A2 THE BULLETIN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2021
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LOCAL, STATE & REGION
DESCHUTES COUNTY
Total COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, Jan. 14:
Deschutes County cases: 4,805 (82 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 32 (1 new death)
Crook County cases: 581 (12 new cases)
Crook County deaths: 9 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 1,661 (12 new cases)
Jefferson County deaths: 25 (1 new death)
Oregon cases: 130,246 (1,152 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 1,737 (29 new deaths)
COVID-19 patients hospitalized at
St. Charles Bend on Thursday: 39 (9 in ICvU).
Vaccines distributed: 5,456 Pfizer-BioNTech
vaccinations given through St. Charles.
ONLINE
BULLETIN
GRAPHIC
129 new cases
130
(Dec. 4)
What is COVID-19? It’s an infection caused by a new coronavirus. Coronaviruses
are a group of viruses that can cause a range of symptoms. Some usually cause
mild illness. Some, like this one, can cause more severe symptoms and can be
fatal. Symptoms include fever, coughing and shortness of breath.
108 new cases
110
90 new cases
100
(Nov. 27)
90
80
7-day
average
70
60
47 new cases
50
(Nov. 14)
40
31 new cases
28 new cases
(Oct. 31)
30
16 new cases
(July 16)
(Sept. 19)
20
(May 20)
1st case
120
(Jan. 1)
7 ways to help limit its spread: 1. Wash hands often with soap and water for
at least 20 seconds. 2. Avoid touching your face. 3. Avoid close contact with sick
people. 4. Stay home. 5. In public, stay 6 feet from others and wear a cloth face
covering or mask. 6. Cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or cough into your
elbow. 7. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
9 new cases
www.bendbulletin.com
SOURCES: OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY,
DESCHUTES COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES
New COVID-19 cases per day
10
(March 11)
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Lottery results can now be found on
the second page of Sports.
Why did the pigeon cross
the Pacific? Maybe it didn’t.
BY ROD MCGUIRK
The Associated Press
CANBERRA, Australia — A
pigeon that Australia declared
a biosecurity risk may get a re-
prieve after a U.S. bird organi-
zation declared its identifying
leg band was fake.
The band suggested the bird
found in a Melbourne backyard
on Dec. 26 was a racing pigeon
that had left the Oregon, 8,000
miles away, two months earlier.
On that basis, Australian au-
thorities said on Thursday they
considered the bird a disease
risk and planned to kill it.
But Deone Roberts, sport
development manager for the
Oklahoma-based American
Racing Pigeon Union, said the
band was fake.
The band number belongs to
a blue bar pigeon in the United
States and that is not the bird
pictured in Australia, she said.
“The bird band in Australia
is counterfeit and not trace-
able,” Roberts said. “It definitely
has a home in Australia and
not the U.S.”
“Somebody needs to look at
that band and then understand
that the bird is not from the
U.S. They do not need to kill
him,” she added.
Counterfeiting bird bands is
“happening more and more,”
Roberts said. “People coming
into the hobby unknowingly
buy that.”
Pigeon racing has seen a re-
surgence in popularity, and
some birds have become quite
valuable.
A Chinese pigeon racing fan
put down a record price of $1.9
million in November for a Bel-
gian-bred pigeon.
Australia’s Agriculture De-
Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian via AP
Search and rescue crews continue to look for a missing woman on
Thursday whose car was swept away by a mudslide on Wednesday
in the Dodson area of the Columbia River Gorge
Channel 9 via AP
This pigeon was thought to be a racing pigeon that made an 8,000-
mile Pacific Ocean crossing from the United States to Melbourne, Aus-
tralia. But its identifying leg band turned out to be fake.
partment did not immediately
say Friday whether the fake leg
band changed its plans to kill
the bird.
The department said on
Thursday the pigeon was “not
permitted to remain in Austra-
lia” because it “could compro-
mise Australia’s food security
and our wild bird populations.”
“It poses a direct biosecurity
risk to Australian bird life and
our poultry industry,” a depart-
ment statement said.
Melbourne resident Kevin
Celli-Bird, who found the ema-
ciated bird in his backyard, was
surprised by the development
and pleased that the bird he
had named Joe, after the U.S.
president-elect, might not be
destroyed.
“Yeah, I’m happy about that,”
Celli-Bird said, referring to
news that Joe probably is not a
biosecurity threat.
Celli-Bird had contacted
the American Racing Pigeon
Union to find the bird’s owner
based on the number on the
leg band.
The bands have both a num-
ber and a symbol, but Cel-
li-Bird didn’t remember the
symbol and said he can no lon-
ger catch the bird since it has
recovered from its initial weak-
ness.
The bird spends every day in
the backyard, sometimes with a
native dove on a pergola.
Celli-Bird has been feeding it
pigeon food from within days
of its arrival.
“I think that he just decided
that since I’ve given him some
food and he’s got a spot to
drink, that’s home,” he said.
Australian quarantine au-
thorities are notoriously strict.
In 2015, the government
threatened to euthanize two
Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and
Boo, after they were smuggled
into the country by Hollywood
star Johnny Depp and his ex-
wife Amber Heard.
Faced with a 50-hour dead-
line to leave Australia, the dogs
made it out in a chartered jet.
Environmentalists move toward a
lawsuit over wildfire fuel break plan
BY SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
RENO, Nev. — Environ-
mentalists have filed a notice
of intent to sue the U.S govern-
ment to block plans to build up
to 11,000 miles of fuel breaks
they contend would violate
the Endangered Species Act
in a misguided effort to slow
the advance of wildfires in six
Western states.
Leaders of four conservation
groups say the Bureau of Land
Management’s project would
be shielded from legitimate
environmental review under
last-minute moves by the out-
going Trump administration.
They say the fuel breaks in
conjunction with proposed
widespread clearcutting, her-
bicide spraying, grazing and
prescribed fire could threaten
the survival of more than 100
rare wildlife species across po-
tentially more than 340,000
square miles of federal land
— an area twice as big as New
York, Pennsylvania and Ohio
combined.
Fuel breaks involve clearing
stretches of vegetation to slow
the progress of fires.
As wide as 500 feet, the
breaks are planned along roads
and federal rights-of-way in
Washington, Oregon, Califor-
nia, Nevada, Idaho and Utah.
If all 11,000 miles are finished,
the breaks cumulatively would
stretch the equivalent distance
between Seattle and South Af-
rica.
“The Trump administra-
tion’s reckless, 11th-hour deci-
sion authorizes the bureau to
use highly destructive methods
to remove millions of acres of
native trees and shrubs,” said
Scott Lake, legal advocate for
the Center for Biological Di-
versity in Nevada. “It’s a clear
violation of the Endangered
Species Act, and we won’t allow
these plans to become reality.”
Lawyers for the center, Si-
erra Club, Western Watersheds
Project and Southern Utah
Wilderness Alliance provided
60-day notice of the intent to
sue the bureau in a letter Tues-
day. It challenged exclusions
the administration included in
environmental impact state-
ments issued in February for
the fuel breaks and in Novem-
ber for fuels reduction and
rangeland restoration.
The groups say the bureau
and its parent Interior Depart-
ment failed to consult with
the Fish and Wildlife Service
regarding impacts to threat-
ened and endangered aquatic
species as required by the act.
They say the department ac-
knowledged more than 130
protected species are found
across the area, including the
greater sage grouse, and ac-
knowledged many of the pro-
posed methods, such as tar-
geted grazing, are unproven.
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Search continues for
Oregon woman swept
away in mudslide
The Associated Press
PORTLAND — Searchers
used inflatable yellow rafts
and drove metal poles into
deep mud Thursday as they
searched for a woman who
was swept away by a landslide
in Oregon during a powerful
winter storm.
Authorities said in social
media posts that they have
found part of the SUV that
50-year-old Jennifer Camus
Moore, of Warrendale was
driving when she was swept
away Wednesday but have
not located her.
Moore, a registered nurse,
was caught up in a land-
slide in the Columbia River
Gorge that was triggered by
heavy rain and high winds
that pounded the Pacific
Northwest on Tuesday and
Wednesday. The cliffs around
the search area near the small
community of Dodson re-
main unstable.
On Wednesday, search-
ers used thermal imaging to
try to locate Moore without
success, but it was too dan-
gerous to send teams into the
mudflow. On Thursday, the
Clackamas County Sheriff’s
Office tweeted out video of
searchers using yellow inflat-
able rafts to navigate the dan-
gerous terrain in mud up to
10 feet deep.
Groups ask court to restore
U.S. gray wolves protection
BY MATTHEW BROWN
The Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. —
Wildlife advocates on Thurs-
day asked a federal court to
overturn a U.S. government
decision that stripped Endan-
gered Species Act protections
for wolves across most of the
nation.
Two coalitions of advocacy
groups filed lawsuits in U.S.
District Court in Northern
California seeking to restore
safeguards for a predator that
is revered by wildlife watch-
ers but feared by many live-
stock producers.
The Trump administration
announced just days ahead
of the Nov. 3 election that
wolves were considered re-
covered.
More than 2,000 occupy
six states in the Northern
Rockies and Pacific North-
west after wolves from Can-
ada were reintroduced in
Idaho and Yellowstone Na-
tional Park starting in 1995.
Protections for wolves in the
Rockies were lifted over the
last decade and hunting of
them is allowed.
But wolves remain absent
across most of their histor-
ical range, and the groups
that filed Thursday’s lawsuits
said continued protections
are needed so wolf popula-
tions can continue to expand
in Colorado, California and
other states.
In response to the lawsuits,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice spokeswoman Vanessa
Kauffman said in a statement
that the gray wolf “has ex-
ceeded all conservation goals
for recovery” and is no lon-
ger threatened or endangered
under federal law.
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