A5
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019
Eagles: The US Fish and Wildlife
Service issues permits to haze eagles
Continued from Page A1
Hunsaker has kept her title of
superintendent, but has largely
been away from the school dis-
trict over the past few months.
She lives in the Portland area
with her signiﬁ cant other, Ter-
rence Smyth, who recently
resigned as principal of Jewell
School and took the same posi-
tion at Gresham High School.
The school board named
Steve Phillips, an executive
administrator hired last year to
take over from Hunsaker start-
ing next school year, as acting
superintendent.
Continued from Page A1
An animal may die in a ﬁ eld
from other causes but be found
with an eagle or coyote hunched
over it munching away.
When a bald eagle is clearly
the killer, there isn’t much ranch-
ers can do about it, anyway. Bald
eagles may not be an endangered
species anymore, but they are still
protected.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice issues permits to haze eagles,
but has not issued any to ranchers
this year. The agency has ﬁ elded
numerous inquiries, however.
“(Bald eagles) are demonstrat-
ing increasing tolerance for human
activity in parts of Washington
and Oregon as their increasing
numbers — and increasing human
populations — create more over-
lap between human-occupied and
eagle habitats,” said Jason Holm,
a spokesperson for the federal
agency.
Parker lives off Brownsmead
Dike Lane, an area crossed by
sloughs, dotted with open ﬁ elds
and bordered by tall trees. Prime
bald eagle territory.
The rancher is keeping his
sheep inside the barn for now
while he ﬁ gures out how to keep
eagles away. He has started to
experiment with placing scare-
crows and ﬂ ags in his ﬁ elds. There
isn’t much else he can legally do
without a hazing permit.
And he’s holding onto the car-
cass of a gutted 2 1/2 -month-old
lamb. He found it in a ﬁ eld with
a bald eagle sitting on top of it,
he said, and he’s waiting for fed-
eral biologists to take a look and
conﬁ rm an eagle was responsible.
His neighbor, Ed Johnson, went
through a similar process recently.
Johnson, whose house is just
visible from Parker’s property,
lost three lambs this spring.
Both men are used to dealing
with predators like coyotes. John-
son uses guard dogs to protect his
ﬂ ock from coyotes and roaming
domestic dogs. But this is the ﬁ rst
year in the roughly three years
Parker has been raising lambs that
eagles have been a problem.
Dirk Rohne, a Brownsmead
Hunsaker: Phillips will
serve as acting superintendent
Katie Frankowicz/The Astorian
Lambs and sheep share an enclosure on Ben Parker’s farm.
dairy farmer and Port of Astoria
commissioner, heard from a num-
ber of people about eagle issues
this spring.
“The bald eagles impacting
livestock is a new one,” he said.
“I can’t say anyone was talking
about that until this year.”
On a positive note, he added,
the eagles seem to have taken a
major bite out of Brownsmead’s
invasive nutria population.
Johnson has lived in the area
for more than 40 years and main-
tains a ﬂ ock of around 55 ewes
and 80 lambs . He feels that issues
with eagles come in cycles.
When runs of smelt — small
forage ﬁ sh that travel in schools
— are strong in the Columbia
River, he doesn’t see as many
eagles. When smelt runs are low,
well — “It kind of depends what’s
around to eat and unfortunately
sometimes it’s lambs.”
For the sheep ranchers in
Brownsmead,
predation
by
eagles has not become a substan-
tial ﬁ nancial hit. Ranchers expect
to lose some sheep each year to
predators.
“I’ve got nothing against the
eagles,” Johnson said. “They’re
beautiful. But at times there would
be seven or eight of them sitting
around waiting for a little action.”
Johnson tends to be philosoph-
ical about it. He’s not interested
in spending the $100 on a haz-
ing permit and then more money
on things like explosives or other
noisemakers to scare the birds. It
takes time to get the permit and,
besides, the eagles are not a prob-
lem every year.
In 1989, Maine was part of
a push to establish the Twilight
Eagle Sanctuary at Cathlamet
Bay, not far from Knappa and
Brownsmead. At the time, advo-
cates estimated there were only
around 40 bald eagles in the pro-
posed sanctuary boundaries, about
half of the total population of bald
eagles believed to be in the entire
lower river area.
Now, when Maine is out doc-
umenting eagle and osprey nests
for the state, it is not unusual for
him to count more than a dozen
bald eagles just on the drive from
Gearhart to the Peter Iredale ship-
wreck at Fort Stevens State Park.
He has seen as many as 21
bald eagles in a single tree on an
island in the Columbia River estu-
ary. Recently, birders counted 75
to 100 eagles in a ﬁ eld just out-
side Astoria.
“A lot of wildlife stories
have sad endings,” Maine said,
“and this is one of those where,
‘O h my gosh, maybe we’re too
successful.’”
Wendy Crozier, Jewell’s dean
of students and a former elemen-
tary teacher in Portland Pub-
lic Schools, was named Smyth’s
interim replacement as principal
of the rural K-12 campus. The
school district recently hired Jon
Wood, the programs coordinator
for Nyssa School District in East-
ern Oregon, as the principal start-
ing next school year.
School leadership in Jewell
has been a revolving door since
the departure of Brian Gander,
who had been with the school
district from 2009 to 2012. Hun-
saker joined after a series of three
interim superintendents.
Trial: 12-person jury must decide
whether Copell is guilty of murder
or guilty by aiding, abetting Wilkins
Continued from Page A1
In his closing statements, Dep-
uty District Attorney Beau Peter-
son recounted Copell’s move-
ments in unison with Wilkins
before their arrest without any
attempt to leave or contact author-
ities about the murder. He showed
security footage of the two acting
friendly while pawning Vinge’s
possessions.
Peterson pointed to Copell’s
changing stories about Vinge’s
murder. Wilkins and Copell ini-
tially corroborated denials of
Vinge’s murder. Copell later
admitted that Wilkins had killed
Vinge. She later attempted to
recant her confession, arguing that
they had killed Vinge in self-de-
fense after he attacked them.
“Frankly, what you have is
someone absolutely involved in,
guilty of murder, lying and com-
ing up with any story they can to
get out of it,” Peterson told the
jury. “I would suggest you think
very carefully before you put
any stock in anything Ms. Copell
says.”
Copell’s attorney, Alexander
Hamalian, argued that Wilkins
drove the murder, the selling
of Vinge’s possessions and the
attempted cover-up. Copell was
simply doing what she was told,
he said.
The 12-person jury in Copell’s
trial must decide whether she is
guilty of murder or guilty by aid-
ing and abetting Wilkins.
Hamalian has argued there
is no DNA or other evidence
showing her directly involved in
Vinge’s murder, nor any corrob-
orating evidence that she helped
plan the crime . Copell’s presence
in the RV when Vinge was mur-
dered does not make her guilty, he
told the jury.
“There is not a shred of evi-
dence that (Adeena) Copell par-
ticipated in the planning or com-
mission of a crime,” he said.
“There is none. The state wants
you to speculate about that. They
essentially want you to ﬁ nd evi-
dence of what she did after the
fact as evidence of committing
the crime, but that’s not the law.”
During prosecutors’ closing
statements, Hamalian attempted
to have Judge Cindee Matyas
declare a mistrial. He claimed
Peterson had brought Copell’s
character into question by calling
her a liar, a violation of her rights
to due process. Matyas denied his
request.
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