PAINTING THE TOWN
Dayville students create mural for the park
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Blue Mountain Eagle
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W EDNESDAY , A PRIL 6, 2016
AYVILLE — Visitors to Dayville will soon see
what students at the school have been up to.
With assistance of visiting artist-in-residence Carol
Poppenga, students in all grades have been creating a “Wel-
come to Dayville” mural — a 30x10-foot Dayville-style depic-
tion of the four seasons — to be mounted at Dayville City Park.
The mural will replace one with handprints that has graced a wall
at the tennis courts since 2001.
• N O . 14
See MURAL, Page A9
• 20 P AGES
• $1.00
www.MyEagleNews.com
The
Grant County’s newspaper since 1868
Blue Mountain
EAGLE
RESTORING
THE FOREST
Eagle file photo
A view of the Strawberry Mountains
from Keeney Fork Road on the Malheur
National Forest in Grant County. An
additional $1.5 million — for a total of $4
million this year — has been awarded by
the federal government for Collaborative
Forest Landscape Restoration projects
on the Malheur forest.
Collaborative awarded $4M in federal
funding to treat thousands of acres
Alternatives proposed
for Forest Plan
By George Plaven
EO Media Group
By Sean Hart
Blue Mountain Eagle
E
fforts by diverse stakeholders to reach consensus
on contentious forest management issues has paid
off — again.
Instead of the $2.5 million in annual funding
it has received for several years, the collaborative
coalition working to implement restoration projects on the
Malheur National Forest recently learned it will be awarded
$4 million this year, the maximum allowed in the Collabora-
tive Forest Landscape Restoration program.
As long as Congress continues to fund the CFLR program,
the collaborative could continue to receive the full $4 million
each year for the remainder of its 10-year project, which be-
gan in 2012. The funding, intended to encourage ecological
and economic sustainability and reduce the risk of catastroph-
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of restoration projects.
Malheur National Forest Supervisor Steve Beverlin said
See FOREST, Page A10
The Eagle/Sean Hart
Trent Seager, a Ph.D. candidate at Oregon State University
and a Blue Mountains Forest Partners science adviser,
speaks at the Forest Partners meeting March 17 in John Day.
The U.S. Forest Service is crafting two new
alternatives for its revised Blue Mountains
Forest Plan, based on a year’s worth of feed-
back from the public.
Details are sketchy, but supervisors on the
Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur
national forests say these alternatives will em-
phasize restoration in order to keep the woods
healthy and lower the risk of potentially devas-
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Each alternative will be fully analyzed in
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ment, due out later this fall. A draft EIS for the
Forest Plan was released in 2014, which was
so thoroughly criticized that the feds spent all
of 2015 re-engaging with local communities
on how to improve the documents.
Tom Montoya, Wallowa-Whitman forest
supervisor, said a recurring theme in those
See PLAN, Page A10
Four Imnaha Pack wolves killed
By Eric Mortenson
Capital Bureau
Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife shot and killed four Imnaha
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month.
The “lethal take” order, adamantly
opposed by a key conservation group,
involves a Wallowa County pack with
a long history of attacks on cattle and
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ence on the growth of other wolf packs
in the state.
ODFW wolf coordinator Russ
Morgan said the four wolves includ-
ed an aging alpha male, OR-4, and an
alpha female, OR-39, that has limped
with a back leg injury for the past cou-
ple years. The male is nearly 10 years
old, which Morgan said is “very old
for a wolf in the wild.”
Courtesy photo/ODFW
This May 2011 photo of Imnaha
pack alpha male OR-4 was
taken moments after wildlife
agency personnel refitted him
with a new GPS collar.
Morgan said it’s possible the male’s
age and the female’s disability caused
the wolves to turn on livestock instead
of deer and elk. Two younger wolves,
possibly yearlings, were believed to
be traveling with them. The four ap-
peared to have split off from the rest
of the Imnaha Pack, which numbered
at least eight at the end of 2015.
According to a press release from
ODFW, the animals were killed on pri-
vate property.
In March alone, the group led by
OR-4 has struck multiple times on
private pastures in the Upper Swamp
Creek area of Wallowa County. A calf
was killed March 9; a sheep on March
25; two calves were attacked on March
26, with one dead and the other eutha-
nized due to bite injuries; another calf
was found dead March 28; and a sheep
was found injured March 30, accord-
ing to ODFW depredation reports.
Morgan said Imnaha Pack mem-
bers commonly visit the area of the
attacks but it’s unusual for them to
remain there, as the four have this
time. That suggests there’s been some
change in the pack dynamics, he said.
Morgan said the agency is follow-
ing guidelines of the state’s wolf man-
agement plan, which is up for review
this year.
He called the decision unfortunate,
but said it is a necessary response to
the pack’s chronic livestock attacks.
“The (wolf) plan is about conserva-
tion, but it’s also about management,”
Morgan said.
ODFW had not killed any wolves
since May 2011, when two Imnaha
Pack members were dispatched for
livestock attacks. The agency sought
to kill two more pack members in Sep-
tember 2011, but conservation groups
won a stay of the order from the Ore-
gon Court of Appeals.
See WOLVES, Page A9