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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2020
Parks events go virtual amid pandemic
Funding future
could be bleak
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
On Sunday morning,
around 600 runners would
have usually taken off along
the Astoria Riverwalk to
raise money for the Astoria
Parks Foundation. Instead,
around 350 have registered
to run their own routes,
staying socially distanced
to help avoid spreading the
coronavirus.
Astoria’s main parks
fundraiser has gone virtual,
along with the open house
for a new park in Warren-
ton, as parks face a funding
future made bleaker by the
pandemic’s impact on city
budgets.
Jennifer Benoit, a city
staffer in Astoria and the
race director for the parks
foundation, said registration
had already started to taper
off when they decided to go
virtual.
“It’s defi nitely some-
thing I cannot stop thinking
about, because this is the big
fundraiser,” she said . “I fol-
low a Facebook group for
race directors, and anyone
who had anything coming up
went virtual.
“A lot of participants are
from Portland and Seattle,”
Benoit said. “We’re ask-
ing them to run their nor-
mal routes (and) use social
distancing.”
Astoria is creating a bud-
get for the coming fi scal
year while not knowing how
much revenue the city will
have available. At a City
Council meeting last month,
City Manager Brett Estes
warned that it might be some
time before the parks depart-
ment even gets back up and
running because of the lack
of lodging taxes and recre-
ation fees.
“Our parks staff is looking
at innovative ways to be able
to open some parks facili-
Photos by Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
ABOVE: The annual Run on the River, hosted by the Astoria Parks Foundation and Buoy Beer
Co., went virtual this year because of the coronavirus. RIGHT: Warrenton has hopes for a new
trailhead at Skipanon River Park.
ties,” he said. “They may be
different from what you have
seen in the past, to get shared
facilities up and running.”
Clatsop C ounty began
easing coronavirus-related
restrictions Friday after get-
ting approval from Gov.
Kate Brown, allowing gath-
erings of up to 25 people
and the reopening of some
businesses.
A public bathing facil-
ity like the Astoria A quatic
C enter, one of the city’s most
challenging parks properties,
would likely not open until a
fi nal phase.
The city’s focus now is on
expanding child care for peo-
ple returning to work and set-
ting up school-age day camps
as school lets out for the sum-
mer, said Jonah Dart-Mc-
Lean, the interim director of
the p arks d epartment.
“We’re focused on evalu-
ating our capacity and bud-
get to reopen programs and
don’t have a timeline for
when we’d begin offering
most of our former services,”
he said.
Warrenton has no parks
department. The city’s sparse
parks funding goes mostly
toward part-time staff hired
under the city’s Public Works
D epartment in busier sea-
sons to maintain properties.
The city has furloughed
part-time help and canceled
Sunday Streets, an August
event in which it planned to
shut down streets to vehi-
cles and encourage people to
come out.
Warrenton has seen
increased interest in parks,
with AmeriCorps intern
Morgan Murray hired for the
year through the Resource
Assistance for Rural Envi-
ronments to help the city
update a parks master plan
from 2008.
That plan will include a
new park in the Forest Rim
subdivision at the corner of
Willow Drive and Honey-
suckle Loop. T he city is try-
ing to gather input on the
project through a virtual
open house at tinyurl.com/
forestrimpark.
The Forest Rim park and
the master plan are the only
two projects Kevin Cronin,
the city’s community devel-
opment director, sees being
funded in what is sure to be
a lean budget.
Murray has also been
documenting the trails that
lace the Warrenton-Ham-
mond area. Cronin is hope-
ful that work will result in at
least a new trailhead at the
city’s Skipanon River Park,
a trail atop dikes that runs
along the waterway through
the middle of the city .
The coronavirus “pro-
vides a budget shortfall, but
it also puts a kibosh on any
kind of momentum you have
for certain projects,” Cronin
said. “With Forest Rim, we
really started to build some
neighborhood capacity for
interest and volunteerism in
that park.
“It really put a stop to the
momentum because of the
physical social distancing,
but also because people just
have other priorities.”
Pacifi c fi sher denied protection in Oregon
By MONICA SAMAYOA
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Endangered species pro-
tections in Oregon and North-
ern California for a rarely
seen, forest-dwelling mam-
mal were turned down last
week by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service.
The federal agency did
approve Endangered Species
Act protections for the Pacifi c
fi sher in parts of the Sierra
Nevada, where it was listed as
“endangered” with extinction.
But it said such protec-
tions were not justifi ed for
the Pacifi c fi sher in the forests
of Northern California and
southern Oregon. The deci-
sion rejected a 2019 proposal
to list fi shers as “threatened”
throughout the West Coast
range.
Pacifi c fi shers are pred-
atory mammals related to
weasels, minks, martens and
otters. They are about half the
size of a cat and inhabit mixed
conifer-hardwood forests.
The U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service decided to sepa-
rate the Pacifi c fi sher into two
distinct populations. Stud-
ies have shown the two pop-
ulations are genetically dif-
ferent and are separated by
a geographic gap of about
130 miles. The groups are
the southern Sierra Nevada
distinct population and the
Northern California-southern
Oregon distinct population.
The decision to not extend
Endangered Species Act pro-
tections for the Northern Cal-
ifornia-southern Oregon pop-
ulation came down to a few
factors. It was found to be
more widespread within its
range, have more diversity in
ages between male to female
ratios and have breeding and
reintroduction success. This,
along with current and pro-
posed fi sher habitat conserva-
tion efforts on public and pri-
vate timberlands, enable this
population to maintain bal-
ance and withstand setbacks.
A Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice offi cial in Oregon praised
the timber industry as a big
Raymond James Financial Services, Inc.
Member FINRA/SIPC
Greg Davis/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Fishers are rare in the United States.
reason the Trump adminis-
tration was able to sidestep
Endangered Species Act pro-
tections for the Pacifi c fi sher
throughout its range.
“Voluntary conservation
efforts by state and private
timber owners have contrib-
uted to the Northern Califor-
nia-Southern Oregon popula-
tion of fi sher appearing stable
within a large range of suit-
able habitat,” Paul Henson,
Oregon’s state supervisor,
said in a statement.
He cited the voluntary
adoption of conservation
measures for fi sher habitat
across 2 million acres.
“The heavy lifting done by
our partners greatly alleviates
the need for regulation,” Hen-
son said.
Conservation
groups
said the failure to protect all
Pacifi c fi shers and their habi-
tat under the Endangered Spe-
cies Act heightens their risk of
going extinct.
Noah Greenwald, endan-
gered species director of the
Center For Biological Diver-
sity, said he doesn’t dis-
agree that there are two dis-
tinct fi sher populations but
that the Northern Califor-
nia-southern Oregon popula-
tion would have been at one
time part of a larger popula-
tion that included all of Ore-
gon and western Washington
and extended into Canada.
“The loss of historic range
is part of what makes that
population at risk and in fact
the isolation of the southern
Sierra population is part of
what makes it endangered as
well,” Greenwald said.
He also said the decision
to only list the southern Sierra
population was purely polit-
ical and a gift to the timber
industry.
“The fi sher, as clearly doc-
umented in that fi nding, faces
numerous threats including
logging of its habitat, roden-
ticides that are used for mar-
ijuana grow operations and
climate change,” Greenwald
said. “There’s really noth-
ing to show that the fi sher is
now secure or doesn’t need
protection.”
Greenwald said his group
is currently reviewing the
fi ndings and will consider
another challenge in court as
most of the Pacifi c fi sher pop-
ulation is in southern Oregon
and Northern California.
Conservation organiza-
tions have been petitioning to
list the Pacifi c fi sher under the
Endangered Species Act since
2000. In 2004, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service issued
a rule fi nding that listing was
warranted but did not fi nalize
the listing. In 2010, conser-
vation groups sued the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service to
force them to complete the
listing process. Again, the ser-
vice proposed federal protec-
tion for the fi sher in 2014, but
then withdrew the proposal in
2016. Conservation organi-
zations then fi led suit alleg-
ing that the denial ignored
the science in a politically
motivated bow to the timber
industry. But they’ve found
little support from the current
administration.
Jamey Hendricks
Jennifer Estner
Financial Advisor
Advisor Assistant
Registered Representative
Mark Hedeen
Financial Advisor
Registered Representative
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