Wallowa County Chieftain
News
wallowa.com
March 22, 2017
A7
EVENTS
WOLVES
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
The free span structure will be reminis-
cent of the many hay barns in the county,
Oberhelman said.
Oberhelman pointed out that there was
vigorous volunteer support for the project.
The building under consideration has
an estimated total cost of $460,500. The
ice rink committee intends to ask the state
to kick in $345,000. In-kind donations to
meet the 20 percent requirement have al-
ready been pledged up to $110,500. An-
other $5,000 could be raised through ad-
vertising at the rink, which could pay for
upkeep each year.
The council will render its decision at
a later date, but comments were positive.
Mayor Stacey Karvoski reminded the
council that an ice rink had been part of
the city plan for eight years.
But it wasn’t the only event that asked
for funding.
The 14th annual Mountain High
Broncs and Bulls Rodeo, scheduled for
June 17, was represented by MHBB pres-
ident Wup Winn. Winn asked for $2,000
to assist with the popular event. Board
of Directors member and official rodeo
announcer Lee Daggett reminded the
council that MHBB organizers were not
newcomers to the process and had proved
their value year after year.
Candy Bunn represented the Main
Street Show and Shine car show. Bunn
asked for the full amount as well and ad-
vised the council that some clubs have
promised to double the number of cars
they bring. Last year the show down Main
Street featured 113 registered entries.
Janice Carper represented two events,
asking for the full amount for each. Carp-
er represents both the Juniper Jam and the
continuing courthouse concert series.
The Juniper Jam is Sept. 2 and all per-
formance spots are filled already, Carper
said.
“I turned down lots of really quality
music to keep it down to one day,” Carper
said.
The event costs about $22,000 to put
on and $10,000 of that is covered by busi-
ness sponsorships.
Carper is also executive director of the
Wallowa Valley Music Alliance, which
sponsors the courthouse concert series.
That event is held in the gazebo on the
courthouse lawn every Thursday from
June 2 through Aug. 25.
The public continues to enjoy the free
music, bringing out blankets and lawn
chairs, and many local businesses arrange
pre-events on the Friday preceding the
concert, making it doubly valuable to the
community, Carper reported.
The Greater Enterprise Merchants
Society asked for $2,000 to continue the
flower project that places large baskets of
flowers throughout the downtown area.
Wallowa Valley Center for Wellness
work programs have found individuals
to keep the baskets and flowers in good
health.
“The workers have done a very good
job for us,” said representative Wendy
Stewart. “But they won’t be available this
year.”
The watering and fertilizing service
cost $1,700 per year.
GEMS hopes to use motel tax funds to
pay for an employee to maintain the bas-
kets and buy more baskets to expand fur-
ther downtown.
GEMS also requested the full grant
for the Eighth Annual Bowlby Bash. The
“We want to develop a more effective system to en-
sure that Wildlife Services’ staff working in areas with
wolves know what ODFW knows about wolf activity.”
OR-48, a 100-pound male from the Shamrock Pack,
died Feb. 26 after it bit an M-44 device, which fires cy-
anide powder into a predator’s mouth when it tugs on a
baited or scented capsule holder. Wildlife Services set
the trap on private land in an attempt to kill coyotes.
Williams would not give any more detail about where
in Wallowa County the incident took place, but did say
they had the landowner’s blessing to place M-44s on
the property.
Wildlife Services, a federal agency, kills predators or
other wildlife that damage or pose a threat to property,
livestock or humans. The agency describes M-44s as an
“effective and environmentally sound wildlife damage
management tool,” but the wildlife activist group Pred-
ator Defense calls them notoriously dangerous.
The devices are designed to kill canids such as coy-
otes and foxes. The cyanide powder reacts with saliva
in an animal’s mouth, forming a poisonous gas that kills
the animal within one to five minutes.
Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense,
said M-44s indiscriminately kill dogs attracted by the
scent and are a hazard to children or others who might
come across them in rural areas.
According to the Associated Press, just last week an
M-44 killed a family dog and injured a boy near Po-
catello, Idaho.
The Wallowa County incident is complicated by Or-
egon’s management and protection of gray wolves over
the past decade after they entered the state from Ida-
ho and formed packs, quickly grew in population and
spread geographically.
Previously, Wildlife Services did not use M-44s in
what the state designated as areas of known wolf ac-
tivity. After wolves were taken off the state endangered
species list in 2015, it was ODFW’s understanding that
Wildlife Services would continue to avoid using M-44s
in such areas.
“We discussed our concerns specifically regarding
M-44s,” ODFW spokesman Rick Hargrave said last
week. “We didn’t want those devices in those areas.
“We believed it was clear what our concerns were,”
Hargrave said.
Williams, the Wildlife Services state director, said he
wants to focus on preventing another wolf death rather
than “who messed up here.”
He said the Wallowa County case was the first time
the agency has killed a wolf in Oregon. Overall, the
agency has recorded “lethal take” of “non-targeted” an-
imals — ones it didn’t intend to kill — in 1.3 percent of
cases, he said. He said the agency twice unintentionally
caught Oregon wolves in foothold traps, which none-
theless allowed ODFW to put tracking collars on them
before releasing them unharmed.
“Some of our tools are more forgiving than others,”
Williams said.
He said Wildlife Services is discussing with other
state and federal agencies about the future of M-44s in a
state that continues to see wolves expand in population
and geographic area.
“We’ll see where we can draw some lines in the var-
ious counties where we can agree that we don’t want to
set M-44s,” said Williams, noting that there may still be
places where the poison can be the right tool.
Yet Williams said lethal methods are not their pre-
ferred solution, and that Wildlife Services puts on work-
shops to help ranchers protect livestock with non-lethal
methods. In one case two summers ago, agency person-
nel spent 260 hours over four weeks helping protect a
sheep flock from Umatilla Pack wolves, he said. The
work allowed ODFW to avoid having to kill wolves due
to depredations, he said.
Meanwhile, the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
views the Wallowa County incident as a matter of agen-
cy-to-agency interaction and is “staying on the side-
lines,” said Todd Nash, Wallowa County Commissioner
and rancher, who is the group’s wolf policy chair.
Livestock producers, of course, have a keen interest
in the state’s wolf management policies and outcomes.
“It’s never a good time politically to have a dead
wolf,” Nash said.
Kathleen Ellyn/Chieftain
Fun at the opening ceremony of Oregon’s Alpenfest in the gazebo on the Wallowa
County Courthouse lawn in 2016.
Courtesy photo
The Wallowa County Ice Rink would
be similar to this free-span, steel
construction ice rink in Mahoney State
Park in Nebraska.
name of the event, which is held the sec-
ond week in July, will be changed in 2017
to Summer Fest.
It was originally named after a the
Bowlby family who homesteaded near
Enterprise in the 1890s.
“Visitors found the Bowlby Bash name
confusing and difficult to understand,”
Stewart said.
Oregon’s Alpenfest is also a going con-
cern for another year with new events to
be held in Enterprise, in addition to the
festival at the head of Wallowa Lake.
Alpenmeister Chuck Anderson rep-
resented the festival and reported that
800 individuals bought tickets for Ore-
gon’s Alpenfest in 2016, 750 took home
souvenir beer mugs, and 450 patronized
the bratwagon that is set up on the Main
Street in Enterprise on Sept. 28.
Other Enterprise-specific events in-
clude the Alpenfest Parade and official
Alpenfest opening, which is held in the
gazebo on the courthouse lawn. The kick-
off event at Terminal Gravity, which fea-
tures accordion music, will feature Alicia
Baker this year.
To further expand the Enterprise fo-
cus this year, the popular glass steins will
again be given away again in 2017 and
will feature a sticker encouraging tourism
in Enterprise.
A new bratwagon is being built with a
Swiss chalet design, Anderson said.
City council will decide which events
to fund at the April council meeting.
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