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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2018)
July 20, 2018 T he C olumbia P ress 5 Rare Saddle Mountain posey a butterfly magnet Courtesy Clatsop County Fair Chickens vie for the top prize at last year’s poultry competition. Fair has music, livestock, rides “Carnival Nights & Country Lights” is the theme for this year’s Clatsop County Fair, which will be held Tuesday, July 31, through Saturday, Aug. 4. There will be live music, carnival rides, carnival food and a kids’ zone. The fair is open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily with entertain- ers taking the stage at noon. Carnival rides open at 2 p.m. opening day and at noon the other days. Golf event is a book fund-raiser Books and reading come to- gether with wine and golf during a fund-raising event, “Birdies Fore Books.” The fourth annual event is Thursday, Aug. 9, at Gearhart Golf Links, 1157 N. Marion Ave. Money raised benefits Start Making a Reader Today, or SMART. Teams of four can register for a golf scramble at 3 p.m. for $350. A wine reception, for those who don’t necessar- ily love golf, is scheduled for 5 p.m. A suggested donation of $40 will provide 14 new books for SMART students. For more information or to register, contact Sharon Ben- son at 971-634-1620 or sben- son@getsmartoregon.org. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children 12 and younger. Parking is $2 per ve- hicle. Carnival wristbands for unlimited rides are $30 at the gate or $20 in advance from the fairgrounds office, Fulta- no’s Pizza in Astoria or online at http://bit.ly/2sWeS55. The main concert is Dia- mond Rio at 6 p.m. Friday. Other performers through- out the fair include Louie Foxx, Brownsmead Flats, We Three, Cherish, Bruce Smith Band, Raeann Phillips, Bri- ana Renae, Cloudshine, Joy Haviland, Meghan Schoen- bohm and Emily & Nate. Fairgoers also can enjoy Jeep races, jugglers, clowns, a fashion show, a free petting zoo, bounce house and lots of 4-H livestock shows. Saddle Mountain’s abun- dance of a rare flower could be the savior of another rarity, the Oregon silverspot butter- fly. Five hundred Oregon sil- verspot butterfly caterpillars were released recently on the slopes of Saddle Mountain, part of a continuing effort to stabilize the state’s declining species population. The reintroduction was led by a team from Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Oregon Zoo and Wood- land Park Zoo in Seattle. The Oregon silverspot was federally listed as threatened in 1980, and its population has declined since then. To- day, just four isolated popula- tions remain: three in Oregon and one in California. Saddle Mountain was cho- sen as the reintroduction site because the early blue violet blooms in abundance there. Early blue violets are the main food source for the caterpil- lars as they mature into adult butterflies. The mountain is one of the few remaining areas where early blue violets grow in large enough quantities to sustain a butterfly population. Elsewhere, the delicate violets have been choked out by inva- sive weeds and forest succes- sion. “Saddle Mountain is prime Mike Patterson/Oregon Parks Above: Volunteers re-introduce silverspot larvae on Saddle Moun- tain. Below: a silverspot caterpillar and an early blue violet. real estate for Oregon silver- spots,” said Trevor Taylor, manager for the reintroduc- tion project at OPRD. “Our hope is the caterpillars will be the start of a vibrant and last- ing butterfly population on the mountain.” The caterpillars began their journey to the mountain as part of the imperiled species programs at the two zoos. Each year, a small number of female Oregon silverspots are collected from wild popula- tions and brought to zoo con- servation labs to lay eggs. The hatched larvae are raised over the winter and released into the wild when they’ve matured into caterpil- lars.