YOUNGSTERS COMPETE IN JUNIOR RODEO | PAGE A9
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
153rd Year • No. 37 • 16 Pages • $1.50
MyEagleNews.com
‘As friends we part’
Pendleton man fears for Afghan family through U.S. evacuation
By Bryce Dole
EO Media Group
Contributed photo/National Guard Capt. Leslie Reed
U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. Joshua Paullus, 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infan-
try, Oregon Army National Guard, shields his eyes from the sun
Oct. 2, 2014, to evaluate the work on a Commander’s Emergen-
cy Response Program project in Kabul, Afghanistan. Paullus, a
longtime Pendleton resident, helped his friend, Hussein, relo-
cate from the county to the U.S. with his wife and three daugh-
ters to avoid the Taliban.
Sgt. Maj. Joshua Paullus speaks to his
old friend Hussein once or twice a week.
The longtime Pendleton resident listens to
the 32-year-old Afghan relate his family’s
plight in Kabul, Afghanistan, the high-des-
ert metropolis where the two met at a mili-
tary base seven years ago.
For weeks, half of Hussein’s family has
been stuck at home, watching the Taliban
patrol the streets day and night in trucks and
armored military vehicles, perhaps search-
ing for Afghans like them who worked for
the United States during the 20-year war.
The other half, including his mother and
father, were stuck at the airport alongside
thousands of Afghans, awaiting their escape
until nearby explosions killed and wounded
scores of Afghan civilians and American
service members on Aug. 26. Hussein’s
family fl ed back to their home.
“They don’t sleep,” Hussein said of his
family.
Out of concern for his family’s safety,
Hussein asked the East Oregonian not to
publish his last name.
“When I get note from the embassy, I
will tell them, ‘Go to the airport.’ I tell them,
don’t take any bags and wear your hijab,”
he said. “I will tell them to burn everything.
If (the Taliban) fi nds any military docu-
ment, they will shoot them.”
Hussein worked for the U.S. Armed
Forces for 15 years, fi rst as a linguist and
then as a contractor. By 2015, as Paullus
See Afghan, Page A16
EO Media Group/Alex Wittwer
Mariah Davis pours an IPA for a fl ight of beers for customers at Terminal Gravity Brewery and Pub on Sept. 2. Terminal Gravity recently closed on Tuesdays following a staff
shortage. Many of the kitchen staff are high school students, who have returned to school, leaving the Enterprise brewpub further short staff ed.
Plan B
Shortage of employees leads
to altered business models
Editor’s Note
Th is is the second in a fi ve-part series by EO Media Group look-
ing at the issue of the lack of workers for jobs in Central and
Eastern Oregon — why workers are not returning to previously
held jobs and how businesses are pivoting to function without
being fully staff ed.
By Davis Carbaugh and Alex Wittwer
EO Media Group
Enterprise isn’t the largest town in East-
ern Oregon, with a population of 2,052. But
it’s just a few miles from the ever-popu-
lar town of Joseph and its vistas
across Wallowa Lake to the peaks
of the Eagle Cap Wilderness.
In a normal summer, Terminal
Gravity Brewing in Enterprise
would be busy all days of the
week serving local, handcrafted
beers to patrons and traditional
brewpub fare. But due to a labor
shortage this summer the com-
pany had to cut hours during its
lunch rush, and close altogether
on Tuesdays.
Natalie Millar, chief executive offi cer of
the Wallowa County brewery, said it’s an
inevitability that they’ll have to close for
even more days as their skeleton crew of
cooks, servers and hostesses return to school
— high school, to be exact.
“Heading into fall it is looking like we’re
going to have to cut an additional
day and probably cut lunches,”
Millar said. “It is pretty brutal.”
Demand for restaurant meals
soared over the summer as
restrictions lifted across Oregon.
Nearly all restaurants saw a huge
uptick in customers. But where
demand reached new heights, a
new challenge appeared — staff -
ing the restaurants that have
balanced narrow margins and
threats of closure since the pandemic hit.
In order to keep employees from burning
out, Millar cut operating hours and closed
See Workers, Page A16
Farm Bureau requests expansion of general season elk damage program
Pilot program only covers
main John Day Valley
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Grant County Farm Bureau
called on the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife to expand
the boundaries of a pilot program
allowing for elk damage hunts on
private land to encompass all Grant
County private lands.
In a Sept. 1. press release, the
Grant County Farm Bureau noted
ODFW established its elk damage
season in 2020. The program aims
to control the number of elk that
move onto the private property of
cattle producers, eat grass, damage
equipment and tear down fences,
taking a big bite out of their profits.
Because the state governs elk
populations, landowners must
abide by hunting laws and wildlife
Contributed photo/ODFW
The Grant County Farm Bureau is
seeking a change to help reduce elk
damage.
management objectives.
Ryan Torland, a district biolo-
gist with ODFW, told the Eagle in
a Sept. 2 email that elk distribu-
tion on private and public lands is
a “priority concern” and one that
ODFW is working with federal and
landowner partners to address.
According to ODFW’s website,
the program allows landowners and
hunters to work together to address
damage occurring during the open
season directly. With permission
from the private landowner, hunt-
ers can purchase a cow elk tag to
hunt on a specific property within
the Murderers Creek and Northside
units.
The agency notes that the tag
replaces 19 controlled hunts and
will replace the need for land-
owner damage program tags in
the areas and during the periods of
the hunts. This is the hunter’s only
elk-hunting opportunity, and they
cannot hunt in a different hunting
unit.
Torland said that, when the
ODFW’s commission approved the
pilot program for a three-year win-
dow, it also developed monitoring
and reporting criteria to assess the
new “tool” and make changes that
could include a larger swath of pri-
vate lands within the county.
Over 130 hunters participated in
the program, and over 40 of them
harvested a cow elk. He said land-
owners were still learning about the
program and expect it to be more
popular this season.
Grant County Farm Bureau
President Shaun Robertson said the
damage from elk populations feast-
ing in pastures intended for live-
stock has been an ongoing problem
on private lands since the federal
government began reducing timber
harvests in the 1990s.
“Unfortunately, the failure of the
federal landowners to address the
lack of high-quality forage on their
own lands has directly resulted in
large numbers of elk translocating
to private lands seeking replacement
See Elk, Page A16