March 9, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 7A
Port, schools hire
Henningsgaard
for timber suit
Attorney will
be local voice
in class-action
claim
By Edward Stratton
The Daily Astorian
‘A PART OF A
BIGGER PICTURE’
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Eric Owen searches the beach for dead birds near Haystack Rock.
Citizen science
programs
integral to
supporting
coastal research
By Brenna Visser
Cannon Beach Gazette
O
n a misty Friday
morning, Eric Owen
and Brooke Wat-
kins of the Haystack
Rock Awareness Program
scanned the beach in search of
dead birds.
For the most part it’s a qui-
et, slow endeavor, marked by
long gazes into driftwood piles
and debris. But when they
found a northern fulmar — a
common seabird — they be-
gan to identify feet, measure
wingspans and take photos.
This monthly ritual is a part
of the COASST survey, a pro-
gram that relies on data taken
by volunteers to study large-
scale patterns in seabird popu-
lations on the West Coast. The
Haystack Rock Awareness
Program conducts similar sur-
veys for sea stars and marine
debris throughout the year.
Surveys like these play a
small part in a growing trend
in the science community to
use citizen scientists as a way
to gather massive amounts
of data. Over the weekend,
marine scientists and conser-
vationists came to Cannon
Beach for the annual Coast
Conference, a regionwide
event to discuss coastal sci-
ence and stewardship.
Whether the presentation
was about ocean debris, ma-
rine mammals, seabirds or
ocean jellies, many relied
on the data collection work
of volunteers throughout the
state. A database for citizen
science programs called Cits-
ci.org, which recorded only
a few dozen groups 10 years
ago, now has more than 500
groups registered across the
country, with new ones regis-
tering every day.
Owen, the citizen science
coordinator for Haystack Rock
Awareness Program, said it’s
invaluable to feel like being “a
part of a bigger picture.”
“This work needs to be
done, but there’s just not
enough capacity,” he said. “If
we weren’t here? It wouldn’t
happen. This data wouldn’t be
taken.”
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Eric Owen and Brooke Watkins locate the carcass of a bird
near Cannon Beach.
applicable to the entire spe-
cies. But in order to know she
would need data collected on
more than one beach at a time.
“When you do that kind of
research, you get a lot of in-
formation about one colony,”
Parrish said. “But it’s hard
to understand whether that
one place is indicative of the
whole range of the popula-
tion, or if we are just seeing
something that’s going on
right there.”
When Parrish launched a
pilot citizen science project
near Ocean Shores, Wash-
ington, she never thought she
would get enough volunteers
willing to do the work. Now,
there are more than 1,000 ac-
tive in the program.
“It’s hard to imagine
more than 50 people at one
time wanting to go sample
dead birds on a beach,” she
laughed. “But I was wrong,
which is great.”
Part of the rise has to do
with technology, she said.
Apps that help identify spe-
cies and allow unprecedent-
ed access to information
have driven interest up and
removed barriers that would
have otherwise made it harder
to collect data without formal
training. Another is the sci-
ence community slowly com-
ing around to accept citizen
science.
“I think there’s a lot of
reticence in the science com-
munity to use citizen science.
‘A marriage contract’
While a general decline in
federal funding for scientific
research could play a factor
in the science community’s
acceptance of using volun-
teer-collected data, Parrish
said, regardless of funding,
there are some projects only
citizen scientists can accom-
plish.
An example was identify-
ing the correlation between
massive seabird die-offs and
“the Blob,” a large mass of
relatively warm water in
the Pacific Ocean that last-
ed through 2015. Millions of
seabirds washed ashore from
Alaska to California in seven
mass extinction events since
2013 — a rate, Parrish said,
that is 100 to 1,000 times
more than normal, depending
on the species.
“Now that we know that,
we can dive into why the
warm water was affecting
them. What did it actually
do to these birds?” she said.
“We only know that because
of the work the volunteers are
doing, getting numbers on the
carcasses.”
Citizen scientists also were
the ones to alert researchers
to early warning data about
invasive species, like when
European green crabs started
showing up on the West Coast
in 2016. There have been
multiple times Parrish has
been alerted to rare seabirds
washing ashore that otherwise
would have gone unnoticed.
“We don’t do that with
mainstream science because
we don’t have the money, the
personnel to do it,” she said.
“To me it’s a contract, like a
marriage contract, between
mainstream scientists and
coastal citizenry to monitor
coastal health.”
Back in Cannon Beach,
Owen sees the benefit going
both ways with his volunteers.
“It’s intrinsically valuable
for our volunteers. What they
are doing, these issues, direct-
ly affect them,” Owen said. “I
think they are realizing how
accessible it is.”
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Dining on the
North Coast
A growing trend
Citizen science is nothing
new. The Audubon Society’s
Christmas Day Bird Count has
existed for almost 120 years,
and for centuries natural ob-
servations have been recorded
in resources like farmers al-
manacs.
Julia Parrish, a seabird
ecologist with the University
of Washington and founder
of the COASST survey, gives
presentations about citizen sci-
ence around the country and
has seen it spike in popularity,
particularly in the last decade.
Parrish started the group near-
ly 20 years ago while studying
a colony of common murres
on Tatoosh Island off the
Washington coast.
She wanted to know if
the reproduction and die-off
patterns she was seeing were
There’s some doubt the data
collected is of the precision
or accuracy that is needed to
document phenomena,” Par-
rish said. “But as it grows, the
more standardized it becomes.
What we’re seeing right now
is a lot of discussion in citizen
science programs asking what
they need to do to get to that
level.”
But a larger part, she said,
is a growing passion in locals
to study and protect their own
communities that otherwise
would not have regular re-
search conducted.
“Haystack Rock Aware-
ness Program is a fabulous
example of local people say-
ing ‘Hey, this is our place. We
want to collect the data, we
want to know what’s going
on,’” Parrish said.
Volunteers with the Hay-
stack Rock Awareness Pro-
gram recently conducted
a survey of dead seabirds
near Cannon Beach.
Astoria attorney Blair
Henningsgaard has been
hired to represent the Port
of Astoria, Seaside School
District and Jewell School
District in the $1.4 billion
breach of contract timber
lawsuit filed by Linn County
against the state.
The state Board of For-
estry in 1998 passed a rule
emphasizing conservation
and recreation along with
timber harvests on state for-
estlands. The class-action
lawsuit, supported finan-
cially by the timber indus-
try, claims the change in
policy breached a historical
contract to maximize sus-
tainable timber harvests on
forestlands deeded by coun-
ties in the 1930s and 1940s,
costing them an estimated
$1.4 billion.
Henningsgaard will at-
tend meetings of legal coun-
sel representing the parties
in the lawsuit. His represen-
tation of the Port and school
districts is separate from his
position as the city attorney
for Astoria, which not a par-
ty to the timber lawsuit.
“Based upon a discussion
with John DiLorenzo (Linn
County’s attorney), I do not
anticipate my fee exceeding
$10,000 annually; $3,333
apiece,”
Henningsgaard
wrote in a letter to the Port,
Seaside and Jewell. “This
assumes I will attend four
meetings per year in Salem
and spend time getting up
to speed on the case and in
communications.”
A win or settlement in fa-
vor of the plaintiffs could re-
sult in sizable payouts to the
approximately 140 taxing
districts party to the lawsuit.
Those include local school
districts, the Port and Clat-
sop Community College.
Clatsop County, which
has about 23 percent of the
forestlands involved in the
lawsuit, was the only coun-
ty among the 15 counties
included in the class action
to opt out, meaning it has no
counsel at
meetings
about the
progress
of
the
lawsuit.
Four oth-
er taxing
Blair
districts
Henningsgaard
under the
c o u n -
ty were automatically re-
moved, and the Sunset Em-
pire Parks and Recreation
District voted to opt out.
Dirk Rohne, a Port com-
missioner and former county
commissioner, came up with
the idea to seek separate le-
gal representation. When he
was a county commission-
er, Rohne had kept track
of the lawsuit. But the vote
on whether to opt out was
delayed until shortly after
he was out of office. His
replacement on the county
board, Kathleen Sullivan,
was one of the three “yes”
votes in the 3-2 decision to
opt out. Residents had urged
commissioners to oppose
the lawsuit in favor of a
more balanced forest man-
agement policy.
“Ultimately, the only
thing that the county has
accomplished is it’s in the
dark,” Rohne said, adding
elected leaders have a fidu-
ciary duty to participate in
issues that could affect con-
stituents.
Seaside and Jewell
school districts receive the
most timber tax revenue of
any in the county, Seaside
Superintendent Sheila Roley
said.
“We just wanted to have
someone who understood
the aspects of that legal con-
versation,” she said.
Jim Knight, the Port’s
executive director, set up the
meeting with Seaside and
Jewell school districts about
hiring representation.
“We did not purposeful-
ly exclude anyone,” Knight
said. “It was easier to do a
meeting with these three
entities. These are the three
largest recipients of (timber)
tax proceeds” in the county.
A Linn County judge
recently denied the state’s
attempts to have the lawsuit
thrown out on the grounds
that it has sovereign immu-
nity against lawsuits by oth-
er governments.
Congratulations Alaina
Alaina Giguiere
Owner/Principal Broker
503.440.3202
alainagiguiere@mac.com
on being the
#1 agent in
Clatsop County for
2016 AND 2017
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