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About The independent. (Vernonia, Or.) 1986-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 1996)
«k Page 2 - The INDEPENDENT, July 17,1996 A 'JO y' frf£ s' f a / Z / s n s M / f 'JAA/Qafe.e The INDEPENDENT z 6 U T O ffic e « . Serving the upper Nehalem River valley. Published twice monthly on the first and third Wednesdays of each month, by Public Opinion Laboratory Ltd., 725 Bridge Street, Vernonia, OR 97064, as a free newspaper. Editors and Publishers, Dirk & Noni Andersen, (503) 429-9410. I U/ a s Jvsr V/fAVfvo Closed government equals open distrust lb The best part of Oregon state government, since its inception, has been the traditional openness which has allowed citizens to talk directly with the people who make decisions. At this time, a disturbing trend is underway, one which will eliminate that openness and substitute “staff reports” in lieu of real, live people talking to decision makers. A case in point is recent action by the Environmen tal Quality Commission to approve expansion of vehi cle emissions testing in the Portland Metropolitan area. The commission made that decision without hearing from anybody in the expanded area, which now includes Scappoose, because only a hearings of ficer listened to all of the testimony, which was then By Dale Webb, member put into a staff report. Additionally, testimony was cut Izaak Walton League, Nehalem Valley Chapter off about three weeks before the commission decided Summer has finally arrived and, by the time the question. you read this article, we probably will have This is a neat and tidy way to bring questions of had the hottest days of the year. With this hot public policy before a board or commission because weather will almost certainly come lethal water the members who make the decisions don’t have to temperatures in our local rivers for salmonid listen to emotional or boring or inappropriate testimo populations. We are monitoring the situation again this year to see if the “Great Flood” had ny. Instead, they merely need to read the testimony - any effect on stream temperatures. as translated by staff members after having been giv Talking about temperatures rising, I recently en to a third party - off of an unemotional piece of pa spoke with a representative of the North Coast per. This procedure is a really great step forward for Game Association (Astoria-based sportsmen group) and it sounds as if the doe hunting is dictatorship. In another case, with a different way of keeping cit sue is going to blow up again. ODF&W is izens uninformed and at arm’s length, the State De again talking about opening up a doe harvest in the Saddle Mountain Unit, beginning in partment of Forestry effectively lied to citizens at Fish- 1997. The hunt would be only in the Western hawk Lake by saying they had no plans to clear-cut half of the unit, for about 400 tags. This was in the area (see article on page 1) even while they were the agreement between ODF&W and NCGA seeking approval for someone else to clear-cut the when the moratorium on doe hunting was im posed in 1994. But also in the agreement was same property. Perhaps this penchant for keeping the unwashed that ODF&W and sportsmen groups would collaborate on an agreeable plan to gauge the masses (citizens) away from the nobility (bureaucrats) results of the moratorium at the end of the is one result of the trickle-down theory the federal gov three years. From what I have heard and seen ernment was touting a few years ago, goodness the agreement part of the deal has been a lit tle lopsided. knows there are enough examples there. The agreement specified several criteria to However it got here, the West Oregon Electric Co operative Board of Directors certainly has succumbed be used for judging the success or failure of the antlerless hunt moratorium. Buck harvest, to the same petty condition. Their ridiculous policy on hu nte r success, s p o tlig h t tren ds and providing information first forces members to jump ODF&W’s new FLIR (Forward Looking In through hoops (entertainment for the royal family of di frared Radar) study were to be the baselines rectors?), then obstructs the declared intent of the pol for judging. Here’s where the twist comes in: ODF&W has concluded the FLIR study needs icy— protecting the rights of members. at least five years of data collection for valid While personnel files should remain confidential, results (something that I argued for from the there is no good reason for West Oregon to withhold beginning). So ODF&W devised a plan to split information about operating procedures and/or the the Saddle Mountain Unit, so the FLIR study costs of operations. There may be a valid reason from area in the Eastern half will not be affected by the viewpoint of those who equate secrecy with secu the antlerless harvest in the Western half. Questioning our district biologist about why rity, but there are no good reasons. Whether the people who are footing the bill are be they needed five years (I knew why, but I wanted him to say it) for the FLIR study, he ing abused or misused by government or by their own replied, ‘They need five years of study so they “co-op” matters very little. What does matter is that have adequate data to base their findings on.” WOEC has forgotten the meaning of the words “mem I agree, and so do the sportsmen groups. ber-owned cooperative” and our state government has Where we disagree is that, by allowing this forgotten the proud tradition it established long ago. antlerless harvest, the trends for buck harvest and spotlight surveys will be negatively affect A » * 4/ ed and we will not see the true effect of an antlerless moratorium. ODF&W could have bought a lot of credibility by offering to hold off on the antlerless harvest until the end of the five year study. ODF&W wants to conduct the antlerless hunt to collect tooth samples to do an age structure of the population. This is an other point of contention. Upon questioning the district biologist about what, exactly, they are looking for, I have yet to get a straight an swer. I feel that in three years there will be lit tle difference in age structure except for a higher percentage of younger animals in the population. To illustrate the thinking of the district biolo gist, during NCGA’s spring banquet, he was asked, “If the moratorium is shown to produce higher buck harvest, better hunter success and is generally better for the population, will ODF&W still promote antlerless harvest in the Saddle Mountain Unit?” The answer was, “Probably, yes” ! It was a good thing there wasn’t a long rope in the crowd or somebody might have been swinging from the Astoria column. The situation with our elk herds isn’t much better. We continue plugging along with about 400 bull elk harvested each year in the Saddle Mountain Unit. Gone are the hey-days of 900 bulls-plus harvested each year, along with the top rating for bull harvest in any unit in the state. I questioned our district biologist about this and his answer, like his two predecessors, was that ‘This unit is fat with elk.” I continued, saying, “My research into elk tells me that a cow elk has a calf every-other year, that half the calves are bulls and that they experience a 50% mortality loss before a year in age, right?’ His reply was, “Yeah, that’s fairly cor rect.” Of course he couldn’t argue, this data comes from ODF&W. Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to fig ure out that it would have taken at least 7200 productive cow elk to produce an annual har vest of 900 bulls a year. This means that elk herds in the Saddle Mountain Unit would have numbered at least 10,000 animals. ODF&W’s figure for the current elk population is over 8,000 elk. But, with 8,000 elk we should be Please see page 3
