volunteer with Global Parks, a nonprofit group made up of retired profession- als with similar backgrounds in parks, conservation and wild- life and resource management. With funding from the Paulson Institute, he and others have been working on wetland con- servation with the Chinese. The habitat in the Yellow Sea is crucial for the bar-tailed godwits, but it is an area where they are quickly losing their footing. It’s a familiar story to West Coast residents, though on a much more massive scale: rapid development encroach- ing on wetland habitat and spe- cies getting lost in the mix. In China, whole cities and ports are filling up former wetlands, Lowe said. In their long travels back and forth, the godwits need these areas to build up fat reserves. “If they don’t have the Yel- low Sea, they’re in real trou- ble,” Lowe said. “We can do great stuff in Alaska, but if everyone else doesn’t do their part, these birds can’t make a go of it.” Threatened wetlands “The coastal wetlands are the most threatened, but least protected, ecosystems in China,” stated a summary of findings for a conserva- tion and management plan for the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea announced in Beijing in 2015. In the past 50 years, the coun- try has lost more than half of its temperate coastal ecosystem and the majority of its man- groves and coral reefs due to economic development. Recently, a number of coun- tries, including New Zealand and Great Britain, and groups like Global Parks, have started working with the Chinese to protect these areas. Lowe and Patterson say birders should get out on the beach while they can; the god- wits will not stick around for long. But Lowe, a photogra- pher in his spare time, has a request to dog owners: Don’t let them chase shorebirds. To nonbirders, the different birds on the beach all resem- ble each other and dogs don’t usually discriminate, at all. If you could follow a godwit out on the beach, you would soon find out, as Lowe has looking through his camera scope, that dogs up and down the coast are chasing shorebirds all day long. And maybe, Lowe said, those particular shorebirds have just flown from New Zealand. Missing: Merrill ‘has access to firearms which were not recovered’ Continued from Page 1A amount” of guns, and a smaller safe containing ammunition had been “totally destroyed.” The burglars had also taken coins and silver. As he took in the scene, the brother remembered that just as he arrived, he’d heard two male voices coming from the property next door, before a car started up and sped away. The sniff test Pacific County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Goodwin quickly realized this burglary was dif- ferent from the hasty “smash and grab” crimes he usually dealt with. “The moment I walked in the shop, I knew exactly how they got into the safe,” Good- win wrote in his report. A dis- tinctive, familiar odor made him instantly recall a long-ago job, assembling trucks. “The smell I recognized was the smell of a grinder on metal,” Goodwin said. He found gouges from a grinder and crowbar all over the safe, and the blue tinge from a torch on the damaged hinges. Thieves had used a cutting torch to destroy the smaller safe. Outside, Goodwin noticed a mole hill that had been kicked over and box of ammuni- tion scattered on a small trail. He followed the trail to an old motor home on the neighbor- ing property. When the owner arrived from Arizona two days later, he discovered that financial records, tools, knives and doc- umentation for the guns were missing, too. The burglars had used the man’s own grinder to break into his safe. The runaway lookout A week later, a man named Carter Strever called Goodwin. Sounding panicked, Strever, 48, allegedly told the deputy “the burglary was not his idea.” Eventually, he explained that he was supposed to act as a lookout for the Ocean Park bur- glary, but he’d gotten mad and left. Strever reportedly said one of the men who broke in named was “Kurt,” and the other was Richard Quartier. He said he and Quartier, 57, had both pre- viously lived in RVs on the vic- tim’s neighbor’s property. The neighbor, George Kopp, told Goodwin that three weeks before, Strever had sud- denly given Kopp his motor home, and asked for a ride to the Astoria Bridge. Around the same time, the victim said when he went to Kopp’s house to ask him about the burglary, he saw his own stolen powder horn hanging on the wall. Kopp gave it back, and said he’d found it inside the motor home. Guns on the run The day after the raid on Merrill’s home and businesses, they served a warrant at his unit at Pioneer Storage. They didn’t find any guns. A source told Sheriff’s Office Detective Ryan Tully that Jeffrey Walton, the man- ager of the storage facility, had covered up the surveillance cameras, and moved the guns to a different unit. Walton, 57, initially denied having any- thing to do with the guns, or with Merrill, but later admitted to knowing Merrill, according to police documents. The burglary investigation stalled out. Cutting torch and incentive In late April, deputies met with a woman who claimed to know Merrill very well. Facing legal problems of her own, she volunteered to work as a confi- dential informant. She alleged that Quartier and Kurt Jones, 54, had done the burglary, with help from Kopp. But, she said, Merrill had provided the men with both a cutting torch and an incentive. According to the informant, when they finally cracked the safe, Jones and Quartier took the guns to Kopp’s house. Mer- rill allegedly came over the next night, and bought the guns for “$4,000 and some dope.” Quartier and Jones split the money. She also said that shortly after the April 4 raid, Merrill had transferred a storage unit to her name. She claimed Mer- rill’s collection included the Ocean Park guns, as well as guns taken from other places. Later, investigators learned that when they searched Mer- rill’s unit, the guns were actu- ally close by, in the informant’s unit. Walton and the informant then allegedly moved them again, to an empty unit. In late April, Tully served a warrant on units belonging to Walton and the informant, then did a basic search of all the other storage units at Pioneer, but didn’t find anything. A failed gun sale By early May, the guns had been moved to a unit at Afford- able Storage, the informant said. She agreed to help the cops get them. In a May 10 meeting that included an undercover detec- tive from Oregon, she called Walton and told him she had a buyer who would pay $15,000 for the guns. He agreed to make the sale. The following day, they sorted out the details: allegedly, Walton would get $11,000, and she would get $4,000 for acting as go-between. She asked for photos of the guns. According to Tully’s report, the pictures showed “assault rifles, pistols and shotguns. One of the fire- arms appeared to be a sawed- off shotgun.” That evening, a under- cover officer and the infor- mant went to Affordable Stor- age, where they met two men, Bryan Haberman, 37, and Jef- frey Bean, 20. The men told them the guns would be ready in 10 minutes. At that point, Tully arrived with two deputies and arrested Habermann and Bean. Inside the facility, Tully said, “I observed at least 20 to 30 fire- arms laid out on the floor.” parking, residential appear- ance, garbage service, sep- tic-sewer capacity inspections and cesspool requirements not required of other residents. A summary of the ballot initiative underwent changes as a result of a decision issued by Circuit Court Judge Dawn McIntosh in May. Petitioners are still working to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Gearhart property owner David Townsend, who has fought the regulations, could not immediately be reached for comment. Jim Whittemore, one of the appellants, said he needed to review the decision before commenting. Proponents of the ordi- New charges Haberman, Bean and Wal- ton face charges first-degree trafficking in stolen property and possession of stolen fire- arms. Haberman faces an addi- tional charge of heroin posses- sion while armed with a deadly weapon. Quartier was arrested on May 15. Kopp was arrested on May 17, and was recently released on bail. Strever was arrested in Clark County in late May, and transferred to Pacific County Jail. He remains in cus- tody, according to McClain. Jones has not been appre- hended yet, McClain said. Quartier, Kopp, Strever and Jones face charges of first-degree burglary, theft of a firearm and theft of a motor vehicle. Arrest and release dates, cities of residence and bail amounts were not available for some suspects, because the Pacific County Sheriff’s Office has temporarily removed arrest and booking information from their website. Merrill was released on $250,000 bail several days after his April 4 arrest. When he failed to show up in May, McClain sought a nationwide warrant for his arrest. He asked that bail be set at $1 million this time, noting in his May 24 request that Merrill “has access to firearms which were not recovered.” On top of the April drug charges, Merrill now faces charges of first-degree bur- glary, theft of a firearm and theft of a motor vehicle. 1 Haberman and Bean 2 Bean claimed he worked for Haberman’s moving business. He said he didn’t know until he arrived at the facility that his boss wanted him to help move stolen guns. Haberman said he knew Walton because he had an office at Pioneer Storage, for which Walton had a key. He claimed that Walton moved the guns into his office after police searched the first storage units. Walton allegedly asked him to help him find a new hiding place for the guns, saying he was moving them on behalf of Gearhart: As of late May, city was looking at 285 short-term rentals for all of its zones Continued from Page 1A “Tony.” Haberman allegedly agreed to help in exchange for three guns. A Long Beach officer arrested Walton at Pioneer Stor- age. In custody, he allegedly admitted Merrill had moved firearms into his storage unit, then transferred them to the informant. Walton allegedly admitted he moved them sev- eral more times to keep police from finding them. He was to receive $4,000 for his trouble. When the Ocean Park bur- glary victim visited the Afford- able Storage unit, he iden- tified 12 of his stolen guns, along with ammunition and accessories. nances argue the regulations help maintain Gearhart’s res- idential feel, while those who want to change the rules say the regulations discriminate against rental-home owners. As of late May, Brown said the city was looking at about 285 short-term rentals for all zones, equating to about 15 to 20 percent of total dwelling units in Gearhart. 3 4 1. 2. 3. 4. CMH cares for the whole family. You can pay your bill online. CMH provides an athletic trainer to schools at no cost. Our volunteers are priceless! 2111 Exchange St., Astoria, Oregon • 503-325-4321 www.columbiamemorial.org • A Planetree-Designated Hospital
