MOTORCYCLE CLUB OFFERING TRADE SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIPS| PAGE A8
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
MyEagleNews.com
153rd Year • No. 8 • 16 Pages • $1.50
Eagle file photo
A view of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness and John Day Valley. Wilderness designations have been a sticking point in talks about revising forest plans.
Meeting in the middle
Forest plan Access Subcommittee disagrees over wilderness
and wildlife designations that restrict vehicle access
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
embers of the access, wil-
derness, habitat, and set-
asides sub-committee of
the Blues Mountain Inter-
governmental Council are
close to reaching a consensus. Still, they are
at loggerheads over wilderness and wildlife
designations that restrict motorized vehicle
access.
The remaining 20%, the notes said, were
scheduled to go before the full BIC — the
group working to create forest plans for the
Malheur, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla
national forests — at its Feb. 26 meeting.
According to the meeting notes, Rep.
Mark Owens, R-Crane, and Carl Scheeler,
manager of the Wildlife Program for the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation, both agreed to draft a set of
recommendations ahead of the Feb. 26
meeting.
In a Feb. 5 phone call, Owens said there
might not be that “sweet spot” in the middle
for him and others.
M
Eagle file photo
Several large wildfires scorched portions of the Monument Rock Wilderness since 1989, in-
cluding this one area near the trail from Forest Road 1370 to Monument Rock.
“Some of us believe we’ve already gone
too far into the middle,” he said.
Owens said access, the most “trouble-
some” of all the subcommittee groups, is at
an impasse regarding wilderness set-asides,
identifying which areas the Forest Service
designated administratively, as those areas
Working leather
Painted Sky’s leatherworking
classes fill up the first day they
are offered
See Forest, Page A16
Oregon lawmakers to reconsider
coyote-hunting derbies
Owens: Urban
lawmakers attempting
to legislate on
unfamiliar rural
matters
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
Leatherworking is popular in Grant County.
On Jan. 4, the leather department at Painted
Sky Center for the Arts held its first class ever
— and the classes are filling up the day they
are offered.
“It’s been an overwhelmingly positive
response and the classes fill up within the first
day classes are available,” Clair Kehrberg,
the lead for the leather department, said. “We
did have a waitlist for both the belt making
and coasters class so we will offer those two
classes again.”
Kehrberg said their first class was a begin-
ning tooling class where students learned the
basics of leather, tools and how to use them,
before making drink coasters with different
leather patterns.
Kehrberg said the experience has been
great for everybody in the department and the
center.
Other leather classes provided by the cen-
ter focus on making belts, earrings and hat
patches. Leon Pielstick, a retired veterinarian
who started leather crafting and tooling at 10,
taught several beginning classes, and Heidi
Brook taught as well.
Kehrberg said the leather classes provide
a rewarding experience with projects students
could go through an analysis process.
Owens emphasized access is not a sim-
ple topic.
According to the notes, the group asked
the Forest Service’s Dennis Dougherty, a
recreation planner, Craig Trulock, Malheur
Forest supervisor, and Nick Goldstein, a
regional planner, about the process of rec-
ommending set-asides within a forest plan.
Dougherty talked about the difficulties
during the last plan revision. He told the
group his biggest takeaway was the need to
comply and comport each component with
the overarching forest plan.
Dougherty said it is important to remem-
ber the forest plan does not designate motor-
ized usage on forest roads. Those provisions
come from the travel management plan.
He also told the group that some areas
are statutorily designated. Also, he said,
Congress identifies certain set-asides as
well.
He explained a Forest Service document,
the “suitability-rating table,” used during
the last revision, which lists management
areas, activities, land allocations and des-
ignations that the forest can use to make
access and land-use recommendations.
Dougherty said he recognized the frame-
work as cumbersome and complicated
because of the plan amendments over the
years. He said it is the Forest Service’s
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Contributed photo
Shanna Wright works on a leather patch for
a hat on Feb. 19 at Painted Sky Center for the
Arts.
can enjoy or gift to others.
“With everything that’s going on in the
world, people are looking for a positive expe-
rience,” Kehrberg said. “We’ve really seen
with our classes the camaraderie between stu-
dents doing something fun and new, and it’s
been really good for people.”
Painted Sky Center for the Arts provides
the basic tools and items to complete leather
projects. This gives people a chance to partici-
pate without incurring the huge expenses asso-
See Leather, Page A16
A bill outlawing coy-
ote-killing contests has made
its way back to the Oregon
Legislature.
Oregonians can hunt coy-
otes year-round, and current
regulations do not limit the
number of coyotes hunters
can kill.
Rep.
Mark
Owens,
R-Crane, said coyotes are
predators that affect the live-
lihood of ranchers. He said
the hunting contests are one
way to keep the populations
down. Owens said, in the
past, the state has put boun-
ties on coyotes.
Owens said doing away
with coyote derbies takes
away an economic oppor-
tunity for the communities
in his district. When a coy-
ote-hunting contest comes to
Contributed photo
A coyote attacks a sheep in this photo from the USDA National
Wildlife Research Center, the research arm of Wildlife Services.
Burns, he said some restau-
rants, bars and hotels make
just as much money as they
would during the biggest
weekend of the year at the
fair and rodeo.
Owens said the bill’s chief
sponsor, Brad Witt, D-Clats-
kanie, has a “passion” to get
the legislation through and
said incentivizing coyote
hunts is “immoral.”
Owens said he has sat
down with Witt a couple of
times and told him that he
thinks he is wrong.
Owens said it would “take
a lot” to stop the bill from
going through.
“We’re not going to get it
stopped,” Owens said.
Owens said this is another
example of the west side of
the state attempting to legis-
late on rural matters they are
unfamiliar with.
“It’s wrong that we allow
people with a different moral
view of subjects in rural com-
munities to pass laws against
them,” he said. “It seems like
a majority of Oregon, over
the last decade, have passed
laws that allow for more cus-
tom and culture, and personal
choices to be acceptable.”