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About The Columbia press. (Astoria, Or.) 1949-current | View Entire Issue (June 12, 2020)
8 June 12, 2020 T he C olumbia P ress ‘Whimsical’ art contest taking entries for Round 2 UO research could resolve otter problem Spruce Up Warrenton is sponsoring Round 2 of its Whimsical War- renton Art Contest. The contest theme is “Unity in Our Community.” Resident Tricia Tamcke won Round 1 with her colorful wa- tercolor of a lighthouse and the many things for which the city is known: storm clouds, great sunsets, the surf, the forest, seafood, the Peter Iredale shipwreck and its Native Ameri- can history. Tricia Tamcke’s winning entry. She won a $25 gift certificate for groceries at Participants should email Main Street Market. photos of their creations Round 2 is for artwork to spruceupwarrenton@ that’s three-dimensional, gmail.com. such as sculpture, textiles, The photos will be posted pottery and jewelry. on the group’s Facebook The contest is open to res- page, where the public can idents of Warrenton and vote on them. Hammond. Entries are due The winner will get a $25 by 6 p.m. Sunday, June 21. gift certificate. Scientists are probing ar- chaeological evidence to learn how indigenous people used sea otters, and their findings could help Oregonians who want to reintroduce them on the coast as well as Alaskans dealing with growing num- bers of the mammals. Before fur traders decimat- ed sea otter populations from Alaska to Oregon, ancestors of at least one Alaskan indig- enous population, the Tlingit, hunted the mammals for their pelts but probably not for food, according to a study by University of Oregon an- thropologist Madonna Moss. Her research, published in April in American Antiquity, took on questions about tra- ditional use by native popu- lations amid calls to expand harvesting. Since their reintroduction in the 1960s, the population of sea otters has spiraled Only Alaska Natives living along the coast are permitted under federal law to hunt sea otters for subsistence. Pelts are used for clothing, bed- ding, hats and other regalia. Some environmentalists have challenged the right of Alaska Natives to hunt sea B y J iM B arlow University of Oregon Ryan Wolf/University of Oregon Two otters cavort off the coast of Alaska. otters without eating their meat. Conservationists want to show that native popula- tions regularly did so as part of their case for allowing larg- er-scale harvesting for con- sumption. The idea comes amid rising tensions. Sea otters have al- tered ecosystems, making it more difficult for commercial fisherman to catch abalone, clams, Dungeness crabs, red sea urchins and other inver- tebrates the otters consume. From 1996 to 2005, the in- dustry was reported to have experienced an economic loss of $11.2 million. Populations from Alaska to California hunted sea ot- ters for thousands of years, Moss said. As sea otters recolonize their historic range, finding out whether other native populations ate sea otter meat is wor- thy of attention, she said. “Hunting sea otters and using sea otter skins has been a Tlingit and Haida cultural tradition for thou- sands of years,” said Moss, a professor in the Depart- ment of Anthropology and curator of zooarchaeology at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Moss examined 461 sea otter and 195 seal speci- mens found among 940 bones previously collected at two of 16 southeast Alas- ka sites. Moss examined them for telltale signatures of human modifications that result from using sea otters for different purpos- es. Moss excavated the two sites in the 1980s when she was studying fish and shellfish remains as part of her research on subsis- tence economies of the An- goon Tlingit. Efforts to reintroduce sea otters to the Oregon coast failed in the 1970s, but amid fresh calls to try again, a current UO project could prove to be helpful. Sea otter sightings on the coast are rare and are thought to reflect tempo- rary visits.