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Show The Park Record A-22 Meetings and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, February 4-7, 2017 More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas please email classifieds@parkrecord.com A brave new world Summit County Board of Health Meeting AGENDA Introduction of new BOH member, Gary Resnick, PhD (4:05 – 4:10) Summit County Board of Health Meeting Directors Report (Rich, 4:10 – 4:20) February 6, 2017 4:00 PM – 5:30 UALBOH (Dorothy, 4:20 – 4:25) Summit County Health Department 650 Round Valley Drive Park City, Utah 84060 Legislative Update (Rich, Kim, All, 4:25 – 4:40) PUBLIC MEETING 4:00 – 5:30 Mental Health Assessment Results and Implementation (Rich, 4:45 – 5:30) Adjourn Minimum Performance Review (Rich, 4:40 – 4:45) Welcome and Approval of Minutes (All, 4:00 – 4:05) Lone wolf is a celebrity People advocate for individual animals, not packs Emma Marris High Country News Night is falling in the Wood River Valley, a broad, flat expanse of southern Oregon, just south of Crater Lake National Park. John Stephenson, a gray-haired, lantern-jawed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, is building a campfire on this chilly late October evening. He is here to be a human, to move around and make noise and generally discourage a nearby wolf pack from coming out of the dark timbered hills. These wolves have killed four yearling cattle in this particular pasture already. And this isn’t any old wolf pack; it was the first to settle in southern Oregon, and the family of a legendary lupine wanderer known as OR7. The campfire’s flickering amber flames compete with the irregular flashing of anti-predator lights mounted on fences. This is Stephenson’s fourth night in this field. In a few days, the cows will be rounded up and shipped to California for the winter. Once they’re gone, he’ll be able to more or less relax until the cattle return in the spring. Wolves are expanding across the West, though they’re still federally endangered in some places. At the edges of their range, the wolf frontier, the animals are more likely to be individually known and managed as if each one is precious. If one finds a mate or has pups, it’s announced in the local paper and even on Facebook. And if one begins killing livestock, government officials camp out for days in a cold pasture, hoping to maintain a fragile coexistence without further bloodshed — especially if the wolf is as famous as OR7. But the era of knowing and managing Western wolves as individuals probably won’t last. If and when gray wolves become well established, they will be managed like black bears, cougars or other animals — as largely anonymous populations. In another wolf generation or three, an animal that kills livestock in this valley might well be shot. “Part of the deal of having wolves back on the landscape is there are going to be some problem ones we have to remove,” Stephenson said. “It is the price of success.” OR7, whom local environmentalists dubbed “Journey,” gained his official designation in early 2011, when he became the seventh wolf to be captured and fitted with a radio collar in Oregon. That fall, he left his natal pack and took off on an epic 1,000mile trek that saw him cross into California for a time, becoming the first wild wolf in the Golden State since the 1920s. His wanderings surprised biologists, who hadn’t realized how far wolves were prepared to travel in search of a good territory and a mate. And he inspired environmentalists, who regarded “Journey” as symbolic: the personification of wildness reclaiming the Pacific Northwest. OR7 has since inspired two documentaries, a children’s book and a Twitter account. Since his famous cross-state trek, OR7 has settled down in a large territory stretching from north of Crater Lake down to the California border. He’s found a mate and had several rounds of pups. The family is known as the Rogue Pack after the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest that makes up much of their turf. OR7’s radio collar has gone dead, but Stephenson has been unable to trap him or his mate; the wolves are too wily. OR7 is now 7 years old, and he and his family have largely kept to themselves, hunting elk and staying in the forest. It wasn’t until this year that the Rogue Pack bothered livestock, perhaps owing to what Utah State University ecologist Dan MacNulty calls “predatory senescence” — older wolves simply have a harder time chasing down wild game. Placid cattle make a tempting alternative. So far, the attacks have been few, annoying rather than infuriating Klamath County ranchers. Butch Wampler is the manager at the Nicholson Ranch, where the pack killed cattle. He was riding his horse when he came across several wolves dining on the carcass of a 600-pound steer. He suspected the wolves had made the kill. “I rode the cattle really good on Friday, and there were no sick ones,” he said. The next night, the pack struck again. “All they ate out of that second one was the heart and lungs and liver,” Wampler added, clearly irked. “Wolves kill just to kill.” Eventually, they took two more steers. The owner of the cattle, DeTar Livestock of Dixon, California, was paid $3,660 in compensation from the Klamath County Wolf Depredation Committee. And after the third loss, Stephenson began his vigil. Wampler told Stephenson he understood the real reason he was I don’t recall individuals having the kind of attention and press that individuals out West would get.” Dan MacNulty Utah State University ecologist working so hard to avoid yet another kill: “You are not protecting these cattle from the wolves; you are protecting your wolves from these cattle.” Stephenson acknowledges the fame of this particular wolf figures into the amount of effort he’s putting in. However, even here on the wolf frontier the fate of a single animal hardly matters, given the likely spread of these smart, flexible predators, who know how to move and take advantage of local resources, said Mike Jimenez, a recently retired wolf biologist. And so he supports early lethal control of livestock-killing wolves to encourage tolerance in rural residents. “You give wolves a little bit of protection and don’t indiscriminately kill them, and then take care of the problem ones, they come back ferociously,” he said. Robert Klavins, the northeast Oregon field coordinator for Oregon Wild, does not believe wolves will inevitably cover Oregon. The state’s population, around 110 animals in 12 packs, is still far too small and thinly spread to assume they are here to stay, he said. “I think it is pretty premature to start talking about when do we start killing wolves in western Oregon,” Klavins said. Wolves haven’t colonized all of the West’s suitable habitat, including parts of Utah, Colorado and Nevada, but they have expanded faster and more broadly than expected. Twenty-one years after the first wolves were moved from Western Canada to Yellowstone, there are approximately 1,900 wolves in the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, plus another 3,610 in the robust Great Lakes population and 65,000 in Canada and Alaska. Wolves have already been delisted in Montana and Idaho, which now have hunting and trapping seasons. They’ve also been delisted in the eastern third of Oregon (without legal hunting or trapping), and the state has removed the species from its endangered species list. When wolf numbers are very low — during the early days of reintroduction, or in small, isolated populations like the Mexican wolf subspecies — genetic diversity is precious and every breeding adult with unique genes can be vital to recovery, said MacNulty. But at a certain point, that’s no longer true. Once wolves have a large enough interconnected population, removing one won’t matter to their conservation status. And thus many Oregon wolves, including OR7 and his pack, are probably, ecologically speaking, expendable. But even if their ecological value isn’t especially high, their “social value” is, MacNulty said. Social value tends to be higher in new populations at the edge of wolves’ range. In Minnesota, where MacNulty worked for a decade, wolves were never eradicated, so they didn’t have to be reintroduced. “I don’t recall individuals having the kind of attention and press that individuals out West would get,” he said. “Maybe once you have established populations, these individuals lose their charm or notoriety.” The draw of the individual is testified to by the popularity of wild animals with distinctive characteristics — an unusual gait, a recognizable voice or an easyto-spot color variation, like that of the grizzly cub called “Snowy” in Grand Teton National Park. Wellknown animals are featured in the press releases of groups like Defenders of Wildlife or the Center for Biological Diversity, which often releases fundraising appeals when a particular favorite is killed by officials or poached. Recently, an email blast from Defenders announced that a locally famous sea otter in Southern California known as “Mr. Enchilada” was killed by a car. The group used the “devastating loss” to lobby for speed humps to slow down motorists. Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said this focus on the individual is rhetorically effective, even though his organization is primarily concerned with populations and species-level conservation. “There have been lots of psychological studies showing that people connect emotionally to individuals and small groups more than large groups,” Suckling said. “They’ll give hundreds of dollars to help one poor child, tens of dollars to help a family, and very little to help a struggling nation.” The tension between managing a population and caring for individual animals can be hard to reconcile. Even Stephenson, whose job it is to act at the population level, regards many of the wolves he manages as individuals. “You get attached,” he said. “We all do.” OR7 is a celebrity, and no doubt the Fish and Wildlife Service will go the extra mile to enable him to live out his life. But in a future where wolves are a normal, everyday part of the landscape, his great-grandchildren may not warrant such special consideration. Killing wolves should always be the last resort, said Klavins, but more conflicts will be inevitable as their population increases. He said when wolves are truly recovered, it will no longer be possible to know each one individually. “There is a part of me that looks forward to the day that we don’t know every wolf’s story,” Klavins said. I can’t quite get my head around Trump as president yet. He won, despite the Democrats getting 3 million people to rise from the dead to help Hillary win the popular vote. It was an amazing conspiracy, but apparently the dead people all voted in the wrong states without regard to the Electoral College. That’s exactly the kind of thing the Democrats would do — put together a conspiracy of overwhelming and unimaginable scale and complexity to get 3 million dead people to vote in the wrong states so it didn’t matter. Or maybe that didn’t actually happen. I watched the inauguration, which was the biggest gathering of humanity ever recorded as long as you don’t look at all the empty space on the national mall. It doesn’t matter, but Trump is still fixated on it. Apparently he can’t quite believe he’s President, either. He’s jumped into the role with enthusiasm, and is issuing a blizzard of Executive Orders showing that he’s in charge. He’s setting about doing exactly what he campaigned on. That’s shocking. Americans are not used to that from our elected officials. We listen to all the wild-eyed campaign promises and cast our votes based on something: Perhaps that something is indigestion, contempt for the other candidate, “If Uncle Lew is for him then I’m against him,” general frustration, or hand size. I don’t think people really vote on the basis of careful examination of issues or policy. But the common wisdom is that the victor usually has the good sense and manners to set aside all of the campaign promises and proceed with business as usual, nibbling on a few changes around the edges. Having a President who is actually doing what he said he would do in the campaign is an entirely new proposition in American politics. I don’t know what to make of it. While spewing alternative facts and flat-out falsehoods, Trump has demonstrated a fundamental truthfulness about his intentions. So we get a ban on Muslims from countries without a Trump hotel, a trade war with Mexico, budget-destroying tax cuts and spending increases, and long-standing allies are getting poked in the eye. Most of what he is doing might turn out to be symbolic. There is the nasty problem of the Constitution getting in the way. Trump can’t impose a tariff on Mexican imports. That takes legislation, and while Trump moves at lightning speed, Congress is still Trapped in an airport? Well, you should have thought about that before being born in Iraq. Not our fault. Planning, consequences and basic compassion aren’t part of the process here.” Congress. It’s not happening anytime soon. The immigration order is caught up in the courts, where the limits of Presidential authority will end up being litigated for years. Meanwhile, only Christians need apply. It’s small comfort to people caught up in the process to know that, after only a few years, their rights may be sorted out in court. There probably was a way to have imposed some variation of his Executive Order that didn’t leave thousands of people trapped in airports, or leave people who have been in the U.S. for years with lawfully issued green cards blocked at the borders. I don’t like the policy in general, but I really don’t like that it was imposed in a manner that created the most chaos possible for the people affected. Trapped in an airport? Well, you should have thought about that before being born in Iraq. Not our fault. Planning, consequences and basic compassion aren’t part of the process here. The approach seems to be blowing things up, and figuring out what to do about it later. Details make bad television. Nothing has a “normal course of business” about it anymore. The Supreme Court nominee is somebody that any Republican president would have picked, and that no Democratic president would have named. That’s how it works. But even that is all bollixed up because of the Republicans’ unprecedented decision to prevent Obama from filling the vacancy when Scalia died a year ago. So qualified or not, the nominee will get caught up in revenge extracted by the Democrats. If Obama can’t fill a vacant seat in the last year of his term, maybe Trump can’t fill it in the first year of his. Or the second. If they block things long enough, the Supreme Court will die off. Some of them are ancient. Then what? Whether you are a CEO making billion dollar decisions or a family booking spring break in Cancun, one of the things that differentiates this country from a Banana Republic is a sense that the rules are what the rules are. Things are predictable and consistent. If there are changes to be made, big or small, they get discussed, and there is some warning. There is time to adjust and plan ahead. That concept has gone out the window, and now changes get made with the unpredictability of an earthquake. Details and consequences are just facts that get in the way of our brave new world. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. Sunday in the Park By Teri Orr Sick of sick I was feeling a bit cocky, I admit it. Friends were falling in December and the first part of January with various versions of what we once just called a cold. And I was exceedingly healthy. Full of energy. Getting stuff done. Daily. I woke up feeling rested and I attacked the days. Good health was being taken for granted. It felt more a right than a privilege. On the day of the March on Main, the first Saturday of the Sundance festival and the biggest blizzard day we have seen in nearly a decade, I was up early and ready to participate. I bundled up in a new fluffy coat, the first new coat I have purchased for myself in over a decade. It is like walking around in a full length down sleeping bag. My footwear was a trusty pair of fashionable but functional Sorrels. Several seasons old but always dependable in the past. I spent five hours at the event, from start to finish. I was in the pre-March ramp up, in the March, at the speeches, getting off Main Street and back to the Eccles theater where I work. My feet ended up soaked. I mean to the bone soaked. I told myself it wasn’t so bad. I went to work until 7 p.m. In hindsight I realize I was chilled for about 12 hours total. Medically speaking, being cold does not give you a cold. I understand that. However, when I was weakened and fighting the cold and wet, I was more open to the germs coming through the box office window, as more than 6,000 people a day breathed on me with their home grown germs from all over the world. Lovely people, talented people, funny, sincere and thoughtful people. Many of them with just a little case of the sniffles themselves. On Sunday, I felt something coming on but I had to be at work and there was an evening full of events to attend. So I did all that. On Monday, I couldn’t get out of my pajamas; I was down completely. Tea and self- sympathy and bad television and naps. Tuesday, I was back at it. But secretly I knew I wasn’t. But it was Sundance and our small staff are all needed to manage our theater and keep the backof-house-stuff running smoothly. I showed up. I left earlier than any other year from my shifts. I tried all my fail safe remedies: hot and spicy foods, steamy baths, lemon and honey and hot water and whisky. Over-thecounter meds came into play, still not working. I reached out to my doctor. She said everyone she knew who marched got sick. It seemed to take two weeks to run its course. She would prescribe a Zpak but mostly I had a few more days to just muddle through it. I read the Sunday New York Times almost cover to cover. I worked most of each day but not well. And I cursed myself for my pre-Sundance healthy arrogance.” I finished the episodes of House of Cards I hadn’t previously found time for. I read the Sunday New York Times almost cover to cover. I worked most of each day but not well. And I cursed myself for my preSundance healthy arrogance. I kept my eye doctor appointment and ran into a friend who is, yes, Jewish, and she immediately asked if she should bring me chicken soup. And while I was spending more waking in my home I was able to observe those tasks that most often happen out of sight and out of mind. My driveway and walkway were cleared every day sometimes twice depending upon the snow, by my kind neighbor who keeps me able to negotiate my way into the world. I also noticed the giant icicle creation on my back porch. A thing of beauty in the sunlight, it was as thick as the thigh of a linebacker and I remembered that is usually an indication of the drain system on the roof...not working. The man who helps me mostly in the summer with all things maintenance arranged for workers to shovel the roof to keep the ice jams of spring at bay. The garage door, which was installed just about 25 years ago and serviced twice in that time, appears to be unhappy with all the ups and downs this winter. I lost the remote about a year ago so part of the irony is I have to get out and go inside and open the door and ditto when I want to extract the car. Of late, it has taken to holding us hostage for chunks of time, but only on mornings when I am already running late. Cursing does not seem to improve its function. It is easy to — when minor things seem to gang up — think this is really much more than it is: minor annoyances and inconveniences. I remind myself of that time about 20 years ago when I was really actually sick, so sick the doctors in several states after two years of trying understand my lung issues decided there was nothing they could do. My illness would most likely prove fatal in three to five years. But I healed with great loving support and have been a picture of health for nearly two decades now. Having a rotten cold is just that, a pretty common case of the mid-winter miseries that needs rest and some prescribed medications and maybe just one more quiet Sunday in the Park... Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the director of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. |