FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Hunting,
grazing in
balance
You may never have visited the Zumwalt Prairie in
Wallowa County, but it’s a special place. Designated a Na-
tional Natural Landmark, it’s the largest remaining area
of Pacifi c Northwest bunchgrass prairie in the United
States. The Nature Conservancy manages a chunk of the
515-square-mile prairie, and in doing so it’s demonstrated
that hunting, cattle and nature can mix, all to the benefi t
of the prairie, even though some environmentalists might
disagree.
Elk are native to the prairie, but they had all but disap-
peared from the land more than 100 years ago, according
to an article on the Oregon Public Broadcasting website.
Oregon’s fi rst game warden decided to import new elk in
1912, and by 2015 more than 4,000 of the large members
of the deer family roam the area.
That’s too many for the landscape, which is fragile to
begin with and must be shared with cattle — which are
part of a study being conducted by the conservancy to con-
fi rm that well-managed grazing can actually benefi t the
land. After an unsuccessful effort to persuade the elk to
spend less time on the prairie and its fragile soil, ranchers
approached the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
to allow some hunting there, and the conservancy agreed
to participate. The goal is to reduce the elk herd over time
until there’s a permanent herd of only about 700 animals
left.
The conservancy, meanwhile, limits the number of
hunters allowed on its land and has replaced some barbed
wire fences with ones more friendly to young elk and
other wildlife. And it continues to study the effects both
of the cattle and the elk on the land. Among other things,
says Chad Dotson, who oversees the conservancy’s elk
management efforts on the prairie, it’s already clear that
fewer elk moving around more are better for the native
aspen than larger herds that linger too long.
Neither the conservancy nor local ranchers want to rid
the Zumwalt Prairie of elk, or, for that matter, of cattle.
They’re working together to fi nd a balance that benefi ts
all, from elk to cattle to grass, fl owers and trees. It’s a
work in progress, to be sure, but so far it appears to have
demonstrated that environmentalists and cattlemen can
work together successfully toward a common goal.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
OTHER VIEWS
Beef study provokes messy debate
Editorial from The Dallas Morn-
ing News:
We Texans love our beef, and we
don’t like it when someone suggests
we shouldn’t.
Oprah did so on national televi-
sion and a disgruntled cattle industry
hauled her into a six-week trial in
Amarillo, Texas, in 1998. Now, Texas
A&M University System Chancel-
lor John Sharp has his own, pardon
the pun, beef over beef, this one with
Harvard University researchers, who
accuse A&M researchers of conducting
a biased, pro-beef study published last
fall in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
We aren’t going to pick sides on the
merits of the research or the criticism.
But we will take issue with the way
this dispute has played out publicly
and the disservice it does to scientifi c
credibility.
Over the years, most of us have read
headlines about beef research and
probably have come to the conclusion
that fi ndings often are remarkably
free ranging. Beef consumption is
either good or bad for your health,
depending on the parameters of the
study and, the bane of academic
research, ideological predispositions
and the impact of funding support on
outcomes.
Scientifi c inquiry is supposed to lead
to dispassionate conclusions based
purely on evidence. This brouhaha,
however, has more in common with
a heavyweight boxing weigh-in than
with scientifi c inquiry. For those of us
looking for scientifi c guidance, that is
disappointing, indeed.
The controversy began when
Harvard researchers pointedly ac-
cused one of the study’s 19 authors,
a Texas A&M researcher, of being in
the pocket of the beef industry and of
downplaying the risks of beef con-
sumption. The author, they say, hadn’t
disclosed that he had received funding
for other research partly backed by
the beef industry.
Predictably, A&M didn’t take this
attack lightly. Sharp wants Harvard
University President Lawrence Bacow
to investigate the Harvard faculty
members for mischaracterizing scien-
tifi c research and besmirching A&M’s
academic reputation. He also tosses
some shade at Harvard, suggesting
that the study’s critics had an ideologi-
cal, anti-beef agenda and links to the
True Health Initiative, a global coali-
tion of researchers who describe their
mission as “fi ghting fake facts and
combating false doubts.”
Annals Editor-in-Chief Christine
Laine has said her inbox was hit with
roughly 2,000 emails with messages
so alike and scathing in tone that she
believed them to have been gener-
ated by a bot. “We’ve published a lot
on fi rearm injury prevention,” Laine
said in a piece published earlier this
month in the Journal of the American
Medical Association. “The response
from the NRA was less vitriolic than
the response from the True Health
Initiative.”
The True Health Initiative denies a
bot attack and stands by their concern
that the study is misleading. But this
clash is neither a shining example of
classic peer review, nor does it provide
useful guidance to nutritionists, doc-
tors and consumers trying to make
informed dietary choices. Scientifi c
debate must be better than this.
Trump & Coolidge: So similar yet so different
I was watching TV coverage
of President Trump’s impeach-
ment trial the other evening and
I couldn’t help but wonder how
different things might be if Trump
were more like Calvin Coolidge.
Or even a little bit like him.
The comparison, I’ll concede, is
farfetched in the extreme.
Indeed there might be no pair of
presidents, at least among Repub-
licans, who are less alike, tempera-
mentally, than Trump and Coolidge.
Coolidge, who was the 30th presi-
dent and served from 1923-29, was
known as “Silent Cal.”
Not even Trump’s most simper-
ing acolyte would dare to describe
him as silent.
I wouldn’t even have thought of
Coolidge — who among us except
presidential historians often does?
and probably not many of them —
except I happened to be reading
“Only Yesterday — An Informal
History of the 1920s” by Frederick
Lewis Allen.
I plucked it from the shelves of
newly arrived nonfi ction at the li-
brary under the mistaken assump-
tion that it was a new book, one
published, perhaps, to coincide with
the 100th anniversary of the start
of the 1920s.
In fact the book came out in 1931.
(Possibly I ought to have dis-
cerned this from the “Only Yester-
day” title, but there you go.)
Given that Coolidge was
president for the better part of the
titular decade, he is a prominent
JAYSON
JACOBY
character in Allen’s book.
As prominent as Coolidge can
be, anyway, which is not especially
prominent at all.
Surely no president has been
more retiring, more seemingly
uninterested in the trappings of the
august offi ce, than Coolidge.
He did not, of course, have Twit-
ter.
But nothing I have read about
Coolidge suggests he would have
bothered to share his deepest
thoughts with the wider world had
the means to do so been available.
Or his shallowest thoughts,
which seems to me the more apt
adjective when it comes to Twitter.
Yet for all the blatant differences
between the two men — Coolidge
placid and distant, Trump volatile
and confrontational — I was struck
by the commonalities of their presi-
dencies as I read Allen’s book and,
my curiosity piqued, subsequently a
few others.
Coolidge, despite his reputation
for not speaking unless he absolute-
ly had to, wasn’t averse, as Trump
is not, to employing the latest com-
munication technology to address
his constituents.
Coolidge’s speech to Congress
on Dec. 6, 1923, was broadcast on
radio, a fi rst for a presidential ad-
dress.
Coolidge, like Trump, also
devoted more time than most presi-
dents to talking with reporters. This
strikes me as an especially strange
thing to have in common since both
presidents would seem to have
ample reason to avoid journalists,
albeit for quite different reasons
— Coolidge’s general reticence as
compared with Trump’s visceral
antipathy for mainstream media.
But to me the most intrigu-
ing comparison between Trump
and Coolidge — and the one that
occurred to me as I watched the
impeachment trial — involves the
trajectories of their presidencies.
The similarities between their
policies, and of the situation in
America during their tenures,
seem to me striking.
Both Coolidge and Trump
signed bills cutting income taxes
— Coolidge did so three times, and
by 1927 only the wealthiest 2%
of Americans paid federal income
taxes.
However, Coolidge, unlike
Trump and indeed most presi-
dents, was also able to control
federal spending and actually
reduce the federal debt (a quaintly
tiny fi gure in those distant days,
when “trillion” was superfl uous in
such matters).
Both presidents opposed what
they considered excessive govern-
ment regulation. One of Coolidge’s
biographers described federal
oversight of industry during his
presidency as “thin to the point of
invisibility,” a phrase which certain
of Trump’s critics might wish to
borrow.
But of course the most obvious
comparison between the Trump
and Coolidge administrations is
the booming economy that each
presided over.
The 1920s were renowned as
the “Roaring ’20s” — the era of
bull markets and bathtub gin and
Flappers doing the Charleston.
These days we can buy our gin
out in the open. But stock market
gains, of which there have been
many the past three years, still
make headlines.
Indeed, the economy during
Trump’s presidency, with record
high Dow Jones averages and
record low unemployment rates, is
the stuff that many of his prede-
cessors, from both parties, could
scarcely dream of.
But rather than keep the low
profi le that was Coolidge’s hall-
mark, sliding silently below the
roiling waves of Washington, D.C.,
and only occasionally lifting his
periscope to have a look around,
Trump is the political equivalent
of an aircraft carrier, brash and
defi ant and liable at any moment
to light off the afterburners.
Trump’s bravado endears him to
his vehement supporters, of course.
And I’m not nearly naíve enough
to believe that had Trump only
displayed a bit more modesty, then
his critics in the Democratic Party
and the media would have lav-
ished praise on his deft handling of
the economy.
Still and all, the impeachment
prompts the question of whether
the taciturn Coolidge approach
might have served Trump better
during his infamous phone call
July 25, 2019, with Ukrainian
President Volodymr Zelensky.
I’ve read a transcript of the call
multiple times.
It doesn’t seem to me as nefari-
ous as Trump’s foes imply.
Yet it’s no minor matter that one
of the people Trump wants Zel-
ensky to investigate is Joe Biden,
someone Trump obviously knew
could well be his rival in the 2020
election.
Trump is guilty of poor judg-
ment, certainly, but that’s not nec-
essarily an impeachable offense.
In any case, Trump certainly
might have saved himself a con-
siderable amount of trouble had
he decided not to broach that topic
during the phone call.
One quote in particular from
Coolidge — and there aren’t a
great many to choose from given
his proclivity for muteness —
seems to me applicable.
“The words of a president have
an enormous weight,” Coolidge
wrote after he retired, “and ought
not to be used discriminately.”
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.