Like other local governments across the state, the Union County Board of Commissioners spent a year trying to make an impact on the outcome of the wolf-no wolf deliberations being waged with ODFW and their Wolf Committee process. We passed resolutions, presented testimony multiple times and aggregated support from fellow counties. We were merely asking that Oregon’s rural residents and its agricultural community not be further harmed by actions of state and federal governments. In the end, the outcome and ODFW Commission decision was predictable and expected. The people who will be the most significantly impacted by the results were left feeling that the divide between rural and urban dwellers is only being wedged further apart by governmental agencies who, somewhere along the way, have lost the ability or will to protect its citizens from harm. Wolves have not changed their behavior since Oregon’s original founders sought to protect its citizens from their impact. It is the misconception of these predators as warm and fuzzy puppies that is driving public perception and law. ODFW did no service to the decision-making process in their public meetings and materials by only showing wolf cubs frolicking in the snow, Kodak moments of wolves against the skyline and nary a snarling wolf face or ravaged deer, cow or family dog to be seen. Throughout the deliberations, much was made regarding weight given to the concern by people who would actually gain the wolves as neighbors and adversaries versus the needs of people who just want to know that wolves are once again roaming the rural areas of the state. During the last day’s testimony in Troutdale, children from a Portland public school were paraded in to perform skits, sing songs and to tout the message that wolves are magnificent and the rural farmers and ranchers that seek to protect themselves and their families are killers. There goes a new generation of Oregon children being taught a lopsided view of life in the whole of the state. Those children feel that the parents of their rural counterparts are wrong to want the same safety from predators for their children that urban parents expect for their own families. If rural Oregonians are afforded so little respect by state agencies regarding their safety, how will we ever truly make Oregon one whole state with genuine concern for our near and far neighbors?
Commissioner Colleen MacLeod, Chairman
Union County Board of Commissioners
1106 K Avenue
La Grande, Oregon 97850
541-963-1001
