A2
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2020
IN BRIEF
Fire destroys home in Brownsmead
Officials are investigating a fire that destroyed a
home on Monday morning in Astoria.
Firefighters were able to keep the fire contained to
the home off of Brownsmead Dike Lane.
Officials say the occupants were able to get out of
the home and no injuries were reported.
—
The Astorian
Peninsula crabs low in meat
LONG BEACH, Wash. — Dungeness crab in
Long Beach Peninsula waters have the lowest
percentage of meat in at least six years of late Octo
ber testing.
This is bad news for the traditional Dec. 1 opening
date, which has often proved illusory in the past two
decades.
Samples gathered Saturday in the south of Klipsan
area had a pick-out rate of 18.7%. Last year, crab gath
ered in the local test area had a meat-recovery rate of
19.1%, which itself was considered very low. This
compares to 20.9% in 2018, 19.9% in 2017, 23% in
2016 and 23.8% in 2015.
Samples from the Westport area collected Friday
tested at 19.6%, compared to 21% last year, 19.7%
in 2018, 20.2% in 2017, 22.9% in 2016 and 24% in
2015.
All areas must be at least 23% before a commercial
crabbing season can commence under terms of the tri
state protocol that governs crabbing in the waters of
Washington, Oregon and California.
Due to coronavirus restrictions and the lim
ited number of Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife crew who could be on board the test
boats, the state did not collect any shell condition
data. Most local Dungeness crab are still at a soft-shell
stage in October after molting in the summer and early
fall.
Dungeness crab is the most valuable fishery in
Washington and Oregon.
—
Chinook Obsen’er
DEATHS
Oct. 24, 2020
BALKINS, Jean Eliz
abeth, 76, of Astoria,
died in Astoria. Ocean
View Funeral & Cre
mation Service of Asto
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
Aug. 3, 2020
KONECNY, Michael
Anthony, 32, of Asto
ria, died in Warrenton.
Hughes-Ransom
Mor
tuary is in charge of the
arrangements. To leave
condolences or messages,
go to hughesransom.com
MEMORIAL
Saturday, Oct. 31
RANTA, Anja Hannele — Visitation from 1 to 4
p.m., Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mortuary, 1165 Frank
lin Ave. Ranta, 66, of Astoria, died Saturday, Oct. 24,
2020, in Astoria.
ON THE RECORD
Theft
• Kathryn M. Jen
sen, 38, of Eugene, was
arrested
Thursday
at
Fred Meyer in Warren-
ton for theft in the second
degree.
Menacing
• Jimmy Seo Peter
son, 43, of Tonasket,
Washington, was arrested
Saturday behind Asto
ria
Warehousing
for
menacing.
Criminal trespass
• Christopher Noelle
Crone, 51, of Astoria,
was arrested Saturday on
16th Street and Marine
Drive in Astoria for crim
inal trespass in the sec
ond degree.
•
Christine Delora
Marcy, 52, was arrested
Saturday at Astoria Mini
Mart East for crimi-
nal trespass in the sec
ond degree. Marcy was
arrested again at the loca
tion on Sunday for crimi
nal trespass.
• Suzanne K. Sno
dgrass, 51, was arrested
on Oct. 17 in Warrenton
for criminal trespass in
the first degree and theft
in the third degree.
•
Unlawful entry
Ashley Lukoszyk,
36, of Warrenton, was
arrested Sunday on U.S.
Highway 101 Business
for unlawful entry into a
motor vehicle.
DUII
• Brian William Scott,
Jr., 29, of Warrenton,
was arrested Sunday on
S.E. 19th Street and S.E.
Ensign Lane in Warren
ton for driving under the
influence of intoxicants.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
TUESDAY
Astoria Planning Commission, 5:30 p.m., City Hall, 1095
Duane St.
Warrenton City Commission, 6 p.m., City Hall, 225 S. Main
Ave.
WEDNESDAY
Astoria Parks Board, 6:45 a.m., City Hall, 1095 Duane St.
Clatsop County Board of Commissioners, 6 p.m., (elec
tronic meeting).
•’Astorian
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Environmentalists, loggers
collaborate in Eastern Oregon
ByAARONSCOTT
Omgon Public Broadcasting
So, a logger and an envi
ronmentalist walk into a for
est together.
It sounds like a joke,
because, at least historically
speaking, loggers and envi
ronmentalists didn’t go any
where in Oregon together. If
they crossed paths in the for
est, it was because they were
on opposite sides of a road
blockade or logging protest.
But not in Eastern Ore
gon’s Grant County. Here,
loggers and environmental
ists have been walking in the
woods together for years.
“So did this pencil out?”
environmental attorney Susan
Jane Brown asked during a
tour of different logging treat
ments in the Malheur National
Forest in August 2019.
“Yeah, easy logging,”
responded Zach Williams, a
forester for the company that
cut the trees, Iron Triangle. “I
don’t hesitate to say this was
the best sale we’ve had in
years.”
Brown and Williams are
part of the forest collaborative
group Blue Mountains For
est Partners. They’ve been so
successful at finding common
ground that environmentalists
haven’t filed a single anti-log-
ging lawsuit on the Malheur
National Forest since 2003.
It might not seem like a
big deal to see environmen
talists and loggers working
together in the woods. But in
the Northwest, it is.
In the 1980s, environmen
talists protested timber sales
across the region, sparking
what was called the Timber
Wars. By the late ’90s, they
had managed to severely limit
logging in federal forests,
which crushed timber-depen-
dent areas like Grant County.
“I can’t even name the
amount of kids I grew up with
that: families lost jobs; the
mill lost, you know, lost whole
logging companies; busi
nesses started to close down,”
Williams said. “Slowly but
surely, you start to wonder
if you’re going to be a ghost
town at some point.”
Williams’ family goes
back five generations in the
area. He watched his father
close their sawmill, and he
said locals blamed environ
mentalists for locking up the
trees.
“At that point in our lives,
‘Susan Jane Brown’ were
extremely dirty words to say
around here.”
“I certainly was concerned
about my safety at that time,”
said Brown, who, as a law
yer at the Western Environ
mental Law Center, regu
larly appealed timber sales on
the Malheur National Forest.
“I had been run out of town
before — had been tailgated
by pickup trucks. I’ve had air
let out of my tires.”
So how did these two
groups go from enemies to
tromping through the woods
together?
What it took was a few
locals realizing in 2003 that
they couldn’t beat Brown in
the courtroom. So they invited
her to Grant County to see if
they could find some way to
manage the forest that would
meet both their goals. And
Brown agreed, bringing along
other environmentalists she
worked with.
They started meeting
informally every couple of
months in the back room of
a local restaurant. And about
the only thing they could
agree on was a name for the
group, the Blue Mountains
Forest Partners (and even that
was contentious).
“I’ll begin by describing
some of those early meet
ings,” said Mark Webb, who
was the county judge during
the early years of the collabo
rative, before losing reelection
in part due to his participation
with the group. “Industry and
community members are on
one side of it. Environmen
/L. __________ itti <1
Brandon
Swanson/Oregon
Public
Broadcasting
There were once dozens of sawmills in Eastern Oregon. Now there are only a handful. The
Prairie Wood Products mill in Prairie City was one of the last to shut down, which it did in 2008
as a result of the housing market collapse and limited timber supplies.
it ripe for much larger cat
astrophic fires. But the sci
entists suggest that the way
to restore them to their his
toric state is going to involve
both fire and logging, because
logging gives more control
over what trees are preserved
and which are removed (for
instance, keeping the old-
growth ponderosa pine trees
while removing the smaller,
faster-growing fir trees that
Brandon
Swanson/Oregon
Public
Broadcasting
now crowd it out).
The Malheur Lumber Co. in John Day almost closed for a lack
“The more time you spend
of timber supply, until environmentalists and other members
out looking at this stuff and
of the Blue Mountains Forest Partners stepped in to develop
the more the science can
inform what we’re seeing, the
a 10-year stewardship contract that would ensure a sustained
more willing many of us in
supply of timber from the surrounding forests.
the environmental community
tal community’s on the other. nary results suggested that have been to having a conver
sation about, ‘OK, chainsaws,
And we have a third party, selective logging had min
a facilitator, that’s walking imal negative impact on I think we’re going to need
back and forth between us, white-headed woodpeckers, some chainsaws out here,”’
because we couldn’t talk to but that it appeared to cause Brown said. “And the other
side of the equation, for the
one another. It was that bad — a slow decline in the nest
almost that poisonous.”
ing numbers of black-backed community, they’re getting
more comfortable talking fire
Webb, who is now the woodpeckers.
group’s executive director,
At the end of the tour, the — prescribed and wildfire.
said he considered it a multi
group circled up around a Because you look at these for
cultural conversation, because charred, old-growth ponder- ests, and they’re out of whack.
it was like the two sides spoke osa pine that had housed one And given climate change, it’s
not going to get any better on
a different language. When of the study’s woodpeckers.
they said something like
“I definitely agree this was its own.”
Perhaps the greatest test
“healthy forest,” they meant a success,” said Williams,
two completely different whose company had logged of this partnership came in
things.
in the study area. “Susan Jane 2012, when Grant County’s
So to find common lan
detests salvage logging, and last sawmill announced it was
guage and common ground, if I’m being honest, I look at closing for a lack of timber.
“I was like, this is not OK,”
they made a fateful decision: this bum — 110,000 acres —
they committed to follow the and look at salvaging 5,000 said Brown, who learned
science. They invited ecolo
of it and think: how is that the news as she was return
gists, biologists, silvicultur
really going to harm habitat? ing home from a backpack
ists and other scientists to tour And I’m not going to say that ing trip. “If the mill closes,
the forests with them and talk I think any differently about this community just dries up
about what exactly makes that, but that’s the point of col and blows away. It’s really the
a forest healthy. And where laboration. And if this is the mainstay of what’s keeping
there wasn’t clear science, kind of process we have to go this community alive.”
But it wasn’t just the com
they commissioned their own. through, then it worked.”
Such was the case for this
“I agree,” Brown said. munity. Brown realized the
tour on a hot August day. One “And I don’t want this to be mill was also keeping the col
laborative alive because it
of the most contentious issues one off. And we can do sal
for the collaborative over the vage, and we can take logs to bought the timber they cut out
years has been salvage log
the mill, and people can earn of the forest during their res
ging, or the logging of trees a living wage, and we also toration work, which in turn
that are dead or damaged don’t have to kill a bunch of funded the work.
So she started making
from fire.
birds in the process.”
Loggers historically rush
Following the science phone calls. She got U.S.
to harvest burned timber gave them a shared language Sen. Ron Wyden’s office
because, to them, leaving to talk about the forest. But it involved. She roped in other
wood to decay is like watch
was also dangerous, because conservation groups like the
ing money rot on trees — to it meant both sides had to be Nature Conservancy and Sus
say nothing of providing fuel willing to change their beliefs. tainable Northwest. And she
for future wildfires.
For
environmentalists, got the mill’s president, Bruce
Daucsavage, and the county’s
But to environmentalists that means not only accept
and scientists salvage logging ing Saab’s research that some biggest logging operations on
is anathema, because these level of salvage logging might board.
The result was what’s
burned forests provide essen
be compatible with wood
called a 10-year stewardship
tial habitat for many animals, pecker habitat, but that log
especially woodpeckers.
ging itself can be an important contract. It guaranteed that
the U.S. Forest Service would
So, when more than tool in forest restoration.
pay for a certain amount of
110,000 acres burned in the
That’s because the sci
2013 Canyon Creek Complex entists they’ve worked with restoration work for 10 years,
fire, much of it on the Mal
argue that these dry, eastside ensuring a sustained level of
heur National Forest, instead forests, like many of the drier logging.
“I think that’s when I
of seeing it as another thing to conifer forests in southern
really looked at Susan Jane,”
fight about, the Blue Moun
Oregon and throughout Cal
tains Forest Partners saw it as ifornia, are now overgrown. Daucsavage said. “She was
an opportunity. They invited The main cause is a century of putting her neck out on the
Vicki Saab, a biologist with putting out the low-intensity line from her side, because
U.S. Forest Service, to create fires that historically burned she was actually being pre
sented as more of a moderate.
a study that would determine through the forests on a reg
whether there was a level of ular basis, cleaning out the And I’m sure she had plenty
salvage logging that could duff and small trees that now of feedback from people that
were winning the battle.”
provide an economic benefit crowd the forest and make
to the local community with
out compromising wood
pecker habitat.
Saab’s study involved log
ging different test sites at dif
ferent levels, ranging from
cutting no trees to cutting r
most of them, and then track
ing how woodpeckers fared
review of your
over four years.
current
As they toured the test
Medicare
Health Plan!
sites at the end of the study,
Saab said that the prelimi
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