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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 8, 2015)
Village raises money to fi x ugly statue 6A MAC-HI BEATS PENDLETON SOFTBALL/1B 60/38 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2015 139th Year, No. 124 WINNER OF THE 2013 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD MILTON-FREEWATER Animal neglect case looms Woman pushes to care for horse with bad leg By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian A Milton-Freewater woman said she is going to care for a horse with an ailing leg, DQGWKH8PDWLOOD&RXQW\6KHULII¶V2I¿FHLV about launch a criminal investigation into the horse’s treatment. The mare is in a pasture north of the small city and has a swollen, pulpy-looking left rear hoof. Nila Jackson lives near the horse’s pasture and drew attention to what she saw as a suffering animal, but the sher- LII¶VRI¿FHKDVQRWVHL]HGLW Chris Keeling said Tuesday the horse belongs to him and he is doing what he can to help her. Mae is a big thoroughbred and is gentle as can be, he said, and he did not know there was a problem until the sher- LII¶VRI¿FHFRQWDFWHGKLPODVWZHHN+HVDLG he saw photos of the horse, and while the leg looks bad and needs care, the horse is not in dire straits. Keeling, 47, said he rented the pasture last year to keep Mae and another horse, EXWZKHQKHUHDOL]HGKHFRXOGQRWFDUHIRU WKHPKHVRXJKWWR¿QGWKHPQHZKRPHV Then he left to visit family on the other One dollar PENDLETON Statue decorations banned to Main Street over the summer, Pendleton resident Pamela Har- mon decorated the statue in corre- 7KH EURQ]H RI -DFNVRQ 6XQ spondence with various holidays. When her husband was al- down will be decorated no more. The council unanimously ap- legedly attacked after getting into proved banning all public statues a confrontation over the decora- in the city, including Sundown, tions, Harmon gathered a 29-sig- prompting tribal members in the QDWXUHSHWLWLRQWRDOORZWKHEURQ]H audience to applaud at a meeting to be adorned. Since that time, people most- Tuesday. $IWHU WKH EURQ]H ZDV PRYHG ly from the American Indian By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian community have gathered 156 signature to oppose the statue’s decorations. The decorations also drew the opposition of the tribal H[HFXWLYHFRPPLWWHHIRUWKH1H] Perce Tribe, of which Sundown was a member. While many council members seemed to show initial support to- ward the decorations, many came to regret their position after the re- sponse from the tribal community. Councilman Chuck Wood said he was “embarrassed” by his orig- inal support and now thought dec- orating the statue was in violation of the nuisance ordinance. While originally not listed as an action item on the agenda, it was Wood who requested the council vote on the issue. Mayor Phillip Houk offered See STATUE/8A Council will keep mulling walkway ordinance Marijuana shop rules as well By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian The city council didn’t take any action on an ordi- nance prohibiting obstruc- tion of Pendleton walkways, but Councilwoman Jane Hill raised some concerns over the broad reach of the law. Hill said she didn’t un- derstand why authorities’ continued troubles keeping Pendleton High School stu- dents from loitering on the Bedford Bridge should man- date a law that would make it illegal for people to obstruct any sidewalk, bridge or walking path in the city. “For example, I think my children and their friends drawing with chalk on the sidewalk would not be al- lowable in this ordinance,” she said. “I think someone partially parking the back of their truck over the sidewalk would not be allowed under this ordinance.” Hill requested city staff supplement Police Chief Stuart Roberts’s report at the council’s next meeting. Also receiving concern from the council but no ac- tion was an ordinance reg- ulating medical and recre- ational marijuana sales in Pendleton. Councilman Chuck Wood said he was disappointed that there were certain regula- tions missing from the law. Wood said he would like to see regulations such as background checks for mar- ijuana retail store employees and more detailed parame- See HORSE/8A Ripple felt as shipper leaves Port of Portland By MOLLY HARBARGER The Oregonian The Port of Portland’s container-termi- QDORSHUDWRUFRQ¿UPHG7XHVGD\WKDWVKLS SLQJOLQH+DSDJ/OR\GKDVJLYHQRI¿FLDO notice and will no longer stop in Portland. 7KH RI¿FLDO DQQRXQFHPHQW FRPHV about a month after Hanjin Shipping Co. stopped calling at Portland. Together, Hanjin and Hapag-Lloyd make up nearly all of Terminal 6’s business. Only Westwood, which is scheduled to send a ship at the end of April, is still mov- ing products through Portland’s container port. The line, which visits once a month, has a contract with the port through De- cember. Hanjin and Hapag-Lloyd were not under contract. The economic effect of losing contain- er service in Portland is expected to ripple up the Columbia River to Eastern Oregon, where companies shipping products over- seas will have to pay $600-$1,000 more per container in trucking costs to reach ports in Seattle and Tacoma. Products shipped in containers include almost all of the region’s value-added ag- riculture, including hay, corn, onions and See PORT/8A See MARIJUANA/8A More inside Staff photo by E.J. Harris Pendleton High School students cross the Bedford Bridge after school let out Tuesday in Pendleton. Oregon Senator suggests letting dispensaries sell recreational pot Page 7A Feds to consider spotted owl for endangered species listing By JEFF BARNARD Associated Press AP Photo/Don Ryan, File In this May 2003 fi le photo, a northern spotted owl sits on a tree in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman. GRANTS PASS — Federal biologists have agreed to consider changing Endangered Species Act protections for the northern spot- ted owl from threatened to endan- gered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce Wednes- day there is enough new scientif- ic information in a conservation group’s petition to warrant a hard look, which will take about two years. A notice will be published Friday in the Federal Register. After the northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened spe- cies in 1990, it became a symbol for Endangered Species Act pro- tections that harm local econo- mies. Conservation groups won court-ordered logging cutbacks to protect owl habitat that put many Northwest timber towns into an economic tailspin from which they have yet to fully recover. Political efforts to ramp up logging in the ensuing years have largely failed. Paul Henson, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife in Oregon, says a lot has changed since the origi- nal listing. Back in 1990, the big- gest threat to the owl was cutting down the old growth forests where the owls live. Now it is the barred owl, an aggressive cousin from the East Coast that migrated across the Great Plains and invaded spotted owl territory. Those two areas will be the focus of the review, he said. “The bad news is that the spot- ted owl population has continued to decline,” despite logging cut- backs of about 90 percent on fed- eral lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California, Henson said. “The good news is we know why it is declining,” and have be- gun taking steps to deal with the barred owl. Spotted owl numbers have con- tinued to decline, and the species is estimated to number less than See OWL/8A
