A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
November 9, 2016
Wallowa County Chieftain
ODFW needs
consistent
state funding
hanges in social behavior and public financing
will increasingly affect how we fund the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife, and whether
some of the Pacific Northwest’s outdoor traditions are
able to continue.
Our Capital Bureau reported Tuesday that a task force
charged with finding sustainable funding for ODFW
is considering holding off on scheduled license fee
increases. It wants to see
if the Legislature approves
either an income tax
surcharge or a surcharge on
beverage containers to fund
the department.
About a third of the
From the Daily Astorian
agency’s budget — roughly
$60 million a year — is
generated by selling hunting and fishing licenses. State
and federal funds account for two-thirds.
Like many other states, Oregon has experienced a
gradual but inexorable decline in the number of people
still interested in harvesting their own wild fish and
game. And like other states, Oregon has partially offset
this decline in participation by raising license fees
on those who remain. This results in a cycle of less
financially advantaged residents being squeezed out of
hunting and fishing, along with those whose who have
only marginal enthusiasm for rod and gun sports.
As much or perhaps more than other recreational
activities, interest in hunting and fishing typically is
established in childhood or not at all. Fish and Wildlife
and its peers around the nation have taken a variety of
steps to encourage parents to get kids engaged in the
outdoors, offering free or discounted license options,
special events and other incentives. But if parents can’t
afford to go hunting or fishing themselves, it’s unlikely
their children will.
This leads to the kinds of internal struggles evidenced
by the state’s task force, which is reluctantly eying two
license fee increases — one in 2018 and another in 2020,
with future increases indexed to inflation.
These increases come at the same time other hunting
and fishing costs also are on the rise. In addition to the
constant struggle to afford insurance and upkeep on
vehicles and vessels, hunters in particular face steep
increases in fees they must pay for access to many
previously free forestlands. Weyerhauser and other
corporations have been aggressively raising access fees
— ostensibly as a way to pay for forest upkeep.
Why should the majority of citizens who neither
fish nor hunt care about any of this? Many who enjoy
nature in ways that do not require licenses — everything
from birdwatching to the satisfaction of knowing wild
places exist — individually pay a few dollars in taxes a
year to ODFW operations, as opposed to $180 for a full
combination adult license fee.
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported this week on the
difficulties Fish and wildlife has in funding conservation
measures for nongame species — everything from bats
to frogs. Problems like this will get nothing but worse
if hunting and fishing participation rates and license
income continue to languish.
What can we do? Certainly support legislative efforts
to establish a reliable safety net for ODFW funding.
Other voluntary options already exist and are fully
described at http://bit.ly/2f8YQ1Q. One of the easiest is
buying $20 habitat conservation stamps via the internet
or at any location that sell fishing and hunting licenses.
If we care about Oregon wildlife — and surveys show
we strongly do — we have to figure out new ways to pay
for the vital work performed by Fish and Wildlife.
C
GUEST
EDITORIAL
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Contents copyright © 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduction
without permission is prohibited.
Volume 134
Getting around, circa 1947
On a recent trip to Sas-
katchewan with my brother
I took a picture of an aban-
doned grain elevator that sat
by an abandoned rail line. The
rail line was not only aban-
doned, it had the ties and rails
removed. The CPR main line
is still functioning but most
of the spur lines that used to
serve communities north and
south of the main line are
gone. The unique thing about
the picture of the elevator is
that the shipping corrals were
still standing complete with
loading chute. For years thou-
sands of cattle were shipped
via rail from all over the West
to eastern destinations like
Chicago and Kansas City.
Local ranchers, Krebs live-
stock, used to ship thousands
of sheep from Central Oregon
to summer grass on the Black-
feet Reservation bordering
Glacier Park in Montana. That
stopped when the rail lines
quit the practice. The last cat-
tle cars I recall seeing were on
a branch line in central Mon-
tana about 1975 and looked
awfully lonesome.
When I was about 7 or 8
I talked my folks into letting
me ride a branch line train
to visit my cousins that lived
close to the Montana line
about 80 miles south of us.
This required taking a Hooter-
ville Trolley that ran the spur
line down and back daily. Dad
bought me a ticket and pinned
it to my jacket and put me on
the train and told me not to get
off until I got to Glen Bain.
The train consisted of an en-
gine, coal car, water car, box
cars, cattle cars, a mail car, a
baggage car, a passenger car
and a caboose. At each small
town we came to empty box
cars were dropped on a siding
by the elevators and the mail
Barrie Qualle
An abandoned grain elevator with shipping corrals beside an old rail line.
OPEN
RANGE
Barrie Qualle
and passengers
were dropped.
After a couple of towns
I got tired of the passenger
car and visited the guy in the
mail car. When he tired of me
and my questions he direct-
ed me to the caboose, where
the brakeman who doubled
as conductor let me ride in
cupola where you could see
the tops of all the cars. After
about a six-hour ride with
several stops we arrived in
Glen Bain and I headed for
my cousins’ house.
I noticed the train had
dropped about eight cattle
cars on the Glen Bain siding
and a couple of days later
two herds of steers arrived at
the corrals. One herd occu-
pied the corrals and the other
held up on the flat next to the
tracks. The cattle cars were
hauled to the loading chute by
a team of work horses loaded
and moved on down the sid-
ing. When the first herd was
loaded the second filled the
corrals and were loaded also.
It turned out this was the
day for me and the loaded
steers to head back to the
main line. The train picked
me up along with the cattle
and at each subsequent town
added box cars, now full of
grain from the elevators. My
dad met me up at the main
line station and the cattle
and grain were dropped on a
siding to await the next east-
bound train.
The branch lines along
with most elevators are all but
gone now and cattle are only
transported by truck. Grain is
still shipped by rail but only on
the main lines. The local grain
elevators that used to serve
small towns on the prairie
have been replaced by big ter-
minals on main lines and the
grain is transported to them
by truck. A lot of the thriving
small towns with their eleva-
tors have disappeared or are
pretty much ghost towns. All
in my lifetime.
Columnist Barrie Qualle
is a working cowboy in Wal-
Raising a toast to our
veterans and their families
The first time I met fellow veteran
Dawson Officer, we bonded over a whis-
key that was smooth and subtle, with
flavors of vanilla, caramel and spice. But
we weren’t at a bar and didn’t even share
a drink.
Instead, we were at the Oregon Na-
tional Guard’s Camp Withycombe and
Dawson was the keynote speaker at a
conference to help veterans start, sus-
tain and grow their businesses. A com-
bat veteran, Dawson is also the founder
and owner of 4 Spirits Distillery, a small
batch operation in Adair Village.
When starting his business, Dawson
was troubled that even as we had thou-
sands serving overseas, the conflicts in
the Middle East barely registered as a
concern in public opinion polls.
Dawson felt compelled to act and ded-
icated his new business in honor of four
soldiers with whom he served in the Or-
egon National Guard: Lt. Erik McCrae,
Sgt. Justin Eyerly, Sgt. Justin Linden, and
Sgt. David Roustum. Four soldiers who
were his brothers in arms and gave their
lives in Baghdad. He continues to give
back today with a share of proceeds go-
ing to support local veteran services.
etters to the Editor are
subject to editing and
should be limited to 275
words. Writers should also
include a phone number with
L
GUEST
COLUMN
Cameron Smith
The essence of Dawson’s distillery
captures the meaning of Veterans’ Day:
a day where we honor military service
and sacrifice, but also celebrate how
veterans from the greatest generation of
World War II to the latest generation of
Iraq and Afghanistan continue to serve
and build our communities.
At the same time, we must also have
an honest appraisal of the impacts of
war upon return and our shared commit-
ment to support those who have borne
the battle.
As a Marine, I spent almost two years
in the sands of Iraq. When I left the mil-
itary, the transition was a challenge. I
missed the higher calling of a shared
mission. I missed the close connections
forged in the long stretches of boredom
and intense adrenalin surges on deploy-
ment. I also struggled to explain to em-
their signature so we can call
to verify identity. The Chief-
tain does not run anonymous
letters.
You can submit a letter to
ployers how I could add value.
But my experiences pale in compar-
ison to that of many veterans who are
challenged by the visible and invisible
wounds of war. We must understand that
those most impacted by their service
have a tenacious spirit and resiliency.
They deserve the best in care, resourc-
es and support as an investment in their
continued leadership for our state and
nation.
This Veterans Day, we will not add
any new names to the state’s Afghan/
Iraqi Freedom Memorial Wall in Salem.
But as Dawson would remind us, we
are still a nation at war, with our Armed
Forces deployed around the world.
Please join me Nov. 11 in raising a
toast to salute our fallen and their fam-
ilies, veterans of all eras, and those still
in uniform serving around the world.
Let us recognize them on this one day
and commit to partnering throughout the
year to ensure that our military, veterans
and their families thrive in Oregon.
Cameron Smith served three tours in
Iraq as a U.S. Marine and is the director
of the Oregon Department of Veterans
Affairs.
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