Local News

An artist's digital rendering of fish entering the control tower. Bill Bakke isn't exactly a celebrity. But if you fish in Oregon, particularly if you fly fish - which it seems everyone does these days- you owe him a debt of gratitude.
A lifelong conservationist, Bakke is the man responsible for removing hatchery fish from the Metolius River in the mid 1990s and imposing a slot limit on rainbow trout on the Lower Deschutes, a move that has resulted in bigger fish in the river year round.
I called Bakke this past week to get his take on the somewhat spectacular setback at the multi-million dollar fish collection facility at Pelton Dam. The fish tower, as it is sometimes called, is the linchpin of a plan to reintroduce salmon and steelhead to the Upper Deschutes Basin, which includes parts of Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties. Just a few weeks earlier, crews working on the fish passage system watched as a critical piece of the mechanism, a 40-foot wide, 140-foot long tube that cycles water from the fish collection facility into the dam's turbine system, split into pieces during its installation. A portion of the nearly 290-ton conduit floated to the surface, while several other pieces dropped to the bottom of the lake.
The mishap is expected to delay the completion of the tower, which project managers had hoped to bring on line this week, by a minimum of four months at a time when thousands of juvenile fish are beginning their ocean migration.

Call it a Hail Mary pass, but a last-minute legislative maneuver has rekindled the possibility of a deal to preserve Skyline Forest in exchange for some limited development on the 33,000-acre tree farm just west of Bend.

Under the proposed legislation, which is expected to be introduced this week by Rep. Brian Clem (D-Salem), Fidelity National Timber Resources would be able to build up to 137 housing units on 200 acres southwest of Sisters. Another 2,300 adjacent acres would be placed in a conservation easement buffer. Most importantly, Fidelity, in exchange, would be required to sell the vast majority of the forest to the Deschutes Basin Land Trust, which has already set aside more than $1 million for a purchase.
The proposal represents a marked decrease in the overall development footprint on Skyline, where developer Fidelity had initially pitched 1,000 homes on 3,000 acres in exchange for a direct transfer of the remaining forest land- roughly 30,000 acres-to the Land Trust. But that deal, while well received by the Land Trust, never got any traction with the public after Fidelity entered into negotiations with the state of Oregon on a complicated development-land exchange deal (The company owns some 270,000 acres of land in Oregon that it acquired from Crown Pacific out of bankruptcy).The deal also drew fire from some environmentalists who didn't like the idea of 1,000 homes in the forest outside of Sisters, a town which itself only relatively recently surpassed 1,000 residents.

Up past Smith Rock State Park, on a road lined with farmland and flanked by pine-covered hills on each side, there's a small brown sign that you'd miss if you weren't keeping a keen eye out. But it's a sign that seasoned climbers from Central Oregon and beyond know well. It marks the entrance to the Skull Hollow Campground, a small collection of picnic-table-and-fire-pit camp sites nestled amongst brush and scattered trees.

The campground is rather primitive, as far as campgrounds go. Other than the tables and fire pits, the only other amenities are a dirt road that loops through the grounds and a pair of toilets that are basically just pits in the ground and on a recent afternoon were absent of toilet paper. For years, Skull Hollow has been a refuge for weary climbers who spend the days tackling Smith Rock and retreat the roughly eight miles to Skull Hollow to sack down for the night come sundown. And they've always done so for free - Skull Hollow hasn't required a fee, only a 14-day limit on stays. But a public lands advisory committee has recommended that the campground include a $5 nightly per-site fee, and anti-public-land-fee groups, as well as climbers have taken issue with the fact that come May 15, Skull Hollow (which is currently not planned to receive improvements or additional facilities) will no longer be a free campground.