A5
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2021
Wildlife center sees infl ux
of injured birds due to heat
By BRYCE DOLE
East Oregonian
Noah Berger/AP Photo
A fi refi ghter sprays water while trying to stop fi re from spreading to neighboring homes in
California on Saturday.
Wildfi res rage as West
sees heat amid drought
By CHRISTOPHER
WEBER
Associated Press
Firefi ghters were work-
ing in extreme tempera-
tures across the West and
struggling to contain wild-
fi res, the largest burning in
California and Oregon, as
another heat wave baked
the region, straining power
grids.
The largest wildfi re of
the year in California — the
Beckwourth Complex —
was raging along the Nevada
state line and has burned
about 140 square miles as of
Monday morning and state
regulators asked consumers
to voluntarily “conserve as
much electricity as possible”
to avoid any outages starting
in the afternoon.
In Oregon, the Bootleg
fi re exploded to 240 square
miles as it raced through
heavy timber in the Fre-
mont-Winema
National
Forest, near the Klamath
County town of Sprague
River. The fi re disrupted ser-
vice on three transmission
lines providing up to 5,500
megawatts of electricity to
neighboring California.
A wildfi re in south-
east Washington state grew
to almost 60 square miles
while in Idaho, Gov. Brad
Little has mobilized the
National Guard to help fi ght
fi res sparked after light-
ning storms swept across the
drought-stricken region.
The blazes come as the
West is in the midst of a
second extreme heat wave
within just a few weeks
and as the entire region is
suff ering from one of the
worst droughts in recent his-
tory. Extreme heat warnings
in California were fi nally
expected to expire Monday
night.
On Sunday, fi refi ghters
working in temperatures that
topped 100 degrees were
able to gain some ground on
the Beckwourth Complex,
increasing containment to
23%.
Late Saturday, fl ames
jumped U.S. 395, which was
closed near the small town
of Doyle in California’s
Lassen County. The lanes
reopened Sunday, and offi -
cials urged motorists to use
caution and keep moving
along the key north-south
route where fl ames were still
active.
“Do not stop and take
pictures,” said Jake Cagle,
the fi re’s operations sec-
tion chief. “You are going
to impede our operations if
you stop and look at what’s
going on.”
Cagle said structures
had burned in Doyle, but he
didn’t have an exact num-
ber. Bob Prary, who man-
ages the Buck-Inn Bar in
the town of about 600 peo-
ple, said he saw at least six
houses destroyed after Sat-
urday’s fl areup. The fi re was
smoldering Sunday in and
around Doyle, but he feared
some remote ranch proper-
ties were still in danger.
“It seems like the worst is
over in town, but back on the
mountainside the fi re’s still
going strong,” Prary said.
A new fi re broke out Sun-
day afternoon in the Sierra
Nevada south of Yosemite
National Park and by eve-
ning covered more than
6 square miles, triggering
evacuations in areas of two
counties. Containment was
just 5% but the highway lead-
ing to the southern entrance
of the park remained open
early Monday.
In Arizona, a small plane
crashed Saturday during a
survey of a wildfi re in rural
Mohave County, killing both
crew members.
The Beech C-90 aircraft
was helping perform recon-
naissance over the light-
ning-caused Cedar Basin
fi re, near the tiny commu-
nity of Wikieup northwest of
Phoenix.
PENDLETON — The
calls fl ooded into Blue
Mountain Wildlife fi rst thing
in the morning in late June
— dozens of baby hawks,
desperate to escape the blast
of early summer heat, bailed
from their nests and plum-
meted to the ground.
Calls poured in day after
day as temperatures pushed
beyond 110 degrees across
Eastern Oregon. In her 30
years as director of the wild-
life rehabilitation center
outside of Pendleton, Lynn
Tompkins had not seen any-
thing like it.
“They had no choice,”
said Tompkins. “It was just
too bloody hot to survive.”
In all, the center took in
nearly 50 nestling Swain-
son’s and Cooper’s hawks
after they leaped from their
nests in the extreme heat
wave that baked the Pacifi c
Northwest. Thirteen of the
raptors suff ered injuries
severe enough they had to
be euthanized.
“We knew the tempera-
ture was going to spike
beforehand, and we assumed
we might get a few more
calls,” said Trisha Marquez,
a volunteer who fi elded the
calls and who is also Tomp-
kins’ niece. “But we did not
expect this at all.”
Blue Mountain Wildlife
lodged 157 more birds com-
pared to the same day last
year. The infl ux was more
than the small staff could
handle. They hardly had the
space to put them all, and
eventually, they asked peo-
ple to turn on their sprin-
klers and hoses and set out
pans of water for less-in-
jured birds to cool them-
selves down.
Tompkins said they will
typically see a few injured
birds who display this sort
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Lynn Tompkins, director of Blue Mountain Wildlife, checks
on a group of baby Swainson’s hawks at the rehabilitation
center outside of Pendleton.
of behavior in heat waves
around July or August.
But this year, with the heat
arriving earlier and surging
higher, it caught the babies
right in their nesting period.
“The conditions were
just right, or wrong,” Tomp-
kins said, adding, “When
your normal body tempera-
ture is like 100, and it’s 115,
you have no way of moder-
ating the temperature except
for getting out of there.”
The birds came from
across the region, includ-
ing southeastern Washing-
ton state, as the wildlife cen-
ter’s facility in the Tri-Cities
took in more than 70, Tomp-
kins said.
And it’s not just hap-
pening here. A rehabilita-
tion center in Delta, Brit-
ish Columbia, saw a similar
uptick amid the heat wave.
The center has about 140
more birds than last year at
this time, and many babies
that fl ung themselves from
their nests didn’t make it,
a Vancouver news station
reported.
In Seattle, state offi cials
began monitoring a col-
ony of Caspian terns last
week after dozens of pre-
mature seabirds fl ed their
rooftop nests as tempera-
tures reached 108 degrees.
Too young to fl y, they fell to
their death.
Marquez said events such
as the heat wave can have a
population-wide eff ect.
“Usually,
rehabbers
make a diff erence for one
bird at a time,” Marquez
said. “Overall, we can have
an impact, but this is a
whole generation of a spe-
cies of bird.”
A growing body of
research from experts
around the world suggests
as the planet warms due to
climate change, species will
disappear at an accelerat-
ing rate. Some studies sug-
gest the planet has entered
its sixth mass extinction of
wildlife.
An analysis by scientists
from prominent universi-
ties across the world, pub-
lished in the journal Pro-
ceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences in
2020, found more than 500
species of land animals are
on the brink of extinction
and likely will die off within
20 years. That will have a
domino eff ect, the research
shows, with interdepen-
dent species dying one after
another, causing extinction
rates to accelerate.
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SEVENDAY FORECAST FOR ASTORIA
TODAY
WEDNESDAY THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
REGIONAL FORECAST
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
Seattle
66 56
Partial sunshine
64 55
64 55
Low clouds
Partly sunny
65 53
Low clouds
67 52
67 54
Sunny to partly
Mostly sunny
cloudy
68 55
Mostly sunny
Aberdeen
Olympia
68/56
82/57
Wenatchee
Tacoma
Moses
Lake
83/55
ALMANAC
UNDER THE SKY
TODAY'S TIDES
Astoria through Sunday
Tonight’s Sky: After sunset low
west, the waxing crescent moon,
Venus and Mars in close gather-
ing. A must see!
Astoria / Port Docks
Temperatures
High/low ................................ 64/56
Normal high/low .................. 67/53
Record high .................. 91 in 1951
Record low .................... 43 in 2008
Precipitation
Sunday ..................................... Trace
Month to date ........................ 0.13”
Normal month to date ......... 0.47”
Year to date .......................... 37.40”
Normal year to date ........... 36.38”
Forecasts and graphics provided by
AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Source: Jim Todd, OMSI
Sunrise today .................. 5:37 a.m.
Sunset tonight ............... 9:05 p.m.
Moonrise today .............. 9:18 a.m.
Moonset today ............ 11:38 p.m.
Full
Last
High (ft.) Time Low (ft.)
3:28 a.m.
5:06 p.m.
New
3:08 a.m.
4:45 p.m.
3:20 a.m.
4:55 p.m.
Warrenton
3:23 a.m.
5:01 p.m.
Knappa
4:05 a.m.
5:43 p.m.
Depoe Bay
July 17 July 23 July 31 Aug 8
7.9 10:35 a.m. -1.0
6.8 10:43 p.m. 2.4
Cape Disappointment
Hammond
SUN AND MOON
First
Time
2:18 a.m.
4:00 p.m.
7.8 9:47 a.m. -0.9
6.7 9:51 p.m. 2.9
8.2 10:05 a.m. -1.1
7.1 10:13 p.m. 2.7
8.3 10:19 a.m. -0.9
7.3 10:27 p.m. 2.5
8.2 11:36 a.m. -0.8
7.1 11:44 p.m. 2.1
7.9 9:16 a.m. -1.2
6.8 9:21 p.m. 2.9
City
Atlanta
Boston
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
Honolulu
Houston
Los Angeles
Miami
New York City
Phoenix
San Francisco
Wash., DC
Wed.
Hi/Lo/W
84/71/t
69/64/pc
81/68/c
94/77/pc
93/65/pc
87/75/sh
91/75/t
85/68/s
87/79/t
77/70/t
105/87/t
70/58/pc
94/77/s
87/72/t
80/69/t
87/72/pc
94/76/s
87/61/t
88/75/pc
91/76/t
83/67/s
89/78/t
86/70/t
97/84/pc
71/58/pc
93/74/t
Weather (W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy,
c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms,
r-rain, sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice.
101/70
Hermiston
The Dalles 103/71
Enterprise
Pendleton 93/58
100/66
98/67
La Grande
96/62
90/56
NATIONAL CITIES
Today
Hi/Lo/W
92/60
Kennewick Walla Walla
100/70 Lewiston
104/69
79/56
Salem
Pullman
102/67
Longview
66/56 Portland
86/59
97/68
Yakima 102/66
82/53
Astoria
Spokane
100/71
Corvallis
87/54
Albany
88/54
John Day
Eugene
Bend
91/54
96/59
97/60
Ontario
102/66
Caldwell
Burns
96/54
99/63
Medford
99/63
Klamath Falls
96/52
City
Baker City
Brookings
Ilwaco
Newberg
Newport
Today
Hi/Lo/W
95/50/s
69/54/s
63/56/pc
88/55/s
61/53/pc
Wed.
Hi/Lo/W
99/53/s
67/53/s
61/55/c
83/53/pc
60/51/pc
City
North Bend
Roseburg
Seaside
Springfi eld
Vancouver
Today
Hi/Lo/W
64/54/pc
93/58/s
65/55/pc
91/54/s
84/57/s
Wed.
Hi/Lo/W
63/53/pc
86/56/s
64/53/c
85/53/s
75/54/pc