WHAT'S NEXT IN THE WOLF SERIES?

Today: A growing wolf population in Oregon leads to concern about attacks on livestock. 

Wednesday: Baker County rancher recalls attack on sheep in 2009.

Friday: The focus of Oregon’s wolf debate is Wallowa County and state officials plan for the future of wolves in the state. 

La Grande police say a high school age boy found hanging Saturday from an apparatus at the Central School playground was rescued by a quick-thinking passer-by.

Lt. Derick Reddington said the boy apparently hanged himself from the apparatus sometime before 2 p.m. Saturday. The passer-by discovered him about 2 p.m., lowered him to the ground, started CPR and called 911. Reddington said police believe the boy had been suspended from the apparatus about 20 minutes.

Reddington said the youth was taken to Grande Ronde Hospital, then flown to Oregon Health Sciences University, where he remains as a patient. 

Guardsmen from Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion train at Camp Shelby, Miss., in this 2010 photo. Top leaders of the region’s largest Guard unit say the outfit is trained and ready to meet both national and local emergencies. PAT CALDWELL photo

By Pat Caldwell, Observer correspondent

The versatility of the region’s Army National Guard unit will ensure it remains relevant in the future even as deployments to foreign shores dwindle and the nation transitions from war to peace, according to top leaders of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Regiment. 

The battalion — consisting of Guard units from Hood River to Ontario, with its headquarters in La Grande — is uniquely suited to meet national defense requirements and, at the same time, furnish expertise for local communities in the event of a natural disaster or homegrown emergencies. 

Laura Daugereau returns this year to race the 200-mile Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog course starting Jan. 24.

By Katy Nesbitt / The Observer

The conditions are perfect for the ninth running of the Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog Races starting Jan. 24 at Ferguson Ridge Ski Area. Daytime highs in the 30s and overnights in the teens should make for a fast course coupled with the best snow pack in years.

Several racers are returning for this year’s race which should make it exciting and the competition fierce. Some returning racers are Iditarod and Eagle Cap Extreme veterans like 200-mile racers Karen Ramstead of Alberta, Laura Daugereau of Kingston, Wash., the first woman from her state to finish the Iditarod, and Steve Riggs of Olney, Mont. 

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The legal problems are piling up for the Canadian tour company whose bus crashed on an icy highway in Eastern Oregon last month, killing nine passengers and injuring almost 40.

By Bill Rautenstrauch

Communicable disease nurse Holly Goebel administers an influenza vaccination to Shaun Cederholm of La Grande as he takes advantage of one of the health services offered by the Center for Human Development in La Grande Tuesday. Influenza can occur at any time but most cases occur from October through May with most infections in recent seasons occurring in January and February. CHRIS BAXTER/The Observer

Despite outbreak in other parts of nation, only a few flu cases confirmed in the area 

Influenza is rampant in some parts of the country this year, but Oregon — including Union and Baker counties — has a lid on it so far.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently reported elevated flu outbreaks in 47 states, and said that in some states people may have to go to a couple of different sources before they find vaccine. Across the country, the CDC reported 20 pediatric deaths. 

BAKER CITY (AP) — The Oregon Department of Transportation is installing a new reader board and snow zone signs on Interstate 84 in the Blue Mountains, the same general stretch of freeway where a bus plunged down a ravine last month, killing nine passengers.

The Oregonian reports the variable message board west of  Baker City will alert eastbound travelers of upcoming road conditions and winter chain requirements.

The signs are scheduled to be installed next summer. They were planned before the bus crash.

I-84 is Oregon’s main east-west traffic artery. The 160-mile section between Pendleton and Ontario is known as “blizzard alley” for snow, black ice, high winds, freezing fog and chain-reaction crashes. There are seven reader boards in the stretch advising westbound traffic.

By Bill Rautenstrauch

The Observer

With shock waves from the Newtown, Conn., school shooting still reverberating, law enforcement officials, headed by the Union County Sheriff’s Office, met with local school administrators Thursday to share ideas about such incidents, and to offer help with training and revamping of policies.

Capt. Craig Ward of the Union County Sheriff’s Office said he was pleased that all schools in the county sent representatives to the meeting, which was held at the Misener Conference Room. He said Newtown has sparked a new urgency among law enforcement and school administration to be better prepared in the event an active shooter walks into a local school.

“We’re all in a scramble to get our arms around this thing,” Ward said. 

A LA GRANDE OBSERVER SPECIAL SERIES

What’s next in the series?

Today: The road to reintroducing the wolf has been a long and often bumpy one.

Wednesday: How a meeting in 1843 that was prompted by wolf depredation on livestock helped lead to the formation of Oregon as a state 16 years later.

Friday: The return of wolves to Oregon, starting with a lone female in 1999, spurred the creation of Oregon’s wolf management plan.

By Katy Nesbitt

The Observer

The years following World War II spawned industrialization, increased access to education, advances in technology and the free time to consider societal issues such as peace, civil rights and environmentalism.

America’s farming became mechanized and more people were living in suburbia when issues of clean water, air, protecting the environment and wildlife species went from being a fringe movement to the forefront of concern with the passage of new protection laws.

The Endangered Species Act was one of the laws that came out of the early 1970s concern for the environment and an awareness that certain species were in peril while others had almost disappeared.

Wolves in the West, for instance.

In 1987 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed a study to determine how, when and where to bring wolves back to the West’s wildest places.

Brad Trisler dutifully clears snow this morning on Adams Avenue. Most local cities carry a basic maintenance and care ordinance on the books for sidewalks situated in front of businesses. CHRIS BAXTER/The Observer

At first glance a city ordinance regulating business sidewalks may seem like an obscure, vaguely interesting town news note.

That is, until it snows.

And snows a lot.