OPINION
Blue Mountain Eagle
A4
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Oregon
ranchers face
tough choice
C
attle ranchers in Or-
egon’s wolf country
face a dilemma when a
calf or cow turns up dead: Re-
port it to the state Department
of Fish and Wildlife and time
the response with a calendar,
or ignore it and eat the cost of
the animal.
That’s not much of a
choice, particularly because
wolves have been in Oregon
for 14 years now. That’s plenty
of time for the state’s wildlife
managers to come up with a
better system for determining
how a cow or calf died.
Fewer ranchers are even
bothering to report wolf
attacks on their cattle. The
state’s own statistics show
that.
Nearby sheriff’s offices
say they are ready, willing
and able to inspect the car-
casses and determine a cause
of death. Even the state’s top
carnivore biologist says a wolf
attack looks like a “bomb went
off.” It doesn’t sound like it
takes a Ph.D. in wildlife man-
agement to determine whether
a calf was killed by a wolf.
Environmentalists, who
side with state biologists, say,
in so many words, that sher-
iff’s deputies can’t be trusted
to investigate a depredation
because ranchers will pressure
them.
That, of course, is non-
sense. Sheriff’s deputies are
trained to investigate all sorts
of crime scenes, including
murders. If they can do that,
they can surely check out a
dead calf.
Yet the state insists only
its biologists can do the
inspections.
The only problem with that
is the delay in getting a state
biologist to the scene of a dep-
redation. It can take days,
which allows scavengers to
strip the carcass and destroy
the evidence.
The state faces two
challenges.
The first: ODFW is under-
staffed. The department has
just hired three people who
will be spread across the entire
state. And once the reality of
budget cuts brought on by the
COVID-19 shutdowns take
hold, the odds of adding more
staff — or even keeping staff
— will likely shrink.
The second: Most depre-
dations take place in the back
country. Getting there is often
not quick or easy. That’s why
a local sheriff’s deputy could
just do the inspection and take
pictures. If state biologists feel
the need to follow up, they
could do that on their own
schedule.
We realize the state biol-
ogists are excited about hav-
ing their very own wolves to
manage, but it seems to us that
they spend more time trying
to manage ranchers than the
wolves.
Especially in the east-
ern one-third of the state
where the federal Endan-
gered Species Act no longer
forces everyone to put up with
wolves that repeatedly kill cat-
tle, the state needs to step up
its activities. The department
comes across as wolf apolo-
gists instead of managers.
As the wolf population con-
tinues to increase in Oregon
— at least 158 are in the state,
mainly in the northeastern
corner — we urge ODFW to
allow sheriff’s deputies to help
them investigate depredations.
It’s not difficult, and some of
the deputies have more expe-
rience with wolves and live-
stock than the state’s biolo-
gists. Others can be trained.
For ranchers, a lot of money
is at stake in the form of dead
cattle. For the state’s biol-
ogists, their credibility is at
stake.
FARMER’S FATE
Mud and mascara
I
recently heard a program dis-
cussing makeup and cosmet-
ics. Being confined to the
inside of a vehicle on a recent
anniversary/business trip to Cali-
fornia, we read a lot of books, lis-
tened to audiobooks and tuned in
to satellite radio entertainment
— where we heard mention of
the average annual cost of wom-
en’s makeup. The numbers seemed
ridiculously high, and I had to pull
out my phone to see what Google
had to say — because apparently
in today’s world Google is smarter
than Webster’s.
I don’t wear a lot of makeup
— OK, to be honest, my whole
makeup bag consists of a tube
of mascara, an eyeliner pencil, a
handful of bobby pins and a pock-
etknife. So imagine my surprise
when article after article popped
up listing the amount the average
woman in the U.S. spends to be
between $225,360 and $300,000
on makeup in her lifetime!
Even if you take the lower of
those two numbers, that breaks
down to $3,756 a year — or $313
a month! Women in New York
supposedly spend the most at $11
per day on makeup, while women
in Montana spend the least at only
$3.50. Several of the articles also
mentioned that the average trip
through the makeup isle rings in at
$43 — and who said you couldn’t
buy beauty?
That next morning in the hotel,
GRANT COUNTY
• Grant County Courthouse — 201
S. Humbolt St., Suite 280, Canyon City
97820. Phone: 541-575-0059. Fax:
541-575-2248.
• Canyon City — P.O. Box 276,
Canyon City 97820. Phone: 541-
575-0509. Fax: 541-575-0515. Email:
tocc1862@centurylink.net.
• Dayville — P.O. Box 321, Dayville
97825. Phone: 541-987-2188. Fax:
541-987-2187. Email:dville@ortelco.
net
• John Day — 450 E. Main St, John
Day, 97845. Phone: 541-575-0028.
Fax: 541-575-1721. Email: cityjd@
centurytel.net.
• Long Creek — P.O. Box 489, Long
Creek 97856. Phone: 541-421-3601.
Fax: 541-421-3075. Email: info@
cityoflongcreek.com.
• Monument — P.O. Box 426,
Monument 97864. Phone
and fax: 541-934-2025. Email:
cityofmonument@centurytel.net.
• Mt. Vernon — P.O. Box 647, Mt.
Vernon 97865. Phone: 541-932-4688.
Fax: 541-932-4222. Email: cmtv@
ortelco.net.
• Prairie City — P.O. Box 370, Prairie
City 97869. Phone: 541-820-3605.
Fax: 820-3566. Email: pchall@ortelco.
net.
• Seneca — P.O. Box 208, Seneca
97873. Phone and fax: 541-542-2161.
Email: senecaoregon@gmail.com.
Blue Mountain
EAGLE
Published every
Wednesday by
I dumped out the
few meager items
in my makeup bag,
looking for more
bobby pins — a
search that most
women know all
Brianna
too well. I grew up
Walker
sharing a bathroom
with two sisters,
and you’d have thought we would
have had bobby pins to spare
— but they disappear with such
rapid and frequent occurrence that
would nearly make one believe
they were raptured. For it’s not as
if they just get lost and then even-
tually reappear — no, they disap-
pear never to be seen again.
Perhaps bobby pins become
reincarnated into those odd herbal
pills that no one can remem-
ber buying that fill up the medi-
cine cabinet and the pony fasteners
become that shelf of strange smell-
ing lotions that no one wants to
use. I checked each crease of my
little makeup bag for stray bobby
pins, finding just enough to finish
putting my hair up.
I’d barely finished, when my
small eyeliner pencil went rolling
across the vanity. I sandwiched it
with my hip before it could hit the
floor. I am all for natural beauty
(a.k.a. too lazy to actually buy or
To the Editor:
Let’s get something straight at
the outset. I don’t like wearing a
mask anytime. They are uncom-
fortable, they make my glasses
steam up and I feel like an idiot
with one on. I also don’t think that
wearing a mask will protect me
from the coronavirus. The data do
not support that.
Does the virus scare me? No
more than the fact that I’m going
to die soon anyway. I can live
with that, and I can live wearing a
mask.
What scares me more is the idea
that I might get sick and spread the
disease to someone else and they
die or are injured for life by it. I
don’t want that on my conscience.
So I will reluctantly wear the
mask. It’s not a big deal. I wear a
seatbelt. I don’t drink and drive.
I follow my doctor’s advice
(mostly), and I care about my
neighbors. That is what wearing
a mask comes down to. It’s not a
matter of defending my constitu-
tional rights. It is a matter of lov-
ing my neighbor. And that is the
second highest commandment of
the Lord. So when I am forced to
put that mask on, I think of the
sacrifice he made for me and say
amen!
Jef Bryant
Prairie City
‘Restore our parks
and vote for this bill’
To the Editor:
For over 40 years, I worked
for the National Park Service,
18 of which was as superinten-
dent of John Day Fossil Beds.
I know the challenges of main-
taining critical site infrastruc-
ture like roads, visitor centers,
water and electrical systems, and
more in the face of limited funds
from Congress and an ever-grow-
ing list of postponed but neces-
sary repairs.
I wrote a letter to this paper in
2017 when the deferred mainte-
nance backlog at the Fossil Beds
was roughly $1.5 million. Fiscal
year 2018 numbers now show a
more than $2.1 million backlog,
and system wide, NPS is facing a
nearly $12 billion deferred main-
tenance backlog.
A solution, long overdue,
may be on the horizon. Biparti-
san legislation, the Great Ameri-
can Outdoors Act (S. 3422/H.R.
7092), has passed the Senate and
is now before the House. The bill
would direct up to $9.5 billion in
non-taxpayer monies over five
years to address priority repairs in
national parks and on other pub-
lic lands.
Those dollars represent an
investment not only in our
national parks but in local econo-
mies. NPS data show that 197,000
park visitors spent an estimated
$9.6 million in our local com-
munities when visiting the Fossil
Beds in 2019. Ensuring that NPS
sites are able to meet the needs
of their visitors is good for parks,
good for local economies and
good for businesses looking to get
back on their feet. Our Oregon
congressional leaders should do
what they can to restore our parks
and vote for this bill.
Jim Hammett
John Day
L
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apply) — but a little mascara and
eyeliner never hurt anyone. I was
thinking that perhaps it wouldn’t
hurt to wear a little more makeup
— it was our anniversary trip after
all. Maybe my husband would like
it if I spent a little more time get-
ting pretty, and didn’t rely on dirt
to shade my eyelids and mud to
rouge my cheeks.
Since my makeup case literally
has no makeup other than eyeliner
and mascara, I didn’t have a lot to
work with — but I did have a lit-
tle time. My husband was around
the corner, on the phone with Les
Schwab looking to find a replace-
ment wheel for one of our old semi
trucks.
“Is that aluminum?” I heard
him ask, as I carefully drew a
charcoal black line across my
eyelid.
“I don’t want a steel one,” he
laughed. “See if you can find me
an aluminum one — I wanna put
as much lipstick on that old pig as
possible!”
I finished the rest of eyeliner
to even out my other eye, but as
I put the pencil back in my bag, I
decided I am totally fine being a
mud and mascara kind of girl.
Brianna Walker occasionally
writes about the Farmer’s Fate for
the Blue Mountain Eagle.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Wearing a mask
is ‘loving my
neighbor’
WHERE TO WRITE
I AM ALL FOR NATURAL BEAUTY — BUT A
LITTLE MASCARA NEVER HURT ANYONE.
Phone: 541-575-0710
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