SPORTS A5
SPORTS A6
Baker wrestlers beat Mac-Hi
Bulldogs host swim meet
IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • HOME & LIVING • SPORTS
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
Councilor
to propose
moving
ahead
with train
quiet zone
QUICK HITS
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Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to
Herald subscriber Frank
Riggs of Richland.
BRIEFING
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Local student on dean’s
list at Iowa Lakes
Community College
ESTHERVILLE, Iowa —
Katrina Fast of Baker City
was named to the dean’s list
for the fall 2021 term at Iowa
Lakes Community College. To
qualify, students must earn a
GPA of 3.25 to 3.99.
BY SAMANTHA O’CONNER
soconner@bakercityherald.com
Public hearing set
on North Baker
transportation plan
The Baker County Plan-
ning Commission will have a
public hearing on Feb. 8, to
discuss proposed revisions to
the county’s comprehensive
plan related to the North-
ern Baker Transportation
Improvement Plan.
That plan covers proposed
changes to Cedar Street,
Hughes Lane, 10th Street
and Pocahontas Road.
The public hearing is
scheduled for 5 p.m. at the
County Courthouse, 1995
Third St.
Residents can also
participate remotely, by
teleconference. Call 1-833-
548-0282, enter meeting ID
6826121078 and passcode
967061.
A staff report for the
Planning Commission will be
available at the Planning De-
partment in the Courthouse
by Feb. 1. To receive a digital
copy for no cost, or for more
information, call Tara Micka
at 541-523-8219.
WEATHER
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Wednesday
31/12
Areas of fog
Full forecast on the back
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JANUARY 25, 2022 • $1.50
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Sara Artley, right, owns Sara’s Richland Cafe. She, along with the help of employee Riata Brown, left, offers an international
dinner night on the second Friday of each month, and special Friday dinners on other weeks.
The newest member of the Baker
City Council wants the city to pursue a
railroad quiet zone within the city lim-
its rather than ask voters to weigh in on
the issue.
Dean Guyer, who was appointed
on Dec. 14 to fill the lone vacancy on
the seven-member City Council, will
ask his colleagues during their regular
meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25, to move
See, Council/Page A3
A world of flavor
Sara’s Richland
Cafe offers
international
dinners once
a month
Cases did set weekly
record for second
straight week
BY LISA BRITTON
lbritton@bakercityherald.com
RICHLAND — Sara
Artley is bringing a taste
of the world to Richland,
one meal at a time.
She and her husband,
Jeff, opened Sara’s Richland
Cafe on Sept. 4, 2020.
Prior to that, the cou-
ple managed Cornucopia
Lodge, in the Wallowa
Mountains north of Half-
way.
At her cafe in Richland,
about 41 miles east of
Baker City via Highway 86,
Sara wanted to incorporate
special events that intro-
duced unique flavors to the
local community.
“That was one of our
first ideas,” she said.
The cafe’s first interna-
tional dinner was in Octo-
ber 2020.
It went on hiatus when
the cafe was shut down in
the winter of 2020, but re-
turned in February 2021.
COVID
cases take
slight dip
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
and food — including beef
tongue, which she pre-
pared that morning.
This dish, she said, tastes
good if prepared well —
she pressure cooked it first,
peeled and sliced the meat,
then slow cooked it in a
red wine sauce.
Baker County has set a record for
new COVID-19 cases in two consec-
utive weeks, but daily cases dipped
a bit over a three-day period ending
Sunday, Jan. 23.
It’s too early to say
that this constitutes
a meaningful trend
marking the passage
of the peak of the
surge caused by the
infectious omicron
variant, said Nancy
Staten
Staten, director of the
Baker County Health Department.
“We’ll see what happens this week,”
Staten said on Monday morning,
Jan. 24. “We want to be cautiously
optimistic.”
Nationwide, the seven-day average
of cases on Friday, Jan. 21, was down
7% from the previous week.
The three-day weekend tally of cases
in Oregon was not available by press
time on Monday, Jan. 24.
See, Cafe/Page A3
See, COVID/Page A3
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Riata Brown cooked chorizo on Jan. 14, 2022, for the special Basque dinner that night at Sara’s
Richland Cafe.
The Artleys offer an
international dinner on
the second Friday of each
month.
Featured meals have
included Basque, Irish,
Amish and Russian.
“Sometimes it’s what I
feel like, or what someone
suggests,” Sara said. “We
want to give people an op-
portunity to open their
horizons. We have one or
two dishes they definitely
have never tried before.”
On Friday, Jan. 14, she
and Riata Brown were
busy preparing the meal
for Basque night.
Brown, who grew up in
Elko, Nevada, is familiar
with the Basque culture
Removing roadkill a possible savior for sage grouse
Carcasses can
attract ravens,
which eat
sage grouse
eggs, chicks
2016 in some of Baker Coun-
ty’s best sage grouse habitat,
mainly east of Baker City in-
cluding the Virtue Flat and
Keating areas, showed raven
populations were high enough
to potentially pose a threat to
sage grouse.
Research suggests that ra-
BY JAYSON JACOBY
vens pose a particular threat
when their population den-
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
The connection between a
sities exceed 0.7 birds per
dead deer rotting on the road-
square kilometer, Lee Foster,
side, a live raven and a live
then the Oregon Depart-
(or budding) sage grouse is a
ment of Fish and Wildlife’s
somewhat circuitous one.
(ODFW) sage grouse con-
And not just because only
servation coordinator, said
two of the three things are
in 2016.
birds.
Jill Anna Greenberg/Philadelphia Inquirer-TNS
The 2016 ODFW survey
Sometimes, though, this
Carcasses of roadkilled deer can attract scavengers, including ravens. between April 1 and May
trio forges a link of sorts,
30 — when sage grouse are
and the only one that pros-
Grouse Local Implementa-
grouse chicks.
nesting — yielded a prelim-
pers from the confluence is tion Team (LIT), is that the
Research has shown that ra- inary population density
the raven.
deer carcass can attract ra-
vens can be a significant pred- estimate of 0.9 ravens per
The deer, obviously, is al-
vens, which then tend to stay ator on sage grouse eggs and
square kilometer.
ready gone.
in the area, searching for
chicks, Defrees said.
Identifying, and trying
The problem, said Dallas
other easy meals.
“Ravens are very opportu- to mitigate, threats to sage
Hall Defrees, coordinator
Including sage grouse eggs. nistic,” she said.
grouse is the focus of the ef-
for the Baker County Sage
Or recently hatched sage
A survey in the spring of
fort that Defrees, a Baker
TODAY
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County native, is coordinat-
ing.
That campaign is spear-
headed by a six-year, $6.2
million grant from the Ore-
gon Watershed Enhancement
Board that started in 2019.
The money comes from Ore-
gon Lottery revenue.
Defrees said the roadkill
project, which is in its pre-
liminary stages and has no
definite timeline, aims to
reduce the number of ra-
ven-attracting carcasses along
Highway 86, which runs east
from Baker City and bisects
some of the county’s best sage
grouse habitat.
“If we can deter ravens
from being there, it would
be highly beneficial for sage
grouse,” Defrees said.
She emphasized, though,
that curbing the presence of
carcasses is, at best, a partial
solution.
See, Roadkill/Page A3
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