A10
EASTERN OREGON OUTDOORS
East Oregonian
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Wallowa County Fly-In puts on a soaring spectacle
By JACK PARRY
Wallowa County Chieftain
JOSEPH — Planes lined
the tarmac July 9 at the airport
in Joseph as families, aerody-
namic fanatics and other spec-
tators filed through the gates
to catch the Wallowa County
Fly-In and Airshow.
Vendors sold a slew of
foods and iced treats and
pilots sat next to their planes,
free to answer questions
from curious attendees as
the Joseph State Airport set
the stage for an event that
had been in the making for
months and months.
Requiring tons of Federal
Aviation Administration
regulations and with more
than 100 volunteers helping to
put the event together, it was
finally coming to fruition.
The Wallowa County Fly-In
and Airshow were about to
begin.
J.D. Clay, the chairman of
the North East Oregon Avia-
tion Foundation, explained it
had to make a three-dimen-
sional box in the sky and
evacuate everyone who lives
under that box. Just another
example of the work and coor-
dination this tiny airport in
Joseph needs to do to make
the show possible.
“It takes a lot of work to
make something like this
happen. You just don’t see it at
smaller airports, especially an
airport this small,” Clay said.
One of the most unique air
shows in the northwest, part
of the allure for pilots and
spectators comes from the
stunning view that gives the
airshow its setting. A bright
yellow field of flowers sits
below the Wallowa Moun-
tains just south of the airport
to create a beautiful scene for
planes to pierce through.
“I’ve been to quite a few
airshows, but I’ve never
been to one in this dramatic
of a setting. The backdrop,
it is incredible,” said Brent
Blakely of Sandy, who accom-
panied friends to the show.
Gary Miller came from
Bend to watch the show, and
keeps coming back after
previous years partially
because he admires the scen-
ery so much.
“It’s just a beautiful
airshow in a beautiful loca-
tion. Look at those mountains,
I mean really.” Miller said.
For visitors such as
Jack Parry/Wallowa County Chieftain
The West Coast Ravens lay down smoke in formation during their performance at the Wallowa County Fly-In in Joseph on
July 9, 2022.
Jack Parry/Wallowa County Chieftain
Stephen Christopher and Todd Rudberg of Undaunted Airshows create a loop of smoke during their performance at the Wal-
lowa County Fly-In in Joseph on July 9, 2022.
Blakely, the friendly vibe
from the local volunteers and
vendors makes this air show a
lot more authentic than others
he’s attended.
“It’s a neighborhood event,
it’s not so much a commercial
event,” he said.
Mike Webber f rom
Tucson, Arizona, and his
family were one of the groups
of related spectators who
turned up to the event which
entertained those of all ages.
While he most enjoyed
the noise and horsepower, he
recognized that his little ones
were enjoying themselves as
well, especially his daughter
and her sno-cone.
“Oh yeah they’re having
fun,” Webber said.
For these reasons and
others, this event is one that
tends to bring out the whole
community. Clay mentioned
that they usually have around
1,000 people on the tarmac
each year.
“That’s a sixth of the
county,” he said, “so that’s a
huge number.”
Around 10 a.m., everyone
either in chairs, standing or
laid out on the grass shifted
their attention to the skies as
the West Coast Ravens started
to leave the runway. They did
a six-plane performance that
included different feats of
formation flying.
The performance that
seemed to stun the audience
the most was the tandem
two-airplane display from
Undaunted Airshows, which
included some creative smoke
drawings like a giant loop
right above Chief Joseph
Mountain.
“I liked the two-ship
(performance,)” Miller said.
“I thought they were very
nice. Really tight and you
know, lazy-playing and enjoy-
ing themselves up there.”
Stephen Christopher pilots
one of the planes along with
his partner Todd Rudberg,
who both travel all across the
Pacific Northwest doing air
shows and showing off their
act. Being a professional, he
finds it difficult to compare
the feeling of flying a plane to
anything else.
“Getting the experience
of being up in the air, with
the movement and motion of
seeing everything, it’s very
special,” he said.
He described Joseph as
one of his favorite small town
venues in the area, and he flew
in the show last year when
there was smoke coming from
the fires.
“The farm community,
the backdrop, the enthusiasm
of the families and the kids,”
Christopher said.
Luckily on a clear day,
the plains and mountains
are beautiful for everyone to
observe on the ground. But
Christopher’s view during
some of his stunts in the atmo-
sphere is breathtaking.
“I get to see most of that
when I’m upside down. I get
to see the world spinning by
as a backdrop,” he said.
The show wasn’t just a
meaningless display, the
North East Oregon Avia-
tion Foundation was fund-
raising for the STEM career
technical program at Joseph
High School to help expose
students to aviation employ-
ment possibilities.
For the first time a four-di-
mensional experience from
the U.S Air Force called
“Operation Shadow Strike,”
which simulates a special
operations mission, was
stationed toward the front of
the tarmac. One of the event’s
organizers, Joe Basile from
Joseph, said that the purpose
of the inclusion wasn’t just for
entertainment purposes.
“The Air Force needs
pilots, they need mechanics,
they need technicians,” Basile
said. “It’s a recruiting tool.”
Better news for some Baker County bighorn sheep
bighorns, Ratliff said.
This bunch, which gener-
ally stays at lower elevations
near the Snake River Road,
which runs along Brownlee
Reservoir between Richland
and Huntington, had lambs
this spring, just as in the
previous two years.
But earlier this month,
Ratliff said, biologists didn’t
see a single lamb in the area,
where they counted 67 ewes.
Biologists did see lambs
earlier this year, he said.
They also saw several
ewes with swollen udders,
indicating they had recently
been nursing a lamb that,
presumably, had died.
Lamb survival
improves for some
groups of bighorn
sheep plagued by
bacterial infection
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Baker
County’s biggest herd of
bighorn sheep, plagued for
more than two years by a
bacterial infection that leads
to fatal pneumonia, seems to
be thriving in some places,
but the situation is much less
promising in others.
The difference is dramatic,
said Brian Ratliff.
He’s the district wild-
life biologist at the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life’s Baker City office.
Ratliff has been track-
ing the bacterial outbreak
in the Lookout Mountain
bighorn herd, in far eastern
Baker County, since Febru-
ary 2020. The herd is not only
Baker County’s, but it has also
been Oregon’s largest herd of
Rocky Mountain bighorns.
The disease also spread
to the county’s other herd of
the agile sheep, which roams
in the Burnt River Canyon
between Durkee and Bridge-
port.
The sheep in the Burnt
River herd are California
bighorns, a different subspe-
cies than the larger Rocky
Mountain sheep that inhab-
its the Lookout Mountain
country between its name-
sake mountain and Brownlee
Reservoir.
The strain of Mycoplasma
ovipneumoniae bacteria was
first detected in the Look-
out Mountain herd, which
Tracking ‘chronic
shedders’
Nick Myatt/Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, File
A bighorn sheep ram stands in 2011 in the Burnt River Canyon.
included about 400 bighorns,
in February 2020 when dead
sheep were found near the
Snake River Road above
Brownlee Reservoir.
Lab tests of tissue samples
from dead sheep confirmed
the strain of bacteria, the first
time it had been found in
bighorn sheep in Oregon.
During an aerial count in
late 2018, biologists counted
403 bighorns in the Lookout
Mountain unit.
A survey in late 2020
showed about 250 sheep, and
a count in 2021 turned up 274
animals.
In Lookout Mountain,
different herds, different
results in 2022
First the good news — and
it’s quite good, Ratliff said.
Two groups of sheep,
one frequenting the upper
reaches of the Connor Creek
Canyon, the other in upper
Soda Creek, about midway
between Huntington and
Richland, have produced a
good crop of lambs this year.
And unlike the previous two
years, these lambs seem to be
doing well.
The ratio among those
groups was about one lamb
per ewe, Ratliff said.
“Clearly we had some
lamb survival,” he said on
July 5.
In 2020, by contrast, biolo-
gists were initially optimistic
because they didn’t find any
dead lambs in Lookout Moun-
tain as of mid June. They
knew, from earlier testing,
that ewes don’t infect their
lambs prior to birth.
But later in the summer
of 2020, as ewes and lambs
congregated in what biolo-
gists call “nursery groups,”
those lambs started to
sicken and die across the
Lookout Mountain area.
Ratliff and other biologists
concluded that all of the 65
to 70 lambs born in the unit
during the spring of 2020
died from bacteria-inducted
pneumonia, along with an
estimated 75 adult bighorns.
The situation wasn’t much
better in 2021.
After seeing quite a few
lambs in late spring and early
summer, by late August biol-
ogists knew of just five lambs
that had survived from that
year’s group.
During an aerial census
late in 2021, Ratliff counted
just four lambs.
This summer, the ewes
and lambs are in nursery
groups in upper Connor and
Soda creeks, but the lambs,
unlike in 2020 and 2021, are
surviving.
The situation is quite dire,
however, for another group of
The key to combatting
bacterial infection, Ratliff
said, is finding sheep that
carry the bacteria and can
infect others through nose-
to-nose contact.
These “chronic shedders”
often don’t get sick them-
selves.
But even a lone shedder
can rapidly infect a large
group of bighorns, many of
which are quite susceptible
to the illness, Ratliff said.
Chronically shedding
ewes are especially trouble-
some because they mingle
with other ewes, and lambs,
much more than rams, which
are either solitary or with
other rams most of the year.
ODFW’s strategy for find-
ing chronic shedders is labor-
and time-intensive, requiring
that biologists trap as many
bighorns as possible, test
them for the bacteria, and fit
them with tracking collars
so they can be captured and
tested again.
Sheep that are twice deter-
mined to be shedders will be
euthanized.
So far, ODFW has euth-
anized two ewes, one from
the Lookout Mountain unit
and one from the Burnt River
Canyon, after they were tested
twice and shown to be chronic
shedders of the bacteria both
times. Both were killed in
early spring of this year.
(Several sheep that were
shedding during a first test
were no longer shedding the
bacteria during a subsequent
test. Other chronic shedders
died naturally before they
were tested twice.)
However, Ratliff said he’s
concerned about one ewe
that has been seen recently
by multiple people near the
Snake River Road, in the
vicinity of Big Deacon Creek,
which is between Connor
and Soda creeks. That ewe
is clearly sick, he said, with
obvious symptoms such as
coughing and a snotty nose.
Although it’s not certain
that the ewe is infected with
the Mycoplasma ovipneumo-
niae bacteria, that’s plausible,
and of great concern.
One infected sheep “could
wipe out that entire nursing
group,” Ratliff said.
He said two other ODFW
biologists recently found a
ewe that was suspected of
being the ill sheep, as it was
in the same area where the
sick sheep had been seen the
previous day, but it’s not clear
whether the ewe they found
was the same.
The ewe the biologists saw
was decidedly spry, Ratliff
said.
The sheep actually jumped
into Brownlee Reservoir and
swam faster than the biolo-
gists could run along shore to
track it, he said.