Page 2
The
The INDEPENDENT, November 7, 2012
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Wednesdays of each month
by The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St.,
Vernonia, OR 97064. Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Deadline is noon the Friday before each issue.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Thoughts while anxiously
watching election results
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
I’m hungry...
A CAT WOULD
DO A BETTER JOB
Why we need a farm bill
Are you affected by the federal farm bill? Most of us
are not directly involved in agriculture, but Congress’
failure to pass the farm bill will affect nearly all Ameri-
cans. Unless, of course, you’re able to produce your
own meat, milk, vegetables, grains, etc., or you don’t
need food at all.
Beyond the elements that directly affect farmers,
such as crop price subsidies, crop insurance, conser-
vation, etc., there is much more involved than the price
of groceries.
Among the farm bill programs that can affect chil-
dren and families are school lunches and breakfasts,
summer food service, milk for children, and the
Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.
Meals on Wheels for senior and disabled citizens,
plus the meals prepared and served in most senior cit-
izen centers are included in the Special Nutritional As-
sistance Program (SNAP). Other SNAP programs are
food stamps, and free/reduced price school lunches.
Other major components are The Emergency Food
Assistance Program (TEFAP) and Commodity Supple-
mental Food Program (CSFP), which help supply food
banks and emergency food services. Emergency food
services include situations like Hurricane Sandy.
Study after study has shown that hungry children
can’t learn as well as those receiving adequate nutri-
tion. Also well-documented is how malnourishment
harms pregnant women and the children they bear.
The societal costs of inadequate food for large por-
tions of our population is shameful in America, the rich-
est nation in the world. Yet the farm bill has been held
up in a House of Representatives committee by a few
Congressmen who want to make major cuts in food
stamps because the number of people eligible for the
program has grown during the recession. They also
want to cut WIC and other vital nutrition services. Oth-
er Congressmen said no to those cuts.
The last expansion of SNAP was in 2002. The re-
cession started in 2007, job losses grew through 2009
and, while the job trend is slowly reversing, it is not sur-
prising that the need for food assistance still exists.
Congress will probably pass a farm bill before the
end of the year, but the lack of certainty makes it hard
for agencies to plan now. Even those that use very lit-
tle federal help need to know what their costs will be.
It is inexcusable for people to be hungry in America.
The Independent ©
Ike Says…
By Dale Webb, member
Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League
My last article focused
on the increasing suc-
cess rates and take of
older mature bull elk by
archery hunters. I be-
lieve it is a subject that
ODF&W is somewhat
silent on. My take on
subjects like this, is that
it is not their role to de-
cide the outcomes based on societal pressures,
but based on the science of managing the game
animals under their charge. Once again they
championed the shift from rifle to archery equip-
ment under the assumption of lower success
rates and, of course, the ability to maintain tag
sales. The data we have now is sufficient to con-
clude that those prior decisions made by
ODF&W are no longer valid. I also believe that
the biological data would highly suggest that the
current take of mature bulls, before or during the
rut, has undermined the ODF&W attempt to in-
crease the mature bull segment of the herds, a
biological factor that ODF&W is responsible for
managing.
With the harvest statistics out for last year’s
hunting season, it is again time to look at the lo-
cal Blacktailed deer report. Once again the Sad-
dle Mt. unit severely under performed. The 2010
harvest showed a slight bump up, but 2011 was
back to dismal, with the 3127 hunters participat-
ing during the general season scoring only 385
bucks – a 12% success rate. In the late ‘90s
more than 900 bucks were harvested annually,
and the historical high for Saddle Mt. was over
1600. There are some who believe that this de-
cline is habitat driven, but for you guys who were
able to harvest a buck this year, was your deer
skinny, with little fat, or did it have a good layer
of fat? That is all the proof we need to dispel the
habitat card. It is not rocket science folks.
It is truly amazing how fast Mother Nature can
make a turnaround. We went from one of the
longest dry stretches in Oregon rainfall history,
to one of the higher rainfall totals for October.
Reports of significant mountain snows are show-
ing up already and local streams have risen to
above the historical median stream flow for this
time of year. What was shown this year, though,
was how a wet spring influences stream flow far
into summer. Data from the USGS stream flow
gauge show that we had nearly 2.3 inches of
rainfall in June, with .83 of an inch falling in a 30-
hour window on June 23rd. The high stream
flows coming into June, coupled with high rain-
fall amounts, extended good stream flows well
into the summer. Without this above average
event in June, we would have been faced with
extremely low stream flows in the local area,
with the consequent negative impacts on
salmonids. While the dry stretch was extraordi-
narily long, it was not exceedingly hot, which
was another saving grace. The upper lethal lim-
it for temperature, in regards to salmonids, was
exceeded a couple of times in August in the Ne-
halem River, but Rock Creek’s above normal
flows saved it from the high temperatures. This
Please see page 3