OHA offers rewards to catch habitat vandals
Increasing damage to wildlife habitat by off-road vehicles has prompted the
Oregon Hunters Association to create a Natural Resources Reward Program that
offers a $200 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone causing
serious damage to natural resources by the illegal use of motorized vehicles
or other means, similar to its highly successful Turn in Poachers (TIP)
program. The number to report a violation is 1-800-452-7888.
Increasing off-road use of all terrain vehicles, trucks, motorcycles and
other motor vehicles is resulting in significant damage to wildlife habitat
and other natural resources on both public and private lands throughout
Oregon. In addition to physical damage, irresponsible and illegal use of
motor vehicles in an off-road setting also creates a negative view of
hunters, especially when damage occurs during hunting seasons, even if
hunters were not involved.
The U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies have identified
the growing use of recreational off-road vehicles as one of the greatest
challenges to managing and conserving natural resources on public lands.
Private landowners are seeing more damage from trespassing off-road vehicles
on their lands as well.
“Hunters put so much effort and money into habitat protection and
restoration and then that habitat is damaged by deliberately destructive
acts,” said Fred Walasavage, OHA eastern at-large board member and president
of the Mid-Columbia Chapter of OHA.
The Natural Resources Reward Program will work in a similar manner to the
TIP program. A person observing illegal destructive activities in the
outdoors may call the Oregon State Police at 1-800-452-7888 to report the
incident and provide all relevant information. If the information provided
results in an arrest, the tipster may receive a $200 reward. The same phone
number may also be used to report game poaching incidents.
“A lot of people who witness habitat damage are frustrated by it,” said
Walasavage. “Now we have a program that will encourage them to report those
incidents.” —Jim Yuskavitch
OHA completes new youth shooting range
Three years after conceiving the idea for a youth shooting range at the
Jackson County Sports Park, the project has been completed, offering hunter
education students their own facility. It accommodates 16 rifle shooting
positions, two shotgun positions and automatic clay pigeon throwers.
Previously, students’ only option was to use the public shooting range at
the sports park, which occasionally resulted in safety concerns.
“The range will be instrumental for helping kids develop their shooting
skills, because it will provide a place for them to practice safely,” said
former Rogue Valley OHA Chapter President Ron Sherva. Local volunteers
donated most of the work, allowing the $70,000 project to be completed for
only $15,000 in actual cash outlay for construction.
Funding sources for the shooting range included $5,000 from the Oregon
Hunters Association, $5,000 from late OHA Rogue Valley chapter member Jo
Josephson and $10,000 from the National Rifle Association. —Jim Yuskavitch
OHA helps ODFW reintroduce mountain goats
Rocky Mountain goats are reestablishing their native territory across
northeast Oregon with the help of wildlife biologists and volunteers from
the Oregon Hunters Association.
In July, 13 Rocky Mountain goats were transported from the Elkhorn Mountains
in Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to the Strawberry Mountains in the
Malheur National Forest as part of ODFW’s ongoing relocation efforts. These
mountain goats will supplement a small population that likely migrated from
the Elkhorns in the late 1990s and have been successfully reproducing since
2005.
ODFW wildlife biologists and veterinary staff were on the ground to capture,
transport and release the animals. Staff from the U.S. Forest Service and
volunteers from OHA assisted with the project.
Rocky Mountain goats are attracted to salt during the spring and summer, so
the goats were trapped using a drop net baited with salt. To protect and
monitor the animals’ health, biologists and veterinary staff obtained blood
samples from and administered inoculations to the animals. After biologists
placed radio collars on the goats to track movements and survival rates, the
goats were placed in individual crates, transported to the Strawberry
Mountains in vehicles, and released.
Rocky Mountain goats were likely extirpated from Oregon prior to or during
European settlement in the late 19th century. The rarest game animal
actually hunted in the state today, the present population is estimated to
be 600-700, the result of efforts like this one.
This year’s project was the 15th since efforts began in 1950, when five
goats were transported from northern Washington.
OHA helps
transplant Columbian whitetails
Just four years ago, Columbian white-tailed deer were still listed under the
Endangered Species Act and their southwest Oregon population was restricted
to an area around Roseburg in Douglas County. Today, they are no longer
endangered, and over the past several years, the Oregon Hunters Association
has contributed more than $30,000 and hundreds of volunteer hours to help
reintroduce the animals to some of their former range.
Douglas County’s Columbian white-tailed deer were declared endangered under
the ESA in 1967 primarily due to habitat loss. Much of their preferred
habitat of oak savannah, woodlands and streamside areas was lost to human
development.
“Those are also the same places where people like to live,” said Tod Lum,
ODFW district wildlife biologist who is based in Roseburg. “That’s where the
bulldozers go.”
In the intervening years, a recovery program focusing on habitat
protection helped their numbers climb from a low of 300 animals in 1940 to a
current population of about 6,500. The deer were taken off the endangered
species list in 2003.
ODFW began a three-year program in 2004 to capture and relocate the
deer to areas north and west of Roseburg that still have good deer habitat.
The Umpqua Chapter of OHA contributed about $5,000 to purchase rocket nets
and radio collars for that initial effort.
Earlier this year, the OHA State Board of Directors awarded ODFW a $23,760
grant, along with an additional $2,500 from the Umpqua OHA Chapter and
$1,750 from the Josephine County Chapter, to extend the
trap-and-translocation project for another three years.
“OHA members have also been helping to trap and relocate the deer as well as
helping to pay for a three-year project extension,” said Fred Pariani,
former president of the Umpqua Chapter who assisted in securing grant funds.
The contributions of manpower have significantly helped cut project
expenses.
“The Oregon Hunters Association has been a tremendous partner in this
effort,” said Lum, who is overseeing the project. Enough funds have been
secured so far to pay for half of the next three year’s work and Lum is in
the process of obtaining additional grants.
Columbian white-tailed deer numbers have increased enough that a limited
hunting season has been allowed since 2005, with up to 20 tags offered.
OHA donates funds for
Hart Mountain
National Antelope Refuge pronghorn study
 The
Oregon Hunters Association’s Lake County Chapter has donated $5,300 to pay for
radio collars being used in a multi-year study of pronghorn antelope fawn
mortality on the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, northeast of Lakeview.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service are conducting the study, which is now in its 12th year.
The 278,000-acre Hart
Mountain National Antelope Refuge was established in 1936, primarily to protect
pronghorn antelope habitat, and is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The study began in
1996, when antelope fawn levels on the refuge dropped to about one fawn per one
thousand does and coyote predation was the suspected culprit. Since then, fawn
numbers have climbed to as many as 50 per 100 does. But coyote populations have
increased again recently and researchers are looking at their potential impacts
on the fawns as well as other factors that might affect mortality rates, such
the pronghorns’ general health and weather and habitat conditions. A ratio of
about 30 fawns per 100 does is considered healthy.
According to ODFW
district wildlife biologist Craig Foster of Lakeview, the last fawn for this
season’s study was captured and fitted with a radio collar on May 30. Biologists
will monitor fawn survival rates.
Funds provided by the
Lake County Chapter of OHA were raised at its annual banquets.
"That’s what OHA is here for,” said chapter president Keith Reed. “We raise the
money and are always looking for good wildlife projects to spend it on.”
Pioneer Chapter OHA completes annual spring maintenance
on High Desert wildlife guzzlers
Two dozen volunteers
from the Pioneer Chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association spent last weekend
camped by Pine Mountain, abut 25 miles east of Bend, on their annual excursion
to maintain and repair wildlife guzzlers located on area Bureau of Land
Management and private ranchlands.
“We have 10 guzzlers
that we have adopted,” said David Scott, a Pioneer Chapter OHA member from
Canby. “Each year we do a family campout to survey and repair the guzzlers.” The
Pioneer Chapter has been maintaining these guzzlers on an annual basis for more
than 10 years.
A wildlife guzzler is a
structure designed to collect and store water for wildlife and is especially
critical for animals inhabiting arid regions or during periods of drought. It
consists of a flat surface or apron that collects rainwater and funnels it into
storage tanks containing a basin out of which wildlife can drink.
Over the course of the
winter, guzzlers can become damaged from the weight of snow, falling trees,
weather and other factors that require spring maintenance to ensure they are
functioning properly before hot summer weather arrives. In addition to the
annual weekend maintenance project, chapter members also make a monthly day trip
to the area from May to October to check on the guzzlers’ condition. The chapter
also transported two 360-gallon water tanks mounted on trucks that they use to
fill the guzzlers when necessary.
The OHA volunteers saw
a number of pronghorn antelope with fawns near many of the guzzlers this
weekend, demonstrating their importance to wildlife in the Pine Mountain area
where water is scarce.
“There are no springs
or ponds out there, so the guzzlers provide the only source of water for
wildlife,” said Scott.
Redmond OHA Chapter cuts junipers to restore
wildlife habitat on Crooked River National Grassland
Members of the Redmond
Chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association spent a Saturday in June selectively
cutting junipers on 25 acres of the Crooked River National Grassland off Holmes
Road between Sisters and Redmond as part of an extensive project to help the
U.S. Forest Service improve wildlife habitat.
“It’s a regular
activity,” said Redmond OHA Chapter member Jeff Studnick, who helped organize
the OHA members. “We have done work on thousands of acres for the Forest Service
on a volunteer basis.”
In 2004, the U.S.
Forest Service conducted a vegetation management analysis of its 112,571-acre
Crooked River National Grassland located in Central Oregon, which it manages.
“What we found was that
we have too much juniper on the grassland that are out-competing the shrubs and
grasses,” said Anne Roberts, Crooked River National Grassland district wildlife
biologist.
Grasses and shrubs
historically dominated the area’s vegetation mix. Junipers are native to the
region but were primarily confined to the higher hills and buttes by periodic
wildfires that swept the grassland, burning up any junipers that pioneered into
the lowlands. Beginning in the early 1900s, the U.S. Forest Service and other
government agencies began to aggressively fight wildfires on public lands
throughout the West to protect human life, property and natural resources.
Decades of fire suppression on the Crooked River National Grassland allowed
junipers to encroach into lower elevations, forming dense forests in some
places.
As they expanded their
range, the junipers have muscled in on areas that were once occupied by wild
grasses and shrubs such as bitterbrush and sagebrush, competing with them for
nutrients, water and sunlight and causing those historical vegetation types to
decline.
This has had a negative
affect because wildlife on the grassland is adapted to using grasses and shrubs
for food and cover and benefit less from junipers. For example, the Crooked
River National Grassland is within the Metolius Mule Deer Winter Range where
deer rely on bitterbrush as a food source during that time of year, but the
encroaching juniper forests are reducing the amount of bitterbrush available.
Roberts notes they are seeing increasing numbers of deer and elk on the western
portion of the grassland where the juniper thinning work was done.
The Forest Service
vegetation management analysis identified about 50,000 acres on the Crooked
River National Grassland that requires juniper thinning. To protect old-growth
junipers that predate the fire suppression period, the Forest Service is only
cutting down trees smaller than 12 inches in diameter, leaving them lying on the
ground in some places to return nutrients to the soil as they decay. The OHA
volunteers in June completed the remaining 25 acres of a 257-acre thinning
project begun earlier this year. More thinning is scheduled for later in the
year and in 2008.
“We have an ongoing
partnership with the Oregon Hunters Association,” says Roberts. “They do a ton
of work for us and help us get things done that we couldn’t do on our own.”
Capitol
Chapter Oregon Hunters Association projects protect
aspens and provide water
for wildlife in Oregon’s Blue Mountains
.jpg) For the past 10 years, volunteers from the
Capitol Chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association have make a trek each June to
the Malheur National Forest in Eastern Oregon to help the U.S. Forest Service
protect declining aspen groves. This year’s project took place over the weekend
of June 16-17. The following weekend OHA volunteers helped repair wildlife water
guzzlers on the Ochoco National Forest, a project now in its fourth year. In
additional to the Capitol Chapter OHA, members of the Bend, Redmond and Ochoco
OHA chapters also participated in the projects along with the Rocky Mountain Elk
Foundation, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and U.S. Forest Service.
Aspens have been declining on the Malheur National Forest, as well as in many
other parts of the West for years, due to a variety of factors including the
encroachment of conifers that shade out the aspens, lack of fire that aspens
need to stimulate new growth and over-browsing by deer and elk, which keeps them
stunted.
OHA volunteers have been building fences around aspen groves on the forest for
the past decade to keep big game away until the trees grow large enough to
withstand browsing.
This year, OHA volunteers fenced off 11 acres of aspens along with a stream and
several springs. In addition to keeping big game from feeding on the small
trees, the fence will also serve to keep livestock from being drawn to the water
sources. The ranchers who have permits to graze in the area supported the
project because the fence will help them better manage their livestock and
reduce the time they spend rounding up animals that stray into the aspen groves.
“Having the ranchers on board with us on the project was a step in the right
direction,” said Myrt Kuhl, Capitol Chapter OHA member and chapter project
coordinator, noting that the more partners and supporters they have for these
projects the more successful they are.
Next year, the volunteers will visit aspen groves that have been fenced in the
past to conduct maintenance and repairs. A number of groves have reached the
point that wildlife can begin utilizing them again, demonstrating that the years
of work have paid off both for the aspens and deer and elk.
“We know that some of the aspens have grown large enough to withstand browsing,”
said Ryan Falk, environmental coordinator for the Malheur National Forest’s
Prairie City Ranger District, where OHA has done most of its aspen work. “We
will be taking off the top part of the fences to make the aspen available to
wildlife.”
On the following weekend, June 23-24, OHA members helped repair and modify 12
wildlife guzzlers located on the Ochoco National Forest’s Paulina Ranger
District and place cages around mountain mahogany trees to protect them from
being over-browsed by big game.
A wildlife guzzler is a structure designed to collect and store water for
wildlife and is especially critical for animals inhabiting arid regions or
during periods of drought. It consists of a flat surface or apron that collects
rainwater and funnels it into a storage tank containing a basin, out of which
wildlife can drink.
Some of the guzzlers on the Paulina Ranger District were damaged by snowfall and
their aprons needed to be modified.
“The guzzlers are in water limited areas and benefit deer, elk, antelope,
grouse, songbirds and a variety of other wildlife species,” said Mike Feiger,
district wildlife biologist for the Ochoco National Forest Paulina Ranger
District.
Mountain mahogany were
planted near Heisler Creek after a logging operation several years ago but have
now outgrown their protective tubes and are being over-browsed by deer and elk,
which is limiting their growth. Volunteers replaced the tubes with wire fence.
The trees were planted to provide wildlife with a source of food but need to be
protected until they are tall enough to withstand browsing by wildlife.
“The trees need to be about 5 and a half feet tall so the their leaders are
above the browse line and can grow and reseed the area,” said Feiger.
OHA volunteers
complete annual fence building and
Maintenance work at White River Wildlife Area
Volunteers from the Oregon
Hunters Association’s Hoodview and Portland chapters constructed a
fence around a pond and wetland meadow to protect it from livestock on the White
River Wildlife Area June 8-10 . OHA members have been gathering at the wildlife
area for a weekend in June for the past nine years to help repair and build
fences that are used to control and manage the movements of livestock and big
game.
The 40,877-acre White
River Wildlife Area is located on the east slope of the Cascade Mountains near
Wamic. It was purchased by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in the
1950s and provides habitat for a variety of wildlife including deer, elk and
wild turkey.
More than 50 OHA
volunteers showed up for the event. “It was a big turnout,” said White River
Wildlife Area assistant manager Aimee Bell. “We had more than twice as many
people as we had expected.”
Bell put the group to
work constructing a wood pole fence around a pond and irrigated meadow located
next to the wildlife area headquarters called 70 Acre Pond, which is used by
ducks, geese and other waterfowl. The fence will prevent livestock, which are
allowed to graze on the wildlife area, from intruding on the environmentally
sensitive wetlands.
“The group usually
works on barbed wire fence, so this was a change of pace for them,” said Bell.
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A road that was washed out in the Harney County floods in
the mid-1980s that provided access to one of the best waterfowl hunting
areas within the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is slated for repair with
some help from a $20,000 grant from the Oregon Hunters Association. East
Saddle Butte Road, off State Highway 78, once provided excellent public
access to about 18,000 acres of high-quality waterfowl hunting habitat at
Malheur Lake. Hunters could drive the road along the railroad tracks to a
parking area and launch a canoe or boat into the marsh. But the road was put
out of commission during the heavy flooding of 1984 and 1985. In addition to
the OHA grant, the railroad’s owner, Genesee and Wyoming Railroad, is
allowing the group to take gravel from the adjacent railroad bed to create
the new all-weather access road. An additional grant is still being sought
to provide the rest of the funds needed to complete the project. Total cost
for the project is $60,500.
An $18,475 grant from the Oregon Hunters Association will
be used by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to help fund a
five-year project to research factors that affect the survival of bighorn
sheep in the lower Deschutes River canyon. Funding includes $11,900 from the
state organization, $2,975 from the Capitol Chapter of OHA, $2,000 from the
Portland Chapter, $1,000 from the Emerald Valley Chapter and $600 from the
Redmond Chapter. This study is a continuation of several past research
projects investigating bighorn sheep survival on Steens Mountain, Hart
Mountain National Antelope Refuge and in the Leslie Gulch area of southeast
Oregon. Beginning in early December, ODFW will capture 35 bighorn sheep in
the lower canyon and fit them with radio collars so their movements can be
tracked. As animals die over time, they will be located and the cause of
death determined. This will help researchers to identify mortality trends
and any specific causes or patterns. For example, other bighorn sheep
survival studies have found that predation by mountains lions is an
important factor and Kohl notes that the lower Deschutes River Canyon has a
growing population of the big cats. About 300 to 400 bighorn sheep are
estimated to currently roam the lower Deschutes River canyon.
The Oregon Hunters Association has awarded $33,500 to the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife to help fund a study to track the movements
and behavior of pronghorn in the Owyhee area in southeastern Oregon. The
grant includes $30,00 from the state organization, $1,000 from the Klamath
OHA Chapter, $1,000 from the Josephine County Chapter and $1,500 from the
Lake County Chapter. The funds are being used to purchase 10 Global
Positioning System units and towards the cost of capturing the antelope. The
study is slated to begin in December and will involve capturing 65 pronghorn
in the Owyhee Wildlife Management Unit and fitting them with radio collars
so the ODFW researchers can track their movements. The study will be
conducted over a two and a half year period. Pronghorn, also called
pronghorn antelope, are unique to North America and roam the grasslands and
other open areas of the western U.S., Mexico and Canada. Capable of speeds
up to 40 miles per hour, they are the fastest land animals in North America.
Oregon’s pronghorn population is estimated at 25,000 to 27,000. According to
Don Whittaker, who manages ODFW’s pronghorn program, pronghorn are among
Oregon’s most desirable big game animals. However, because they travel large
distances in remote parts of the state, not a great deal is known about
their movements and population dynamics, which make managing the herds more
difficult.
