KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSDAY, SePTeMBeR 1, 2022
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Polio’s
tiny, but
troubling,
return
P
olio, the specter that haunted
America during the first half of
the 20th century, leaving parents
frightened that their children would be
killed or paralyzed for life, can seem as
relevant today as manual typewriters or
black-and-white TV sets.
And for more than three decades,
the viral disease has been relegated to
history.
Polio hasn’t spread widely in the U.S.
since 1979. And the federal government
declared the disease eradicated from the
U.S. in 1994.
The reason is simple — vaccination.
Vaccines have all but eliminated
polio, along with other previously wide-
spread diseases that mainly afflicted
children, such as measles, mumps, diph-
theria and whooping cough.
Yet earlier this month a young adult
who is not vaccinated against polio and
lives in Rockland County, New York,
north of New York City, contracted the
virus and was paralyzed. More trou-
bling, the virus was found in sewage
samples in a few New York counties, as
well as in New York City.
Vaccination rates remain high in most
of the country, fortunately. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
reported about 93% of 2-year-olds have
had at least three doses of polio vaccine
(federal officials recommend four doses,
although some states require only three
for students attending school).
But the CDC also notes, in a report
on the recent New York state polio
case, that vaccination rates have dipped
during the COVID-19 pandemic, largely
due to disruptions in some vaccination
programs.
There’s another potential concern
— that the politicization of COVID-19
vaccines will convince some people to
eschew polio and other vaccines whose
effectiveness and safety are indisputable
based on voluminous data over many
decades.
According to the New York State
Immunization Information System,
vaccination rates among children 2 and
younger in Rockland County was 60.3%
as of August 2022. In some communi-
ties, the rate was as low as 37.3%. That
puts a significant number of children
at risk of contracting a preventable
disease.
New York officials believe polio
arrived in the state by way of a person
infected with a strain of the virus linked
to samples found in wastewater in Israel
and the United Kingdom. That person
either had few or no symptoms — which
is the case with most people who are
infected with the polio virus — and then
spread it to others, including the person
who, due to the paralysis, became the
first known confirmed case in the state.
The reappearance of polio, even in a
very limited sense as is the case in New
York, doesn’t mean the disease is going
to become widespread again. But the
episode should be a valuable reminder
to Americans of how vital vaccination
is, and how much inoculations have
done to spare both children and adults
from terrible, and potentially fatal,
infections.
Sadly, someone’s life was irrevocably
changed in the process.
Hunters and harvests
BILL
ANEY
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND
he relationship between hunters
and prey is complicated.
I love stepping into the hunter
role, creeping quietly through the woods
with the dials on all my senses turned to
the max, paying attention to shadows,
air currents, the distant crack of a twig
or a subtle shift in a shape on the oppo-
site hill. Did that log just move?
Yes, the hunt makes me feel truly
alive.
But then comes that moment when
the hunter and the hunted meet. Decid-
ing to pull the trigger or release the
arrow marks a change in the whole
experience. As hunters, we say this is
where the fun ends and the work begins,
but it is more than that. Many of us have
quiet personal rituals we go through
after taking a life, thanking the animal,
our creator, the earth. True statement:
None of my hunting partners enjoys the
killing part of the hunt, and I wouldn’t
hunt with anyone that did.
A few of my friends have taken to
referring to the filling a deer or elk tag
as a “harvest.” As in “I hunted hard for
seven days but was not able to harvest
an elk.” I suspect this is a way of taking
some of the angst out of the killing,
trying to convince themselves that hunt-
ing is simply another way of gathering
food from nature’s bounty, like a walk
through the vegetable garden.
Personally, I am puzzled by this
choice of words. By choosing the clean
euphemism of “harvest,” the hunter
seems to be trying to make hunt-
ing somehow seems less violent or
dramatic. But to the hunted, it is still a
violent dramatic event.
T
We usually think of a harvest as
something that completes the cycle of
sowing, tending, watering and weed-
ing. It implies sweat equity, and the
harvester is invested in the crop.
I remember my mother talking about
how she and her Stanfield High School
classmates would make late summer
midnight raids on a watermelon patch,
more than once being chased away by
a farmer with a shotgun. I doubt the
pranksters considered their purloined
melons as a harvest, having no invest-
ment or commitment into the care and
feeding of the crop.
Are hunters any more deserving
to call the result of a successful hunt
a harvest? I am not talking about the
high fence Texas game ranches, where
a “hunter” can pay $20,000 to shoot any
of a long list of exotic game animals.
These herds are cultivated much like
domestic livestock, and use of the
harvest word may indeed apply. But is
this hunting?
I recently had a wonderful discussion
with a new friend and tribal member
about his perspective on hunting and
harvesting. The traditions around hunt-
ing for his culture do involve invest-
ment. Learning to be a tribal hunter
means understanding the creation
stories and the deal struck long ago
between the four-leggeds and humans.
Deer will provide people with food,
clothing and other raw materials, and in
exchange people are to take care of the
deer.
And there’s more to it. Spiritually,
I have heard hunting referred to as an
act of prayer, and there’s a feeling of the
hunted giving to the hunter.
Every crop has a prime harvest
season. It’s watermelon and wheat
season now, and the huckleberries are
ripe in the Blues. Bow hunters are out
chasing bull elk in a season when the
animals are more concerned about
mating than avoiding hunters. Pursuing
big game while they are rutting can be
a lot of fun, but it usually doesn’t bring
the best meat. Similarly, the largest bull
or buck is not the best eating no matter
when it is hunted; you can’t eat antlers,
and I’d much rather fill my freezer with
the meat of a young cow elk or a doe.
There are ways for hunters to invest
time and energy in their bounty. As
public landowners, we can advocate for
intelligent management of habitat, like
a farmer maintains soil health, and we
can invest time, energy and sweat in
improving the ground. In our corner of
the world, the Blue Mountains, we have
tools like forest thinning, prescribed
burning, road management and control
of invasive species to provide habitat for
thriving herds of deer and elk.
Crops can’t grow well on ground that
is constantly disturbed. Once the sown
seed has germinated, the farmer stays
out of the fields. Likewise, wild animals
need secure undisturbed habitat. For
some species this means areas without
motor vehicle traffic and wise hunters
know that bombing around the forest on
all-terrain vehicles in midsummer will
affect the herds they hunt in the fall.
Those who think of hunting as a
harvest should be willing to put in the
upfront investment of time, energy and
treasure into the crop. Join and support
hunting and conservation organizations
that work to improve habitat. Respect,
and encourage, road management on
public lands by keeping motor vehicles
where they belong, thereby providing
secure habitat year-round. Get engaged
and educated on public land manage-
ment issues and be an advocate for
sound resource management.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
———
Bill Aney is a forester and wildlife biol-
ogist living in Pendleton and loving the
Blue Mountains.
YOUR VIEWS
Mixed messages
We continually get the
same message from both
Salem and Pendleton city offi-
cials, we need more revenue.
In the case of those legisla-
tors in Salem, to appease the
governor to solve a myriad
of perceived problems, a
new “transportation tax” to
support public transportation,
was passed. This new tax is
levied only on the working
stiffs. Almost in the same
breath, they announce that
overall tax revenue is much
higher than expected, and
taxpayers, including those not
effected by the new “transpor-
tation tax” will get a “kicker”
refund in lieu of a future tax
reduction.
The city of Pendleton, on
the other hand, would rather
take advantage of that “trans-
portation tax,” and rather than
use it as intended, to improve
our public transportation
system, is using it to construct
a bus barn to provide a break
room and other amenities, not
for our city employees, but for
elite Taxi drivers contracted
to drive city vans and buses.
That’s the company
that just hijacked the name
used by independent driv-
ers contracted to Uber. This
appears to be a retaliatory
move to undermine the test
program adopted by city
officials that allows competi-
tion within the taxi service to
better serve the public. Those
are the same city officials that
boast “not to worry, we’re
not spending property taxes
on public transportation, it
and the bus barn are paid for
with various free government
grants.” Free? Who are they
trying to kid?
In another brilliant move,
the “Love Your Home”
program, aimed at blight elim-
ination in the urban renewal
districts and an “amazingly
popular” program according
to Mayor John Turner, will
probably be eliminated. Go
figure. Once again the resi-
dential areas of the URD will
have to bow to the downtown
business community when it
comes to assistance programs.
Rick Rohde
Pendleton