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NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Deal will add 10,000 acres of habitat
to Central Oregon wildlife area
By HILLARY BORRUD
Capital Bureau
SALEM — The Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife is moving ahead
with a deal that will more than double
the size of a wildlife area where the
publiF Fan hiNe, hunt and ¿sh on the
Lower Deschutes River.
The agency has worked with the
Trust for Public Land over the last
two-and-a-half years to acquire the
former ranch, which will cost $3
million. Private groups partnered with
the state to raise the money.
Lawmakers gave their support to the
plan before they went home in July, and
the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commis-
sion voted unanimously to acquire the
land at its meeting Friday. The proposal
will add more than 10,000 acres to an
existing 8,500-acre wildlife area on the
river.
The parcel is the only private land
along the Deschutes River that is
“heavily used by bighorn sheep” and two
streams on the property are spawning
grounds for steelhead, according to the
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In July, the Legislature approved
the use of $1.3 million from the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service to help
purchase the land, as part of House Bill
5006. Other money for the acquisition
comes from more than $1 million in
mitigation fees that utilities paid to
the state, $225,000 from the Trust for
Public Land, a $135,000 Oregon Parks
and Recreation Department grant and
donations from two wild sheep groups.
The state will not use hunting and
¿shing license fees on the purchase,
according to an Oregon Department of
Portland Art Museum to return
sacred Crow artifacts to tribe
PORTLAND (AP) — The
Portland Art Museum will
be returning 18 ceremonial
packages to Montana’s Crow
Indian Reservation decades
after the sacred artifacts were
taken from the tribe.
The Oregonian reports the museum announced
Wednesday that the tribe will get back their medicine
bundles, which are typically wrapped in a piece of
animal hide and contain everything from beads, seeds,
arrowheads and shells.
The museum’s director of collections and exhibitions,
Donald Urquhart, says Native antiquities and arts dealers
sold the 18 Crow medicine bundles to a Eugene collector
sometime between 1970 and 1990. The woman then
donated them to the museum beginning in the 1980s up
until her death in 2004.
Urquhart says the tribe will work with Little Big
Horn College in Montana to identify possible owners of
the artifacts.
Health care company sues Eugene
newspaper over records release
Courtesy of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is close to a deal to acquire a
more than 10,000-acre ranch on the Lower Deschutes River, including Oak
Creek Canyon pictured here.
Fish and Wildlife document.
Jeremy Thompson, a district wildlife
biologist for the agency in The Dalles,
said the property is important “because
of the unique habitats in the Deschutes
and the ability to tie together a large
landscape of public ground in the
canyon.”
“Being able to have the entire Oak
Creek drainage, and have the ability to
try to manage ¿sheries habitat in that,
will be exciting for us,” Thompson
said, referring to one of the steelhead
spawning grounds.
The existing Lower Deschutes River
wildlife area is a popular location for
people to view bighorn sheep, and it’s
also a good place for bird watching
with habitat for raptors, migratory
songbirds and game birds, according to
the agency.
Thompson said the Department of
Fish and Wildlife will also continue to
allow livestock grazing on the property
as a management tool.
The Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife already owns or manages 20
wildlife or recreation areas across the
state, with a total of more than 200,000
acres.
Likely tsunami debris bagged and barged to Seattle
Associated Press
JUNEAU, Alaska —
Hundreds of tons of marine
debris have been collected
from the shores of Alaska
and British Columbia as part
of an unprecedented cleanup
effort that an organizer says
barely made a dent in the
rubbish that remains on
beaches.
A barge heaped with
white, heavy-duty bags and
loose piles of Styrofoam,
bottles, commercial ¿shing
gear, thousands of large
buoys and Àoats and other
debris arrived in Seattle on
Thursday, three weeks after
picking up its ¿rst load in
Kodiak, Alaska.
Some of the debris
collected likely was swept
to sea by the 2011 tsunami
in Japan, which killed thou-
sands of people. But marine
debris in general, including
rubbish such as plastics and
¿shing nets, is an ongoing
environmental problem.
In Seattle, volunteers
will have to pick through
the piles, sorting what can
be recycled or returned and
what must be taken by train
to a disposal site in Oregon.
Sorting isn’t expected to
begin until next month and
could take a couple weeks
to complete, said Janna
Stewart, tsunami marine
debris coordinator with the
Alaska Department of Envi-
ronmental Conservation.
Still, project organizers
were relieved when the
barge docked in Seattle
after a largely uneventful
journey. There were no
major weather delays along
the way that would have
racked up costs, and the
bags held up as they were
hoisted by helicopter to the
barge from often remote,
rocky beaches.
“Having it come in was
just incredibly gratifying,”
Stewart said.
Of¿cials say the project,
unprecedented in scale in
Alaska, was spurred by the
amount of material that has
washed ashore; the high
cost of shuttling small boat-
loads of debris from remote
sites to port; and a demand
by the Anchorage land¿ll
that ¿shing nets and lines
— common debris items —
be chopped up, a task that
Stewart called impossible.
The mass of debris
collected and loaded onto
the barge, which is roughly
the size of a football ¿eld,
represents just 1 to 2 percent
of the cleanup work that
remains in Alaska, said Chris
Pallister, president of the
cleanup organization Gulf
of Alaska Keeper, which
coordinated the project.
Alaska has more coastline
than all other coastal states
combined, and Pallister
estimates that crews could
¿ll the barge three more
BRIEFLY
EUGENE (AP) — Shareholders of a Eugene company
that manages services to about 95,000 Lane County Oregon
Health Plan patients are suing the publisher of The Register-
Guard to try to stop the state from releasing some records.
The Register-Guard reports that shareholders of
Agate Resources Inc., the parent company of Trillium
Community Health Plan ¿led a lawsuit against Guard
Publishing Co., saying that disclosing the names and
ownership interest of Agate shareholders would invade
their personal privacy and threaten their professional
reputations without serving any public interest.
Agate submitted the names and ownership stakes of
shareholders to the Oregon Department of Consumer
Services in connection to the company’s proposed sale.
Earlier this year, the state agency denied the
newspaper’s records request, but an appeal to the Oregon
Department of Justice later forced the agency to disclose
the records.
Little League vice president
charged in theft of baseball gloves
OREGON CITY (AP) — Oregon City police say the
vice president of the Clackamas Little League has been
arrested on a theft charge.
Sgt. Matthew Paschall says 33-year-old Kerry Edward
Davis turned himself in Thursday, a day after a sporting
goods store called to report the theft of three high-end
baseball gloves. The gloves’ total value was more than
$1,000.
Police say the theft was captured on video surveillance,
and the store was able to identify the suspect from a credit
card he used after taking the gloves.
Davis was booked into the Clackamas County Jail. Bail
was set at $15,000.
Comments sought on navigation
channel environmental review
Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP
This 300-foot-long barge, part of a two-year, multi-national shoreline
cleanup project, is docked at Seattle’s Waste Management on Friday. The barge
will be unloaded of its 3,000 “super sacks” of 400-pound debris, much of it from
the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which was carried to Alaskan and
Canadian shores. In a few weeks, the debris will be sorted to be identified and,
if possible, recycled. Anything remaining will go to the Columbia Ridge landfill.
Mount Rainier is in the background.
times from what remains on
one island alone, Montague
Island in the Gulf of Alaska.
The area on Montague
that needs to be cleaned is
74 miles long, Pallister said.
Over the past three summers,
cleanup crews have covered
10 miles of that stretch and
¿lled at least 1,300 heavy-
duty “super-sacks,” he said.
Many of sites that have
been cleaned are remote
— not the kind of beaches
that attract tourists. But
it’s important to clean the
areas since disintegrating
foam can seep into salmon
streams or be ingested by
birds, Stewart said. There is
also concern with the impact
of broken-down plastic on
marine life.
Pallister worries about
securing funding to continue
the cleanup work. The barge
project was funded in part
with $900,000 from the
state’s share of a $5 million
gift from the Japanese
government
for
states
affected by tsunami debris.
Pallister’s group committed
$100,000. The total cost of
the project was still being
tallied.
The barge arrived in
Kodiak on July 15, where
it loaded debris collected
in that region in 2013 and
2014. Most of the collection
sites were in Alaska, with
the last stop in Alaska near
Wrangell-St. Elias National
Park and Preserve. There
also was a pickup site in
British Columbia.
It can be hard to distin-
guish tsunami debris from
run-of-the-mill
debris
without identi¿able markers.
Before the tsunami,
a lot of old ¿shing gear
would land on beaches.
But afterward, there was
an inundation of Styrofoam
and urethane foam used for
things like building insu-
lation that has continued
to be found, Pallister said.
Property stakes and crates
used by ¿shermen in Japan
also have shown up.
PORTLAND (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers is seeking public comments on a draft
environmental review for continued maintenance of the
Columbia River Federal Navigation Channel.
The proposed maintenance includes placement of
dredged material on the shoreline of Rice Island, just
upstream from Astoria. The goal is to rebuild and protect
the existing placement site and allow development of a
forage area for streaked horned larks, a threatened species
under the Endangered Species Act.
Maintenance also includes re-handling of dredged
material at an in-water site near Howard Island, located
where the Cowlitz River meets the Columbia. It’s needed
because sediment deposition is forming too far away from
the island for a dredge to directly pump that material to the
existing placement site.
The public comment period ends Sept. 7, 2015.
Dr. Connie Umphred,
Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist,
Professional, Competent
541-278-2222 • www.pendletonpsych.com
AUGUST 11-15, 2015
Tuesday, Aug. 11 DUSTIN LYNCH
Wednesday, Aug. 12
JOHN MICHAEL MONTGOMERY
Thursday Aug. 13 (7:00pm) ANTIFAZ &
(9:00pm) LA-MAR-K DE TIERRA
CALIENTE
Friday, Aug. 14 HINDER
Saturday, Aug. 15 WARRANT
Reserved Tickets
On Sale Now!
$12
(does not include
admission)
CARNIVAL WRISTBANDS
$23 (until August 10)
($30 after fair starts)
Available at: Fair office, Hermiston &
Pendleton Chambers, Fiesta Foods and
Columbia State Bank
Call or stop by the Fair Office,
515 W. Orchard, Hermiston
800-700-FAIR (3247)
www.umatillacounty.net/fair
~Visa & Mastercard Gladly Accepted~
Corn
Hammer Toe
Bunion
Diagnosis & Treatment:
• Ingrown/Fungal Toenails
• Bunions/Bone Spurs
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• Ulcers/Skin Disorders
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• Ankle Pain & Instability
• Routine Toenail Care
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Special Services:
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&
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Pendleton Medical Center Suite 11 • Pendleton, OR 97801
(541) 963-0265 • (888) 843-9090
Seeing Patients in Pendleton
Starting September 8
Also Seeing Patients in La Grande
