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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2017
Family held captive by Taliban-linked group released
By JILL COLVIN,
LOLITA C. BALDOR
and MUNIR AHMED
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — An
American woman, her Cana-
dian husband and their three
young children have been
released after years of being
held captive by a group with
ties to the Taliban and called
a terrorist organization by
the United States, American
and Pakistani officials said
Thursday.
U.S. officials said Pakistan
secured the release of Cait-
lan Coleman of Stewartstown,
Pa., and her husband, Cana-
dian Joshua Boyle, who were
abducted five years ago while
traveling in Afghanistan and
had been held by the Haqqani
network.
Coleman was pregnant
when she was captured. The
couple had three children
while in captivity, and all have
been freed, U.S. officials said.
“Yesterday, the United
States government, working
in conjunction with the Gov-
ernment of Pakistan, secured
the release of the Boyle-Cole-
man family from captivity
in Pakistan,” President Don-
ald Trump said in a statement.
“Today they are free.”
Trump later praised Paki-
stan for its willingness to “do
more to provide security in
the region” and said he release
suggests other “countries are
starting to respect the United
States of America once again.”
The Pakistani military con-
firmed the release and said the
This still image made from a 2013 video released by the Cole-
man family shows Caitlan Coleman and her husband, Cana-
dian Joshua Boyle in a militant video given to the family.
AP Photo/Bill Gorman
In this 2014 photo, from left, Patrick Boyle, Linda Boyle, Lyn Coleman and Jim Coleman
hold a photo of their kidnapped children, Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman, who were
kidnapped by the Taliban in late 2012.
family was “being repatriated
to the country of their origin.”
But as of Thursday morn-
ing, the family’s precise
whereabouts were unclear and
it was not immediately known
when they would return to
North America. The fam-
ily was not in U.S. custody,
though they were together in
a safe, but undisclosed, loca-
tion in Pakistan, according to
a U.S. national security offi-
cial, who wasn’t authorized
to discuss the case publicly
and spoke on condition of
anonymity.
U.S. officials had planned
on moving the family out of
Pakistan on a U.S. transport
plane, but at the last minute
Boyle would not get on, the
official said.
Another U.S. official said
Boyle was nervous about
being in “custody” given his
background. Boyle was previ-
ously married to the sister of
Omar Khadr, a Canadian man
who spent 10 years at Guan-
tanamo Bay after being cap-
tured in 2002 in a firefight
at an al-Qaida compound in
Afghanistan.
Officials had discounted
any link between that back-
ground and Boyle’s capture,
with one official describ-
ing it in 2014 as a “horrible
coincidence.”
The couple has told U.S.
officials that they wanted to
fly commercially to Canada,
according to the official, who
spoke on condition of ano-
nymity because he wasn’t
authorized to speak publicly
about the situation.
The release came together
rapidly Wednesday. It hap-
pened nearly five years to the
day since Coleman and Boyle
lost touch with their families
while traveling in a mountain-
ous region near the Afghan
capital of Kabul.
The couple set off in the
summer 2012 for a jour-
ney that took them to Rus-
sia, the central Asian coun-
tries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan, and then to
Afghanistan. Coleman’s par-
ents last heard from their son-
in-law on Oct. 8, 2012, from
an internet cafe in what Boyle
described as an “unsafe” part
of Afghanistan.
In 2013, the couple
appeared in two videos asking
the U.S. government to free
them from the Taliban.
Coleman’s parents, Jim
and Lyn Coleman, told the
online Circa News service in
July 2016 that they received
a letter from their daughter in
November 2015, in which she
wrote that she’d given birth
to a second child in captivity.
It’s unclear whether they knew
she’d had a third.
“I pray to hear from you
again, to hear how everybody
is doing,” the letter said.
In that interview, Jim Cole-
man issued a plea to top Tal-
iban commanders to be “kind
and merciful” and let the cou-
ple go.
“As a man, father and now
grandfather, I am asking you
to show mercy and release my
daughter, her husband, and our
beautiful grandchildren,” Jim
Coleman said. “Please grant
them an opportunity to con-
tinue their lives with us, and
bring peace to their families.”
The family was being held
by the Haqqani network. U.S.
officials call the group a ter-
rorist organization and have
targeted its leaders with drone
strikes. But the group also
operates like a criminal net-
work. Unlike the Islamic State
group, it does not typically
execute Western hostages,
preferring to ransom them for
cash.
The U.S. has long criticized
Pakistan for failing to aggres-
sively go after the Haqqa-
nis. In recent remarks on his
Afghanistan policy, Trump
noted billions paid to Paki-
stan “at the same time they are
housing the very terrorists that
we are fighting. But that will
have to change, and that will
change immediately.”
Rentals: ‘The Pandora’s
box is open, and you’re
not going to shut it.’
Continued from Page 1A
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Mike Holland-Moritz makes his way through part of Fort Stevens State Park on Wednesday in search of wild mushrooms.
Mushrooms: Can live for several hundred years
Washington state’s Cape Dis-
appointment State Park have
had to keep an eye out for peo-
ple looking for similar variet-
ies there as well.
Oregon State Police Lt.
Andrew Merila recently noted
a decrease in the number of
cases coming across his desk,
but said this could be because
he is not able to run as many
patrols around Fort Stevens as
in the past.
Continued from Page 1A
Hunters and hunted
Mushroom caps gleam
with slime, explode in over-
lapping sprays on the sides of
fallen trees, peek out between
tree roots or under pine nee-
dles. Fort Stevens State Park
Ranger Dane Osis, who leads
regular wild mushroom hikes
through the park, has called the
Oregon Coast one of the best
places to hunt for mushrooms,
especially for edible varieties.
Even if you return from a
hunt empty-handed, seasoned
North Coast mushroom hunt-
ers will say the worst thing that
happened is you spent some
time in the woods.
Interest in edible mush-
room hunting has remained
strong over the years, if not
grown in popularity. Still, one
of the North Coast’s most visu-
ally stunning mushrooms is
not for eating.
When fall turns the ele-
ment-battered woods around
Fort Stevens gray and brown
and even the ferns have lost
their shine, the fly amanita
rises from the forest floor. It
is a mushroom straight from
the pages of “Alice in Won-
derland,” the fungi you find
mixed among poodles and
flowers in your smartphone’s
emoji options. With its bril-
liant red and orange cap and
scattered white warts, it is the
mushroom of popular cul-
ture. Troops of it march across
Fungi buddies
Stephen Walsh, of Port-
land, holds up a chante-
relle mushroom he found
while foraging with friends
in Fort Stevens State Park.
the forest floor at Fort Ste-
vens each fall; they can have
unpredictable toxic, and pos-
sibly dangerous, effects if
eaten, notes mycologist David
Aurora in his guide to Western
mushrooms “All That the Rain
Promises and More.”
In past years, however, peo-
ple have come to Fort Stevens
not to gape at the fly amanita,
but to hunt for an unremark-
able looking little mushroom
with hallucinogenic powers.
These mushrooms are consid-
ered a controlled substance,
illegal to harvest or possess.
Oregon State Police troop-
ers and Clatsop County law
enforcement once patrolled
Fort Stevens State Park regu-
larly this time of year. Across
the Columbia River, rangers at
The above-ground parts of
the mushroom — the prized
“fruiting bodies” — people
pick to eat for dinner, use to
get high or simply appreci-
ate for their strangeness and
beauty only tell one side of the
story, Cole said. Underground,
the forest is a world of “infinite
biological pathways,” as ecol-
ogist Suzanne Simard said in a
talk last summer — and mush-
rooms have a big role to play.
In recent years, Simard’s
work has contributed to a
growing understanding of
how forest ecosystems func-
tion, revealing that the below-
ground part of the mushroom
that digests nutrients and pro-
duces the above-ground fruit-
ing bodies, the mycelium,
often works in partnership
with trees. The mycelium
functions as an extension of
the trees’ root systems.
In his book “Mycelium
Running,” mycologist Paul
Stamets writes that mycelium
is tiny enough that “one cubic
inch of soil can contain enough
to stretch for 8 miles.”
“They’re so small that it
allows the trees access to way
more water and soil nutri-
ents than they’d be able to
get on their own,” Cole said.
In return, the trees supply the
fungi with food.
The partnership has big
implications for forest health.
In addition to being able to
bring more to their tree bud-
dies, the fungi functions as a
sort of communications sys-
tem between trees. Using
mycelium, a healthy tree can
send nutrients to a stressed tree
an acre or two away, Cole said.
“This becomes extremely
important in times of stress
or drought or in timber prac-
tices like clear-cuts,” she said.
“(This network) allows trees to
survive through harsh condi-
tions that the tree, on its own,
wouldn’t be able to survive.”
Mycelium can live for a
few days or several hundred
years, depending on where
it’s based and what it’s grow-
ing in. Adaptable and quick
to evolve, fungi can respond
swiftly to changes in the eco-
system. Trees exist on a very
different time scale than fungi
and may not be able to react
quickly to disease or stress,
but, said Cole, “Their fungal
partners can.”
Photographer and reporter
Colin Murphey contributed to
this report.
County staff estimates
the ordinance would impact
at least 173 property owners
in unincorporated areas who
rent out homes for up to 30
days, nearly double the 2010
estimate for vacation rentals.
The state does not regulate
short-term rentals to ensure
renters’ health and safety as it
does with hotels, motels and
bed-and-breakfasts.
Commissioners held a
work session Wednesday with
County Manager Cameron
Moore and County Counsel
Heather Reynolds.
Commissioner Kathleen
Sullivan handed out a memo
with a list of items she would
like included in the ordinance.
Those items include sep-
tic and sewage requirements
that match those in place in
Gearhart, property inspec-
tion at least every three years
— as opposed to the five-year
requirement written in the
most recent draft of the ordi-
nance — and a distinction
between types of short-term
rentals.
“This ordinance is actually
a great opportunity for us,”
Sullivan said. “Now we’re
moving toward digitizing our
information on this, but also
looking at the septic systems.”
Commissioner
Sarah
Nebeker was leery of includ-
ing additional regulations.
Nebeker, a Gearhart resident,
has been a vocal critic of the
city’s new regulations that will
be up for a vote in November.
The ballot measure would
repeal the regulations, require
home inspections and place
responsibility on owners to
self-report issues. Nebeker
and other supporters say the
new regulations are too harsh
and restrict property rights.
The commissioner said
Wednesday that she sup-
ports regulations at the county
level, but does not want them
to be as “draconian” as those
in Gearhart.
“If we put all the short-
term rentals into one pocket
and we make the restrictions
onerous on everyone, I’m not
supportive,” Nebeker said.
Some commissioners also
raised concerns about requir-
ing inspections at least every
three years, citing county
staff time issues and the fact
that inspections would cost
roughly $200. But Sullivan
maintained the ordinance
would be too ineffective if
regular inspections are not
conducted.
“I don’t think a $200
inspection every few years is
onerous,” Sullivan said.
Commissioner
Lianne
Thompson agreed that septic
inspections should be a pri-
ority and that a more efficient
system for reporting issues
must be created. She lives in
Arch Cape, which already has
established regulations, but
the neighborhood she lives in
opted out of them.
One short-term rental in
her neighborhood is con-
stantly overcrowded and she
can smell the sewage from
afar, she said. Other residents
have told her that their com-
plaints have not been ade-
quately addressed by the
county.
“This is a growing trend,
in my experience, because
I’ve tracked it,” Thompson
said.
Scott Lee, the board’s
chairman, and Moore said the
ordinance is a necessary start-
ing point and that more reg-
ulations could be added over
time. Moore added that the
county’s potential regulations
are much less restrictive than
those in place in Gearhart.
“That’s not a bad way
to start in terms of policy,”
Moore said. “We can always
tighten it up as we go.”
Reynolds, the ordinance’s
author, will continue revis-
ing the document with input
from commissioners. They
agreed to bring the issue for-
ward again after the outcome
of the Gearhart ballot measure
is determined.
County staff has discussed
the issue since the summer of
2016, shortly after they first
suspected that a home near
Cullaby Lake caught fire due
to unsafe conditions and lack
of permits. They since have
documented multiple com-
plaints from renters. Commis-
sioners were handed a draft
of the ordinance in June, and
Wednesday’s work session
was the third that commis-
sioners have held about the
topic this year.
All commissioners agreed
Wednesday that vacation rent-
als — despite concerns about
their effects on long-term
housing and the culture of
those who reside in the county
full time— have become an
inevitable factor in the coun-
ty’s future.
“The Pandora’s box is
open, and you’re not going to
shut it,” Sullivan said. “The
culture is changing.”