Jon Stewart did two hilarious segments on the amazing and confounding EPA con man, John Beale. Beale perpetrated a nine year fraud on the American taxpayer by pretending to be a CIA operative and having malaria all while relaxing at home. 
This “Charlatan’s Web” strongly reminds me of a former Coos County commissioner…
Speaking of former commissioners, Rep Wayne Krieger announced at the recent town hall meeting that Cam Parry has been appointed to head the Oregon Hatchery Research Center Board for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife because of all “his experience in wetlands restoration…”
Accountability – I agree with you 100% – I have long been disgusted with the “greenwashing” of the timber companies activities, ardently oppose LNG, coal, mining – all the dirty industry that our Commissioners and their minions claim will bring jobs and safe communities (how’d that ORC thing work out for us?) – and I am on the front line every day trying to fight the “destruction of complex biological ecosystems that took hundreds and thousands of years to develop way faster than what they can possibly be repaired”, but the monied interests (timber, gas, golf, etc) and our sophomoric government representatives have stacked the deck against those of us that dream of a healthy environment and economy. The 15% of lottery proceeds shared by parks, beaches and watersheds is only a drop in the bucket and not enough to fight the corporations who take far more than what they pay for, aided by Commissioners with dollar signs in their eyes.
We’ll keep fighting the good fight, but I can imagine a future Oregon that resembles the armpits of Nebraska or Texas unless the population of Coos County decides to rein in the special interests and agendas of the few and takes responsibility for what we leave our grandchildren. Peace.
“The numbers will continue to grow as long as we keep investing in good work.”
This will not happen as long as these same timber company watershed groups turn a blind eye to all the proposed and continuing destruction that is also going on.
For example, the proposed Jordan Cove LNG export project alone is projected to negatively impact 400 waterbodies in Southern Oregon, many fish bearing. Some of these waterbodies are not fish bearing but important to other species and overall water quality.
A lot of money is being spent to count fish when a better indicator of water quality success would be to count Benthic macroinvertebrates instead. Unlike fish, these organisms are not very mobile and are therefore less able to escape the effects of pollution and sedimentation
We are allowing industry to destroy complex biological ecosystems that took hundreds and thousands of years to develop way faster than what they can possibly be repaired. We need a major shift and change in how we are doing things in order to claim overall restoration success has actually occurred.
In addition, the cumulative increase in green house gases from projects such as Jordan Cove are negatively impacting water temperatures, sea level rise and ocean acidification. What have these same groups done to address this since their mitigation / restoration measures need to be lifelong and successful permanently?
There are many groups across the state that work in water quality, salmon habitat restoration, culvert/tidegate replacement, etc, like the Coos Watershed Association and do an excellent job funded mostly by the Oregon Lottery – something the people of Oregon voted overwhelmingly to renew. There are also many, many successful restoration projects, so it would be interesting to hear what “colossal failures” you have heard of. If you are only knowledgeable about Coos County, you may have succumbed to the hyperbole about the Bandon Marsh, which is a biological success, and we will witness more fish and birds availing themselves of the preserve which will mean less mosquitos and more fish to catch and birds to hunt. Mitigation work is for folks who do not like to play the legal game and choose to fight the system set up to protect all of us and the natural resources we are charged with passing to the next generation. To educate yourself on the who/what/where of funding, projects, monitoring and successes, see: http://www.oregon.gov/OWEB/Pages/about_us.aspx
Also, see the U of O report on economics, jobs, and federal funding coming into the state: http://bit.ly/k4hPhi – the page also has links to restoration and monitoring calculators. Yes, the returning salmon have grown in numbers since the early ‘90’s, with one of the goals being the removal of coho salmon from the endangered species list, something that is being discussed now. The numbers will continue to grow as long as we keep investing in good work.
Projects are being monitored, and the results are out there is you are truly interested. This site has a watershed restoration tool that you can query for all areas of the state: http://oregonexplorer.info
All of the local soil & water conservation districts, watershed councils, environmental non-profits must report their findings and account for every dollar spent. Grant funds are tight so each penny is stretched and the work goes to local contractors and the materials are purchased locally. It’s win-win and exactly why you do not want a charlatan like Mr. Parry and his private consulting friends sticking their hands in the cookie jar. They are no more knowledgeable than our federal & state agencies, even more so when based out-of-state as in Mr. Parry’s case with the California firm, they are much more expensive which results in a waste of lottery & taxpayer monies, and they do not have the commitment to our local communities and overlook local contractors and suppliers, so in the end, private consulting firms are a bad deal for everyone.
He (and his cohorts) applied for a grant through the Coquille Tribe for Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Funds and were successful. From Oregon.gov:
“The PCSRF was established by Congress in FY 2000 to address the need to protect, restore, and conserve Pacfic salmon and steelhead and their habitat and the impacts of the Pacific Salmon Treaty Agreement between the United States and Canada. Under the PCSRF, National Marine Fisheries Service manages a program to provide funding to states and tribes of the Pacific Coast region (Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, and Alaska) to implement projects to restore and protect salmonid populations and their habitat” (2009 Report to Congress, NOAA Fisheries).
Do you, by any chance, have a name for the California company Cam works with?
I have seen some colossal failures with some of these so called wetland mitigation / restoration projects and when regulatory agencies were questioned all I got was that the project was past the 5 year mark so apparently no one does a thing then. While I wouldn’t want to paint everyone with the same brush, it does not appear the job that needs to be done is being done…
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/12/oregon_could_lose_millions_for.html
Please, how do the fellow succeed getting taxpayers money from the penny pinching tribe? Certainly you don’t mean taxpaying tribe or members.
For “Accountability Please”: Can’t speak to projects Mr. Parry may have been involved in (don’t know of any), but would encourage you to learn about the significant results achieved (with comparatively little fanfare) by groups such as the Coos Watershed Association. This non-profit community group has worked productively with small landowners, industrial timber owners and grant funds since 1994 to replace culverts and improve ditching to reduce silt in streams; reopened access to miles and miles of now naturally self maintaining, now heavily-used spawning grounds; reduced water temperatures in unshaded streams, and so on — and they use their grant money to hire local contactors to do the work. Don’t paint everyone with the same brush!
How many of these “restoration” projects are actually successful and have documented proof 5 and 10 years down the road of success?
Or how many actually exist?
Mr. Parry is an untalented hack and knows nothing about salmon, he is just a shill for a California company that wants to take jobs and money from residents of Coos County under the guise of “environmental restoration”. Other than conning the Coquille Indian Tribe out of a huge chuck of taxpayer money, he has been unsuccessful in his attempts because there are plenty of local contractors that can do the work better, faster & cheaper.ODFW needs to pull their collective heads out of their asses because no self-respecting biologist will have anything to do with him or his buddies from California.
Aside from a part-time gig as a radio dj and his destructive stint as an interim Commissioner (both jobs that were handed to him, he did not earn them), what has this man done? He’s not even that great of a bullshitter, so why are people falling for his crap? He’s a half-assed snake-oil salesman (apologies to snake-oil salesmen) with no real-world experience and yet he greasily slides his way into positions he is not equipped nor deserving of – maybe, after he has cost us another few million dollars and screwed up yet another entity with his ineptitude, people will see him for what he really is and tell him to go away!
Yet another excellent rant!
Experience? Just listen to Cam. Total up all the years of his various involvements. He should be about 175 years old by now.
True! Yet he maintains a remarkably low profile with almost no record of these astonishing accomplishments in the public domain
“EXPERIENCE” in what?????
😉
Good question