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.