The BulleTin • Wednesday, June 30, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Wednesday, June 30,
the 181st day of 2021. There are
184 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
In 1971, the Supreme Court
ruled, 6-3, that the government
could not prevent The New York
Times or The Washington Post
from publishing the Pentagon
Papers.
In 1865, eight people, including
Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel
Mudd, were convicted by a mil-
itary commission of conspiring
with John Wilkes Booth, the
assassin of President Abraham
Lincoln.
In 1908, the Tunguska Event
took place in Russia as an as-
teroid exploded above Siberia,
leaving 800 square miles of
scorched or blown-down trees.
In 1917, singer, actor and activist
Lena Horne was born in Brook-
lyn, New York.
In 1934, Adolf Hitler launched
his “blood purge” of political
and military rivals in Germany in
what came to be known as “The
Night of the Long Knives.”
In 1958, the U.S. Senate passed
the Alaska statehood bill by a
vote of 64-20.
In 1982, the proposed Equal
Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution expired, having
failed to receive the required
number of ratifications for its
adoption, despite having its
seven-year deadline extended
by three years.
In 1986, the Supreme Court, in
Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled 5-4
that states could outlaw homo-
sexual acts between consenting
adults.
In 2009, American soldier Pfc.
Bowe R. Bergdahl went missing
from his base in eastern Afghan-
istan, and was later confirmed
to have been captured by insur-
gents.
Ten years ago: Conservative TV
commentator Glenn Beck said
goodbye to Fox News Channel,
airing his final show before go-
ing into business for himself.
Five years ago: Saying it was
the right thing to do, Defense
Secretary Ash Carter announced
that transgender people would
be allowed to serve openly in
the U.S. military, ending one of
the last bans on service in the
armed forces.
One year ago: President Don-
ald Trump came under growing
pressure to respond to allega-
tions that Russia had offered
bounties for killing U.S. troops
in Afghanistan; the White House
said the allegations hadn’t been
confirmed.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Lea
Massari is 88. ASongwriter Tony
Hatch is 82. Singer Glenn Shor-
rock is 77. Jazz musician Stanley
Clarke is 70. Actor David Garrison
is 69. Rock musician Hal Lindes
(Dire Straits) is 68. Actor-come-
dian David Alan Grier is 65. Actor
Vincent D’Onofrio is 62. Actor
Rupert Graves is 58. Former box-
er Mike Tyson is 55. Actor Peter
Outerbridge is 55. Rock musician
Tom Drummond (Better Than
Ezra) is 52. Actor Brian Bloom
is 51. Actor Monica Potter is 50.
Actor Molly Parker is 49. Actor
Rick Gonzalez is 42. Actor Susan-
nah Flood is 39. Rock musician
James Adam Shelley (American
Authors) is 38. R&B singer Fan-
tasia is 37. Olympic gold medal
swimmer Michael Phelps is 36.
Actor Sean Marquette (TV: “The
Goldbergs”) is 33.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
THE NATIONAL WILD AND SCENIC RIVERS SYSTEM
Submitted photos by Nick Smith via Capital Press
Andy Geissler, federal timber program director for the American Forest Resource Council,
straddles a dry creek in Southern Oregon that has been nominated as a Wild and Scenic
River under the federal River Democracy Act.
Southern Oregon’s Bear Gulch was nominated as a Wild and Scenic River. It was dry and
virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape during a recent visit by mem-
bers of the American Forest Resource Council.
New submissions draw criticism
for including creeks and gulches
BY GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
A U.S. Senate bill that would
designate nearly 4,700 miles
of wild and scenic rivers in
Oregon is being criticized for
including hundreds of small
creeks, streams and gulches
that, in some cases, were found
to completely dry upon in-
spection.
The American Forest Re-
sources Council, a trade group
representing the timber in-
dustry, recently conducted
an analysis of the proposal,
arguing that certain nonriver
segments under consideration
“do not meet the intent or defi-
nition of the Wild and Scenic
Rivers Act.”
Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden
and Jeff Merkley, both Dem-
ocrats, introduced the River
Democracy Act on Feb. 3.
The legislation was developed
based on more than 15,000
nominations submitted by the
public for Wild and Scenic
River Act protections.
But according to the forest
resources council, just 15% of
the waterways are actually la-
beled as “rivers.”
The National Wild and Sce-
nic Rivers System includes des-
ignated waterways that are not
called rivers, such as Wychus
Creek in Deschutes County.
Wyden said the act allows
ephemeral and intermittent
streams to be included in The
National Wild and Scenic Riv-
ers System, and some of them
contribute to public drinking
water supplies.
Andy Geissler, American
Forest Resources Council fed-
eral timber program director,
said he used forest maps to
cross-reference and locate the
proposed sites listed for inclu-
sion in the bill.
Out of 886 segments, 752 are
identified as “streams,” rather
than rivers. Another 33 are
identified as “gulches,” one as a
“draw” and 17 were “unnamed
tributaries.”
Geissler said he visited sev-
eral of the streams earlier this
year along the Nestucca, North
Umpqua and Applegate rivers,
spanning the northern Ore-
gon coast south to the Rogue
Valley.
Photos taken at Southern
Oregon’s Bear Gulch in May
show Geissler straddling a dry
channel, virtually indistin-
guishable from the surround-
ing landscape.
“It was pretty shocking to
see what was proposed down
2-year-old found dead identified
after 58 years with DNA match
A man fishing in Southern Oregon
near Ashland on July 11, 1963, came
upon the body of a 2-year-old boy, con-
cealed under blankets, tied with wire and
weighed down by heavy pieces of iron.
The toddler went unidentified un-
til Monday, when the Jackson County
“These are some of the
most important tributaries
of larger, more iconic
systems like the Columbia,
Willamette and Rogue rivers.”
— Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden
there,” Geissler said. “Part of it
is a lack of analysis.”
Geissler’s research and ob-
servations were the basis for
comments submitted by the
council on the River Democ-
racy Act, which received a
public hearing on June 23 in
the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee.
The bill would roughly triple
the number of wild and scenic
rivers across Oregon to protect
fish and wildlife, water quality
and outdoor recreation values.
It also increases wild and sce-
nic river corridors from a quar-
ter-mile to a half-mile on both
sides, which adds up to approx-
imately 3 million acres of pro-
tected land — an area approxi-
mately the size of Connecticut.
The concern, Geissler said,
is whether the designation will
make it harder for land manag-
Sheriff’s Office announced his identity
on Facebook, The Oregonian reported.
A DNA match and some genealog-
ical sleuthing revealed he was Stevie
Crawford, born in New Mexico on Oct.
2, 1960.
The Rogue River man who found the
body was fishing in the Keene Creek
Reservoir along state Highway 66, the
sheriff’s office said. In 2007 a sheriff’s
ers to do forest thinning proj-
ects designed to reduce the size
and severity of wildfires.
“My assumption is these
half-mile corridors will be no-
touch buffers,” he said.
American Forest Resources
Council President Travis
Joseph said the group does not
oppose the Wild and Scenic
River Act, created in 1968 to
preserve rivers with “outstand-
ing natural, cultural and rec-
reational values.” However, he
said the River Democracy Act
violates the spirit of the law.
Catastrophic wildfires, ero-
sion and sedimentation pose
the greatest threats to water-
sheds and rivers, Joseph said.
“Arbitrary restrictive land
designations only tend to im-
pede public lands access and
the most important work
needed to reduce wildfire risks
and impacts,” he said. “Unfor-
tunately, this bill only serves to
make management of federal
lands more restrictive at a time
we are experiencing larger and
more severe wildfires.”
Wyden, who is spearheading
work on the bill, pushed back
against that notion.
The bill requires the U.S.
Forest Service and Bureau of
Land Management to establish
detective found the case among old file
boxes, and the toddler’s body was ex-
humed in 2008. A DNA sample was
taken, but no leads were found.
In December, the Jackson County
Sheriff’s Office received a tip, which
they didn’t describe, but an investiga-
tor ran the genetic sample through an
open-source DNA repository and lo-
cated two possible siblings.
wildfire plans and cooperative
agreements with states and lo-
cal governments to allow forest
thinning within riparian areas
that haven’t been prioritized
until now, Wyden said.
In addition, Wyden said
the River Democracy Act al-
lows ephemeral and intermit-
tent streams to be included in
The National Wild and Scenic
River System.
“These are some of the most
important tributaries of larger,
more iconic systems like the
Columbia, Willamette and
Rogue rivers,” Wyden said in a
statement, adding that 1.7 mil-
lion Oregonians receive drink-
ing water from public systems
that rely at least in part on in-
termittent, ephemeral or head-
water streams.
Steve Pedery, conservation
director for the environmental
group Oregon Wild, said there
is nothing in law that prevents
an intermittent stream from
qualifying for protection.
“To people who manage riv-
ers, and are working on things
like restoring salmon or pro-
tecting drinking water, they
recognize that you have to start
with the headwaters,” Pedery
said. “You can’t just focus on
the big river downstream.”
In an interview with investigators,
one of the siblings, a DNA-confirmed
maternal half-brother in Ohio, said that
he had a young sibling with Down syn-
drome — a genetic disorder that aided
in the identification — who was born in
New Mexico and went missing.
How he died and came to be placed
in that location remains unclear.
— Associated Press
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