July 6, 2018 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 3A
An extraordinary ship
Historic marker
the effort of
volunteers
By R.J. Marx
Seaside Signal
U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
Marbled murrelets won’t be listed as endangered in
Oregon.
Oregon Fish and
Wildlife Commission
reverses course on
threatened seabird
Marbled
murrelet not
endangered
By Katie Frankowicz
The Daily Astorian
The Oregon Fish and
Wildlife Commission on
June 7 reversed a decision
to upgrade the status of
the marbled murrelet from
threatened to endangered,
choosing to wait for a 10-
year study of the species to
end.
There were concerns
that increased protections
for marbled murrelets —
small seabirds that winter at
sea but nest in coastal for-
ests — would mean strict-
er logging limits on state
forestland. Several county
commissioners from coast-
al communities testified at
a commission meeting in
Baker City Thursday that
they were concerned about
the economic impacts of the
decision.
The move toward uplist-
ing nearly ended in a dead-
lock when commission-
ers first considered it at a
meeting in February. It only
passed after Commission-
er Bob Webber decided to
change his vote.
Staff recommended re-
classifying marbled mur-
relets as an endangered
species Thursday, but Curt
Melcher, director of the Ore-
gon Department of Fish and
Wildlife, said commission-
ers had the option to reject
the listing change, which
they did in a 4-2 vote.
The commission intends
to wait for results from an
ongoing study of marbled
murrelets by Oregon State
University researchers. The
researchers are in the second
year of the 10-year study.
“Let’s wait a few years
and let scientists update us
on how this species is do-
ing,” Mike Finley, the com-
mission’s chairman, said.
Environmental groups
shot back against Thurs-
day’s reversal.
Quinn Read, director for
Defenders of Wildlife, said
the commission “bowed
to the interests of the tim-
ber industry, abandoning
the conservation leadership
they demonstrated just four
months ago.”
“We are extremely dis-
appointed, but we are not
done,” Read said. “Orego-
nians won’t stand for this
failure of leadership. De-
fenders will continue to
work with our conservation
partners to challenge this in-
defensible decision.”
Marbled murrelets are
considered endangered in
Washington state and Cal-
ifornia. Oregon listed the
species as threatened in
1995. Very little is known
about them and nests are
hard to find and study. The
birds appear to favor large,
old-growth conifers, a hab-
itat that has dwindled, re-
searchers say.
The Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife assessed
the species in response to a
petition from multiple con-
servation organizations.
ARCH CAPE — The USS
Shark was no ordinary ship.
In the mid-19th century,
it was a trusted military ves-
sel that fought in combat and
navigated the Strait of Ma-
gellan and beyond. But it met
its match in Oregon with the
mighty Columbia River.
“Everything that ship did
is so mind-boggling,” Elaine
Trucke, director of the Can-
non Beach History Center and
Museum, said. “It went all
over the globe, then it thought
it could do the Columbia Bar!
And it couldn’t!”
In an effort to get the
Shark off the south spit, the
crew chopped down the ship’s
three masts and jettisoned the
cannons. When the ship be-
gan to break up, the crew took
to lifeboats and all on board
were eventually saved.
The ship’s captain received
information from Native
Americans that the three can-
nons had come ashore south
of Tillamook Head. Realizing
it would be impossible to re-
trieve the ship’s remains from
such a remote location, they
made no effort at recovery.
On June 15, volunteers and
state officials converged on
U.S. Highway 101 just north
of the fire station in Arch
Cape to celebrate a new inter-
pretative marker dedicated to
the shipwreck.
Namesake
The Shark was one of hun-
dreds of ships sunk along the
coast, but one of the most no-
table — and the one that gave
Cannon Beach its name. The
new marker stands just north
of Arch Cape firehouse, where
an original marker was in-
stalled in the 1980s. The new
marker, made of a wood resin,
includes historical informa-
tion, photos and illustrations
recounting the ship’s story.
Annie Von Domitz, of the
Oregon Travel Experience,
supervised the renovation
of the historic marker, in the
style of the state’s histor-
ic wooden beaver markers.
Arch Cape resident John Piatt
R.J. MARX
Annie Von Domitz of the
Oregon Travel Experience at
the ribbon-cutting of a new
historic marker along U.S.
Highway 101 in Arch Cape.
R.J. MARX
A new historic marker ready to be unveiled along U.S. High-
way 101 in Arch Cape.
played a key role in work-
ing on the text and drafts,
with historical support from
Trucke and Jeff Smith, senior
curator of the Columbia River
Maritime Museum.
The postmortem is as fas-
cinating as the Shark’s career
in the waters. Long after it
ran aground, the search for
the ship’s three carronades —
small, powerful cannons used
to fire at ships at near range —
became a local obsession.
“For decades, the cannon
played peekaboo,” Trucke
said.
One was found in 1896.
Two others were discovered
a day apart more than a cen-
tury later, in 2008, revealed
by extreme low tides and the
natural loss of beach sand due
to winter storms.
Piatt recalled: “The sand
was way out and a girl and her
dad were out walking and she
said, ‘This looks like a can-
non!’ A couple of days later
someone found the third can-
non right near there.”
The restoration of the three
carronades became a commu-
nity project, with the assis-
tance of the Garden Club, the
Arch Cape Community Club,
Historic Markers Committee,
the Cannon Beach History
Center and Museum and the
Columbia River Maritime
Museum.
Funds were raised and the
carronades were restored at
the marine archaeology de-
partment of Texas A&M Uni-
versity before returning to the
North Coast. Today, a replica
stands at the site of the historic
marker. One carronade stands
at the history center and two
are on exhibit at the Columbia
River Maritime Museum.
How did the Shark arrive
here? Trucke provided an elo-
quent recounting of the ship’s
creation and its ultimate de-
mise.
‘Manifest Destiny’
The secretary of the Navy
in early 1846 sent the vessel
to the Pacific Northwest to
join the Pacific squadron. The
ship’s role was to defend U.S.
interests in the Northwest
and to spread the concept of
“Manifest Destiny” in the Or-
egon territory when there was
doubt about whether it would
be British or American land?
President James K. Polk
sent the Shark to Oregon in
August 1846. The ship, 86
feet long, was designed for
speed and maneuverability
to navigate the waters of the
West Indies.
The Shark’s impressive
career saw it transport the nat-
uralist James J. Audubon in
1831 to collect research spec-
imens. The Shark was the first
U.S. ship to navigate the Strait
of Magellan in 1833 en route
to Peru.
According to the “Arch
Cape Chronicles,” by Da-
vid and Alma English, in the
summer of 1846 Lt. Neil N.
Howison received orders to
carry supplies from Hono-
lulu in readiness to ascend
the Columbia River as far as
the Willamette. Their reports
would assist in formulating
a decision on the location of
the boundary between En-
gland and the American lands.
Americans wanted the board
to be 54 degrees, 40 minutes
latitude, the reason for Polk’s
slogan, “54-40 or fight,” im-
mortalized in history books.
But due to a lag in com-
munications, crew members
were unaware that the U.S.
Senate had already ratified
a treaty with Britain making
the U.S. border the 49th par-
allel, rendering the journey
unnecessary. Some of the ship
deserted, but the lieutenant in
command was “impatient, na-
ive and somewhat impetuous”
in seeking his return south. He
attempted to cross the Colum-
bia Bar without a bar pilot.
With a sparse crew and bad
weather, on Sept. 10, 1846,
the Shark was pulled directly
toward breakers. While the
crew survived, the ship was
destroyed.
Author offers a path for stewarding public lands
Conversation
focuses on
peoples’
relationship to
forests
By Nancy McCarthy
For Seaside Signal
In Oregon, where the issue
of forest management is a hot
topic, Mariah Acton asks a
personal question: What does
the forest mean to you?
Acton, a former social sci-
ence researcher for the U.S.
Forest Service, recently led a
conversation about the future
of forest management with a
group at the Cannon Beach
History Center. She is study-
ing for her master’s degree in
conflict resolution at the Uni-
versity of Oregon and works
as a mediator for the state
Housing and Community Ser-
vices Department.
“I noticed no one was
talking about their own iden-
tities as people living in the
forest, as third-generation
timber families, or as envi-
ronmentalists or just speaking
from their own values. I just
felt this was a big part of the
conversation that was miss-
ing,” Acton said.
As part of a program spon-
sored by Oregon Humanities,
Acton has traveled through-
out the state to talk about
what public forests mean to
Oregonians.
“Every community has a
different relationship to the
land that surrounds them,”
she said. “This is a chance
to explore those values and
perspectives, the chance to be
heard, to hear others and to
CANNON BEACH MUSEUM AND HISTORY CENTER
“Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Stewarding Our Public
Lands,” a lecture by Mariah Acton, at the Cannon Beach Mu-
seum and History Center.
reflect.”
While most of the 15 par-
ticipants lived in Cannon
Beach, others were visiting
from surrounding communi-
ties.
When Acton asked what
forests meant to them, they
cited the forests’ importance
for recreation, sustaining
watersheds and their connec-
tion to the eco-system. Some
participants talked about the
beauty, solitude and peace
forests gave to them and the
need to protect them for fu-
ture generations.
“When I look at a forest,
I think of life,” said Jan Sie-
bert-Wahrmund.
Clatsop County Commis-
sioner Lianne Thompson,
who also was among the par-
ticipants, noted that she lived
in a forest clearing in Falcon
Cove.
“Forests mean to me a
place that I love, that I’m
devoted to,” Thompson said.
“But as a public figure, my
job is to create a moderate
middle where there’s a bal-
ance between what John Muir
called economic development
and conservation; they go
hand-in-hand.”
“In Oregon, our for-
ests mean a lot of different
things,” Acton said. “We
have a timber industry that
is the economic driver of our
state settling; there’s no way
around that. The economics
part of it continues to fuel a
lot of our communities across
the state.”
Forests also draw visitors,
Acton noted. “People come
here for nature, for finding
the peace, the tranquility and
the beauty of those trees when
they’re standing upright.”
Half of the 63 million
acres in Oregon is in forests,
Acton said. “We have lots of
different forests across our
state, so when we talk about
different types of forest poli-
cies, we’re talking about lots
of different types of trees,”
she added.
In eastern Oregon, conver-
sations about forest manage-
ment are different, she said.
“They have to cut down a lot
more trees to get the board
footage to fuel their schools
(economically) than over
here. It’s different environ-
mentalism, it’s different eco-
nomics.”
In addition, the type of
ownership varies from region
to region in Oregon. While
federal ownership predom-
inates on the east side, state
forests are more common on
the west side, she said. With
the variations of ownership –
city, state, federal, Bureau of
Land Management, private
holdings – come variations in
management policies.
“We can’t talk about forest
policy as a monolithic; there’s
a lot of different nuance
there,” she said.
Policies also change with
time. Acton talked about the
influence of two early conser-
vationists: John Muir, found-
er of the Sierra Club, who
sought preservation of forest
land, and Gifford Pinchot,
founder of the U.S. Forest
Service, who promoted sus-
tainable use of the forest.
Acton asked participants
to consider where they place
themselves along the spec-
trum of conservationism and
utilitarianism.
Thompson said she kept
moving between “loving the
planet” and taking care of
“disenfranchised people who
don’t have any way of earning
a living.”
“I see people with ade-
quate and stable incomes
saying I want to have only
park land and we shouldn’t
cut any trees and the money
should magically come from
somewhere. Tourism creates
air pollution and traffic and
the load on fresh water and
wastewater,” Thompson said.
But Betsy Ayres, of Can-
non Beach, noted that auto-
mation is taking away tim-
ber-related jobs. She said
government’s priority should
be to conserve natural re-
sources.
“I personally don’t feel
like we are managing those
in perpetuity. I think we’re
still stealing from our chil-
dren’s children for a profit,”
said Ayres, who would like
to see more of the corpora-
tion-owned forests owned by
families.
At the end of the gathering,
Acton challenged the group to
continue the discussion.
“Anyone can start these
conversations,” she said. “In
this world of hyper polariza-
tion, we’re afraid to talk to
our neighbor these days. Be
willing to start these conver-
sations.”
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