Page 2
The INDEPENDENT, January 3, 2001
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New jail programs
will help inmates
Columbia County finally has the new jail it has need
ed for many years. More than that, however, is the fo
cus that the Sheriff’s Department is putting on what
happens inside the facility.
There will be a very strict behavioral code, with in
mates having to earn privileges such as television
time, phone usage (all inmate calls will be collect),
commissary privileges and more. But real excitement
can be heard from corrections officers when they talk
about some special program additions.
For the first time, Columbia County will be able to
have classes for inmates. At this time, classes are
planned in landscaping, baking, computer basics, re
sumé writing and job interview techniques. Because
the jail and community corrections will be sharing the
facility, it may also be possible to include GED classes
for inmates who lack a high school diploma, even if
they are not in the jail long enough to complete the
course (The average length of stay is four months.).
Also planned are church services, Alcoholics Anony
mous and Narcotics Anonymous. Columbia County
doesn’t have sufficient funds to add more teachers and
counselors to its workforce so qualified people inter
ested in lending a hand would be greatly appreciated.
Everyone who has the interest and the opportunity is
urged to take a little drive over to St. Helens this Sat
urday to tour the new facility. It is located at the corner
of Old Portland Road and Port Road.
Sen.Wyden’s visit a good
opportunity for questions
Unless they’re running for re-election, when politi
cians come to Columbia County, they rarely get off
Hwy. 30. Trying to recall Congressional representa
tives who have spent much time in Vernonia, only two
come to mind: Many years ago, Rep. Les AuCoin was
often seen in Vernonia, and Rep. Elizabeth Furse was
here frequently, particularly after the ‘96 flood, but not
for publicity purposes. Governor Kitzhaber has been in
Vernonia a couple of times and Rep. David Wu has
visited only once, while campaigning.
So it’s good to see Sen. Ron Wyden hold his town
hall meeting here. This is the time to put your ques
tions together. If you want to know what’s happening in
any area of federal government, ask the senator, after
all, he has a few years before he has to campaign
again. See the date and time on page 1.
Prompt removal of tree lights
appropriate and appreciated
It was surprising to see the Christmas lights being
removed from the trees on Bridge Street on the first
working day of the year. It was also reassuring to know
that they weren’t going to be left unti, Valentines Day.
That has been known to happen here...or was it near
ly St. Patrick’s Day when they finally came down?
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...................... ......... ............................... .....................
Iks Says. . .
................... ................................. ......................
By Dale Webb, member,
Izaak Walton League, Nehalem Valley Chapter
Happy new year, everybody. A new year has
dawned and, like many prior years, there will be
new hopes and challenges. Unfortunately, the
welfare of our outdoor treasures is influenced
not only by the weather, but by the people who
use or abuse them and the people who hold the
positions of influence over them.
With a new president in office (one that I vot
ed for because of gun control), we will definitely
see new changes in how our natural resources
will be utilitized. Hopefully the new conscious
ness that our country has found in protecting our
natural resources will be strong enough to over
come the pressures to resume the “business as
usual” mentality that has gotten us into the
messes we have today.
>t /
Unfortunately for Oregonians, there has not
been a change in how fish and wildlife in Oregon
are managed. We are still stuck with the same
management style that has been here for years
- and that is selling our resources for a buck. We
have the classic “fox guarding the hen house”
structure where the agency that is in charge of
making management decisions is almost solely
dependent on exploiting the resources it is de
signed to protect, for its own financial well being.
For the most part, the constituents of this
agency also push for more harvests, even in the
face of severely depleted resources.
,s said
that humans are very intelligent creatuPfe, yet
we must have a void in our brains th a f keeps us
from learning from our past. Have we not
learned from the ancestors who stood before us
and exclaimed, “We will never be able to shoot
all these buffalo", “We will never be able to log
all these old growth trees”, “We will never be
able to catch all these fish" and, finally, “The
ocean is boundless”? Even in the face of all
these failures of our past, we continue to act as
though man does not have an impact on our nat
ural resources. Even while our rivers run with
the blood (mud) of human impacts on our sur
rounding forests, we deny the obvious. Even the
people in charge of our resources are in denial
as they lobby for increased catches dfehdan-
gered fish and continue to propagate genetically
altered fish by the millions, without adequate
knowledge about the impact of their actions.
History is, again, repeating itself as the
agency in charge of our fish and wildlife contin
ues to expand the commercialization of wildlife.
In a very short time, the commissioners that gov
ern have moved us all closer to privatization of
our public resources. With the advent of con
trolled hunts and landowner tags, they have cre
ated a whole new industry in selling wildlife to a
captive audience. Game farming is expanding
even though there are serious concerns about
the health and safety of surrounding wildlife that,
if infected with some of these diseases, will have
to be destroyed. Tag auctions and raffles, again,
commercialize our natural resources and make
it obvious that if you have money, you can hunt
in Oregon. Hunting will soon become the sport
of Kings and poachers, with nobody in between.
Locally, we have our own battles with the peo
ple in charge of our wildlife. In the face of over
whelming reports of dead and dying deer, our
district biologist makes light of the situation.
Even with declining deer trend counts and in
creasing age structure, we continue to harvest
the very heart of future herds in the form of an-
terless deer. In analyzing the age structure data
that has been gathered since the early nineties,
it is obvious that our deer herds have been se
verely depressed and impacted by antlerless
hunting. Deer younger than two years of age
composed more than 66 percent of hunter har
vest, with around a 52 percent drop from year
ling to two-year-old animals. This is the perfect
picture of an over-exploited resource and hunt
ing having a severe impact.
At the end of the moratorium, with deer trends
from three monitoring groups (ODF&W, Izaak
Walton League and North Coast Game Associa
tion) all showing increases in deer numbers, the
overall harvest of deer less than two years of
age had declined to about 55 percent, with a
pick-up in deer three and four years of age. The
drop between yearlings and two-year-olds was
down to 28 percent, and to three-year-olds,
which now compose around 16 percent of the
harvest, the drop was an amazing 10 percent.
These data definitely show that not harvesting
antlerless deer has a beneficial impact that in
cludes more mature does in the herd.
The harvest data for 1999 is another picture.
With the increase in anterless harvest, abnor
mally wet winters in ‘97 and *98, and the intro
duction of hair-loss syndrome, the picture has
turned grim, at best. Spotlight trend counts are
down; deer less than two years of age have de
clined to around 44 percent of harvest and the
average age of deer has increased to 3.92 from
3.46 in the early nineties. While this may actual
ly sound good to most sportsmen, it is important
to understand how age structure works. In a
healthy deer herd that has been severely de
pressed by over-hunting and is then protected,