SERVING CURRY COUNTY SINCE 1946
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FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2021
Brookings, Oregon
Gray whale washes ashore near Brookings Expert: Young 34-foot whale likely died due to orca attack Knox Keranen The Pilot
A 34-foot dead gray whale washed up onto Whaleshead Beach near Brookings over the holiday weekend. Jim Rice, program manager with the Marine Mammal Institute of Oregon State University, said several bite wounds he found on the carcass indicate the juvenile male may have died from an orca attack — killer whales. Rice said this is the second whale to float ashore on the Oregon Coast this year and is pretty much typical according to the state average. He said gray whales often get stranded in Oregon during the month of May because they are migrating northward from their breeding grounds near the coast of Baja California in Mexico. “I was remarking to some colleagues on Friday that I was almost
expecting a gray whale to strand over the holiday weekend,” said Rice. “We could very well have other strandings occurring in the next few weeks or month.” What is troubling though, is the recent death comes amid an unusual mortality event for gray whales, which began in 2019. Four dead gray whales washed up onto beaches in the San Francisco Bay in a span of eight days last month, according to news reports. What’s more, gray whales migrating along the West Coast have dropped 24% since 2016. A new population assessment puts the species at 20,580 whales, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While this event is unusual, scientists believe the recent mortality jump will have no effect on the
Photo by Knox Keranen/The Pilot
A young gray whale washed up on shore at Whalsehead Beach over the weekend. Experts say the whale likely More Whale, Page A2 died after being attacked by killer whales.
Azalea Festival returns to its glory Community celebrates with parade, vendor fair, dance, more
Zack Demars ThePilot
Knox Keranen The Pilot
The 82nd Azalea Festival returned to its pre-COVID glory last weekend; complete with DJ dance parties in the park, a vendor fair on Frontage Road and a parade through a thick layer of Brookings fog. Amber Nalls, festival organizer, said customer turnout at the vendor fair more than doubled last year’s, when the festival was pushed to July due to COVID-19. She said her preparations for the festival began a year in advance. “Crazy amount of hours, crazy amount of time. If we didn’t have the volunteers and we didn’t have people putting on the events, of course it wouldn’t be successful,” said Nalls. “The more participation we have; whether that’s parade participants, vendors, people wanting to do events at Azalea Park, that’s what makes it even bigger.” In addition to the festival’s return to Memorial Day weekend, there were also three new events this year: a two-day softball tournament, a Wild Rivers Dance performance and a dance party in the park. Scott Graves, DJ of Wild Rivers Sound, co-organized the dance party along with fellow DJ Dave of Big Dave’s Music Machine. Graves said 60-80 people showed up to dance, a turnout higher than he
Photos by Knox Keranen/The Pilot
Local Elks Lodge #1934 shows off their “hometown pride” during the Azalea Parade. Below, Elizabeth Cowie only recently started making art but has sold her pieces to customers as far as New York. She displayed her art at the vendor fair.
More Azalea, Page A3
New strain of Sudden Oak Death found Knox Keranen The Pilot
A strain of Sudden Oak Death previously undetected in the wild on the West Coast, has been discovered near Port Orford. Before the recent discovery of infected tanoaks along Highway 101, just north of Port Orford, the NA2 strain had only been known to infect plants and trees in nurseries,
Merkley looking for new wildfire funding
according to a May 26 press release from the Oregon Department of Forestry. Randy Weiss, Sudden Oak Death forester with the ODF, said he is not sure how the new strain was introduced, but he estimated it could be from plants transported from an infected nursery. Whatever the case may be, NA2’s presence here is cause for concern, especially for the tanoak he said.
“It’s such a widespread tree across the landscape. As far as acorn production for wildlife, it’s one of the main ones out here,” said Weiss. Sudden Oak Death is caused by the invasive water mold Phythphtora ramorum, which spreads by spores, usually through the tree canopy. When the disease was first detected in Oregon in 2001, forest agencies attempted to eradicate it,
but when that proved impossible Oregon’s SOD program shifted to slowing the spread of the disease. The site is also sounding alarm bells because it was found 21 miles north of the 515 square mile quarantine zone, which is bounded by the state border to the south and the Rogue River to the north, including large portions of the Rogue Riv-
More Strain, Page A2
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley hopes to use his post on a powerful senate committee to increase funding for wildfire prevention efforts. The Democratic senator last week convened a hearing of an appropriations subcommittee he chairs on the topic of funding forest management. Merkley and the subcommittee questioned U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen about the agency’s fire prevention work. “The 2020 fire year became a call to action. We saw the most acres burned on the Forest Service lands since the Big Burn of 1910. In many places, forests will not come back on their own, which impacts the potential for carbon storage and limits the land’s capacity to mitigate climate change,” Christiansen told the committee. In all, Christiansen told senators her agency needs more money for fuel management programs and to provide higher pay for wildland firefighters. “Despite the pandemic, the Forest Service sustained our hazardous fuels production work, but we know it’s not enough. We need a paradigm shift,” she said. In comments to reporters after the hearing, Merkley laid out his vision for providing those funds through congress. “Forests of course are absolutely the heart of Oregon’s identity. We value the forests. They’re headwaters of our clean drinking water, they’re the genesis of our salmon runs, they’re the backbone of our recreation in our rural economies,” Merkley said. “And the Forest Service and the professionals that staff it are critical to our state, our people, our economy.” One key program Merkley noted to promote resilient forests was the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which brings together timber, environmental and other stakeholders in certain forests to collaborate on forest management. “These collaborative have More Merkley, Page A2
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