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About Seaside signal. (Seaside, Or.) 1905-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2018)
August 3, 2018 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 7A Silverspot butterfly makes return to Saddle Mountain Silverspot caterpillars are back By Katie Frankowicz The Daily Astorian BRENNA VISSER/THE DAILY ASTORIAN Karen Emmerling and Alexis Butler haved worked togeth- er for more than 11 years. For Alexa Butler, a summer job turns into a life passion Butler has worked at Beach Books in Seaside for more than 11 years By Brenna Visser Seaside Signal Like many 15-year-olds, Alexa Butler was in search of a summer job. That summer, she was drawn by the “help wanted” sign in the window at Beach Books in Seaside. She had always loved reading. “I can get paid to talk to people about books that I love? What’s better than that?” Butler said. What the 15-year-old Butler didn’t anticipate was that 11 years later the book store would become both her career and her home. Anyone who has perused Beach Books in the past decade most likely has met Butler, greeting customers with a smile behind the front desk or shelving books at the store wedged at the corner of Holladay Drive and Broad- way. She loves helping cus- tomers who wander into the store as a refuge, attempting to escape the chaos of the beach. Tags with handwritten recommendations from But- ler and other staff members hang from books on the shelf. “There’s so much out there. I like young adult, fantasy,” Butler said. “But probably not sad, ‘The Note- book’-type books.” When she’s not at the store, Butler likes to travel and, well, read more books. But what has kept the Seaside native at Beach Books for the long haul is not just her love of litera- ture, but also for the woman who hired her. Karen Emmerling, the owner of Beach Books, re- members having an instant connection with Butler, to the point where she trusted Butler to run the store alone on her first day. “Her math teacher, who is a good friend of mine, rec- ommended her,” Emmerling said. “And said that maybe she wasn’t all that good at math, but she was very re- sponsible. I just trusted she was going to do it right.” Over the years, the rela- tionship slowly progressed from co-workers to friends, and then friends into family. The two joked about keeping sleeping bags up- stairs for long days worked during the summer rush. Their conversations behind the counter are laced with laughs and inside jokes. One of Butler’s favor- ite memories was throwing Emmerling a surprise birth- day party in the store. “I had no idea that when I was in high school that I would be treated like a daughter,” Butler said. Since then, Emmerling has entrusted her with more responsibilities. For the past few years, she has sent But- ler to regional and national bookseller’s conventions and conferences to hone her skills and network with au- thors. One day, she could see passing the baton to Butler. “She knows books so well, and if she’s passion- ate about a book, you aren’t leaving without it,” Emmer- ling laughed. “She’s engag- ing and she’s going to make a great bookseller.” Rare butterfly caterpillars are back on the slopes of Sad- dle Mountain for the first time since they completely disap- peared from the area years before. Government and private partners released 500 Oregon silverspot caterpillars on the mountain’s rocky meadow slopes recently as part of an ongoing effort to rebuild the threatened butterfly’s popula- tion at key sites. “It was a culmination of so much work and it was almost a celebration,” said Trevor Taylor, manager for the rein- troduction project at the Or- egon Parks and Recreation Department. Last year, teams rein- troduced caterpillars at the Nestucca Bay National Wild- life Refuge in southern Tilla- mook County with plans to release caterpillars at Saddle Mountain this year — a site Taylor describes as “prime real estate” for the red-orange butterflies marked with dis- tinctive silver spots. Elsewhere, the small but- terfly’s decline has been linked to a decline in habitat but its disappearance from Saddle Mountain is more mysterious. There are several theories for the decline: past chemical spraying practices on surrounding timberland may have impacted the butter- flies, or perhaps the butterflies were unable to weather espe- cially rough winters. People who searched for silverspots on the mountain in the 1970s saw them; when people went looking again in the early 2000s, they were gone. “We don’t know when the silverspots disappeared, we don’t know why they disap- peared,” said Mike Patterson, a contractor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the reintroduction project. “We can only speculate about why they disappeared and that’s speculation — there’s no way to prove it.” Saddle Mountain remains one of the few sites where the Oregon silverspot’s main source of food — another rare organism, the early blue violet — blooms in abundance. Oth- er wildflowers also flourish there. The variety of blooms make the mountain a popular destination for hikers. For the butterflies, these flowers will provide additional sources of nectar, Taylor said. Over the summer, many of the silverspots will die. Some will be eaten before they pu- pate, others will be eaten while they pupate or when they emerge as butterflies. PHOTOS BY COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN Kim McEuen holds up an Oregon silverspot butterfly in the lab at the Oregon Zoo. The conser- vation lab raised caterpillars that were released at Saddle Mountain. Oregon silverspot caterpillars seen through the viewfinder of a microscope. At the Nestucca site, Pat- terson could account for only 9 percent of the nearly 1,000 caterpillars released along his survey route. It was a num- ber that concerned others in- volved, but not Patterson. “Being able to account for only 9 percent doesn’t mean only 9 percent became butter- flies,” he said. And he feels confident about the caterpillars’ success on Saddle Mountain. “My guess is we’ll see but- terflies,” he said. “The habitat is certainly ripe for them up there.” Of the 500 caterpillars now chomping away at plants on Saddle Mountain, 280 larvae came from the Oregon Zoo’s butterfly conservation pro- gram, which raises as many as 10,000 Oregon silverspot and Taylor’s checkerspots in its lab at any given time to supplement wild populations. Larvae also come from labs at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, the children of wild female silverspots collected from Mount Hebo in the Siuslaw National Forest in Tillamook County. Kim McEuen works with Oregon silverspot caterpil- lars at the Oregon Zoo. The conservation lab raised caterpillars that were released at Saddle Mountain. “Numbers are dictated year to year by (the Fish and Wildlife Service) but it is highly likely we will continue to operate at or near capacity over the next several seasons at least,” said Travis Koons, who oversees the Oregon Zoo’s butterfly conservation program. “We will continue to release high numbers of larvae at the various sites.” The silverspot caterpil- lars were placed on early blue violets in three different DINING on the NORTH COAST Great Restaurants in: GEARHART • SEASIDE CANNON BEACH Excellence in family dining found from a family that has been serving the North Coast for the past 52 years New firm takes over local land surveying By Edward Stratton The Daily Astorian Dale Barrett, a land survey- or who joined HLB & Asso- ciates in 1986, has amassed a treasure trove of maps, plans and institutional knowledge from countless North Coast projects dating back to the 1970s. As he approaches retire- ment, Barrett is helping tran- sition HLB’s operations to S&F Land Services, a Port- land-based firm that has taken on his team of coastal survey- ors. HLB was originally found- ed in Manzanita by Colin Handforth and Ron Larson in 1975 as Handforth and Larson Surveying and Engineering. Barrett, previously a coun- ty surveyor, joined the two in 1986, creating HLB & Asso- ciates. In 2006, the company merged with Portland-based design, planning and engineer- ing firm Otak Inc. to form HLB Otak. Otak recently gave HLB no- tice that it would be pulling out of the partnership, Barrett said. EDWARD STRATTON/THE DAILY ASTORIAN Dale Barrett, left, is helping Chris Sherby, co-owner of S&F Land Services, take over his landsurveying on the North Coast. “They were just not that in- terested in the coastal market,” he said. “They want big-city stuff. Their primary focus is Denver, Portland, Seattle.” Otak reached out to S&F, an emerging small business formed in 2016 by Christo- pher Sherby and Matthew Faulkner, a former employee of HLB, about taking over the surveying team. This month, S&F took over all of HLB’s accounts. The company’s survey projects range in size from small residential property line disputes and municipal contracts to large commercial projects and the reconstruc- tion of the system of jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River. S&F is able to pro- vide cost-effective surveying locally because of the copi- ous records and institution- al knowledge from HLB’s 43-year history, Sherby said. Former employees of HLB have also taken up many po- sitions with local municipal- ities. “Dale’s been taking me around to introduce me to all the agencies, and everywhere we go, it’s usually some- one who’s worked for Dale,” Sherby said. HLB had more than 50 em- ployees and offices in Manza- nita, Gearhart and Long Beach, Washington, when the merger with Otak occurred in 2006. But during the Great Reces- sion, Otak cut the staff down to fewer than 10 and closed the offices in Long Beach and Manzanita, Barrett said. “All the work is still here,” he said. “The possibility of growth is really good. The struggle is to find the staff.” With a staff of around sev- en, the company has been in- undated with work so far and is looking to add more survey- ors on the coast, Sherby said. Like others, it faces a lack of affordable housing that makes it difficult to bring in new peo- ple. But for those who join, Sherby said, S&F provides a high-quality, family wage po- sition. “We’re trying to provide a full, lifetime career,” he said. areas on Saddle Mountain. Over the next few weeks and throughout the summer, Patterson and others will check different survey points, counting any adults they see. Though Patterson is confident this first reintroduction will find some degree of success, he said, “At the same, it’s not a one-time quick fix kind of deal. This is just the first of probably quite a few efforts to go up there and release more caterpillars.” Great Great Great Homemade Breakfast, lunch and pasta, Clam but that’s dinner steaks & Chowder, not all... menu,too! seafood! Salads! Seaside • 323 Broadway • 738-7234 (Open 7 Days) Cannon Beach • 223 S. Hemlock 436-2851 (7am-3pm Daily) Astoria • 146 W. Bond • 325-3144 MAZATLAN M E X I C A N R E S TA U R A N T Phone 503-738-9678 1445 S. Roosevelt Drive • Seaside WANNA KNOW WHERE THE LOCALS GO? • Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner BEST BREAKFAST IN TOWN! • Lighter appetite menu • Junior Something for Everyone menu Fish ‘n Chips • Burgers • Seafood & Steak Friday & Saturday - Prime Rib Lounge Open Daily 9-Midnight All Oregon Lottery products available 1104 S Holladay • 503-738-9701 • Open Daily at 8am