ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2020
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Counting
on further
relief
T
he arrival of federal CARES
Act money to the county is
good news, but it isn’t going to
be enough and that means lawmakers
will need to get back to work to find out
where more cash will come from and
soon.
Last spring, the state received $1.39
billion of federal CARES Act money and
initially, the CARES Act money seemed
to be a bright, shining light against
growing storm clouds on the horizon.
That’s because the impact of the pan-
demic isn’t going to lessen anytime soon.
As news the COVID-19 vaccine is roll-
ing out the reality is there will poten-
tially be a high casualty rate among
small businesses — especially restau-
rants — across Eastern Oregon by the
time the pandemic is declared to be over.
Already the restaurant and hospital-
ity businesses — two key elements in a
place where the Pendleton Round-Up is
one of the biggest economic engines —
in the region are suffering.
Many will probably not survive the
pandemic. That means more people will
be out of a job in a region that has strug-
gled economically for decades.
Which, in turn, means more money is
going to be needed in the future if we are
going to save small businesses.
CARES Act money has been put to
good use, and the funds now available
to Umatilla and Morrow county busi-
nesses is a good example. Businesses in
both counties can apply for support until
Tuesday, Dec. 15.
The money, though, isn’t going to go
very far. At least not far enough to really
make the impact that will save a business
or a restaurant that is barely hanging on.
The response to the pandemic across
the nation and the state was mishandled
essentially from the very beginning, but
the willingness and dedication of Oregon
officials to get much-needed money to
local business deserves praise.
Yet, what happens after this round of
money is gone? What is the plan going
forward? An easy answer would be to
put it all on Congress. But state offi-
cials need to take some responsibility
too. They need to be ceaseless advocates
to our federal congressional delegation
regarding the need for more funds as
soon as possible.
The squeaky wheel, in this case, will
get the oil. Our state elected leaders can,
and must, work to ensure Oregon — and
especially Eastern Oregon — can count
on further relief in the future.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
LETTERS
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters
of 400 words or less on public issues and public
policies for publication in the newspaper and
on our website. The newspaper reserves the
right to withhold letters that address concerns
about individual services and products or
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be published.
SEND LETTERS TO:
editor@eastoregonian.com,
or via mail to Andrew Cutler,
211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801
Why are salmon and steelhead on path to extinction?
YANCY
LIND
OTHER VIEWS
A
recent Associated Press story
titled “Study: Ocean conditions,
not dams, reduced salmon
runs” was misleading reporting of
the original study, “A synthesis of the
coast-wide decline in survival of West
Coast Chinook Salmon” published in
the Fish and Fisheries journal.
The research study argues that the
most prized salmon and steelhead pop-
ulations along the West Coast of North
America are in decline, often dramati-
cally so, and that the reasons are com-
plex. Dams are not the sole culprit.
This can be a controversial statement
in many environmental circles, but it is
true. It is well known that anadromous
fish are declining in river systems that
are not impacted by dams as well as
where dams are present. This is not an
either-or proposition, however.
There are many factors contributing
to the decline of these fish and dams
are certainly one of them. Other rea-
sons include poor water quality from
various sources of pollution, habitat
degradation and loss, lower river lev-
els due to agricultural and municipal
consumption, excessive harvest, higher
water temperatures, breeding between
wild fish and stray, genetically inferior
hatchery fish, etc.
In the Columbia River, dams
have created a series of slow mov-
ing, hot lakes that are lethal to return-
ing salmon and steelhead. These lakes
also confuse and slow down juvenile
fish heading out to the ocean, further
weaken them with exposure to high
concentrations of parasites, and contain
predators like Northern Pike Minnow
and invasive species like bass.
Closer to home, while some pas-
sage has recently been provided, for
decades local dams have stopped fish
from spawning in the waters they his-
torically called home. Lake Billy Chi-
nook is another artificial reservoir
that impedes out migrating smolts and
returning adults.
Agricultural runoff and other
sources of pollution have fouled local
waters creating a toxic stew for salmon,
steelhead, as well as resident fish such
as trout and bull trout. Ever wonder
what happens to all the ground down
toxic bits of tire that comes off our
cars? It is dispersed into the environ-
ment where we breath, eat, and drink
it. We now know that a chemical in this
tire dust also kills salmon.
One of the most important issues
for all anadromous fish today, however,
is our rapidly heating planet. Dramat-
ically rising ocean temperatures have
disrupted the ocean’s food web. The
juvenile steelhead and salmon that can
make it to the ocean find little to eat
and often starve to death. Of course,
they are not the only ocean species suf-
fering from a lack of food. At the other
end of food web, the plight of starving
orcas in Puget Sound has been widely
reported.
This is the point of the research
report. Even fish who call relatively
pristine rivers home are precipitously
declining in numbers due to degraded
ocean conditions. As the report points
out, scientists have predicted this for
nearly two decades. Little has been
done with this knowledge, however,
and today “rebuilding targets may be
unachievable” everywhere, regardless
of the presence or lack of dams.
To quote the research paper, “At the
broadest level, the major implication of
our results is that most of the salmon
conservation problem is determined
in the ocean by common processes.
Attempts to improve SARs (smolt
to adult return rates) by addressing
region-specific issues such as freshwa-
ter habitat degradation or salmon aqua-
culture in coastal zones are therefore
unlikely to be successful.”
Global heating is why the slow but
steady decline in salmon and steelhead
has turned into a calamitous drop in
recent years. Without dramatic change,
and soon, anadromous fish are on the
road to extinction. Of course, fish are
not the only living organisms that will
suffer from our rapidly heating planet.
———
Yancy Lind lives in Tumalo and blogs
at www.coinformedangler.org.
YOUR VIEWS
Public health deserves our
appreciation
Public health is typically under-
funded and very much underappreci-
ated, but nonetheless a foundational
concept in the health of all of us.
A good example of the lack of appre-
ciation is that the pandemic prepared-
ness work done during the Obama
administration was obliterated by the
Trump administration — work that had
been done in recognition that emerg-
ing and reemerging diseases are hap-
pening and due to happen at any time.
If the preparedness program had been
operational and supported, chances are
reasonably good that we would be in a
much stronger position than we occupy
today.
But on the other side of the equation,
the George W. Bush administration did
a great deal of good public health work
with HIV-AIDS, both domestically and
especially in the international context
with the PEPFAR program, which was
very successful in subsaharan Africa
and Asia. It is entirely possible for both
Republican and Democratic administra-
tions to do good work on pandemic pre-
paredness and response.
Our contemporary situation is the
astonishing resistance to the very sim-
ple concept of wearing masks becoming
political battles and attacks and death
threats against public health officials for
suggesting such a basic and stunningly
simple approach.
What has happened to us as Ameri-
cans — all of us as Americans together?
What happened to cooperation in the
face of a significant threat? And look-
ing out for the welfare of each other?
And making all of us American people
“great again”? And communal respon-
sibility for “the mask prevents me from
infecting you, and you from infect-
ing me, and us together not infecting
anybody else, and them not infecting
us.” We can do this — it may be a tiny
inconvenience — but isn’t infecting
each other and dying pretty inconve-
nient too?
Not wearing a mask as a political
statement is a tragedy, and has served
to expose the horrendous lack of under-
standing or appreciating what pub-
lic health is meant to undertake. Now,
as the pandemic surges, the empha-
sis for the need for use of masks surges
as well. The political situation has fin-
ished and ebbs away, so the no-mask
statement need no longer be made. We
must all address this problem together,
regardless of political affiliation or any
other limiting factor, because the more
we ignore the basic public health actions
of mask wearing and social distancing,
the longer and longer the pandemic will
last, dribbling on and on and on.
Regarding vaccination, yes — great
strides have been made. But when there
is an actual vaccine in hand there will
be a huge problem with distribution,
and also the hierarchy of who gets it
when. Obviously, medical personnel
and first responders need it most, and
from there it trickles through various
levels down to ordinary people like you
and me and most of us — and that will
take a while.
In the meantime, we cannot afford
to let our guard down. We must con-
tinue with the basics — masking and
distancing.
Andrew Clark
Pendleton