Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Portland Police target shooting in Columbia River Gorge raises Forest Service concerns over safety, resources

Note to Portland police: If you're going to go target shooting on someone else's property, you might want to give them a heads-up. Especially if that property happens to be part of a federally designated scenic area that includes peregrine falcon habitat, centuries-old petroglyphs carved in the rock and a public hiking trail wending above the shooting zone. Police didn't notify the U.S. Forest Service about the training they organized for 35 tactical team officers from Portland and elsewhere around the metro area, said Stan Hinatsu, a Forest Service manager. The federal agency oversees the site -- Cape Horn -- where the targets were set up. Cape Horn, located in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, is across from Bridal Veil along the Washington side of the river. The Forest Service found out only after a Portland man who was kayaking along the Columbia came upon officers staging approaches from their boats and firing live ammunition at steel targets set up on the shoreline in front of Cape Horn's distinct basalt cliffs. It sounded, he said, "like a war." He then notified conservation groups. Hinatsu, recreation program manager for the Forest Service in the scenic area, said he was concerned that the shooting could compromise Cape Horn as well as threaten public safety. The scenic area is subject to a management plan that seeks to protect such resources as the cliff's petroglyphs, which appear when water levels are low. But the Forest Service won't seek to ticket the police for the Aug. 29 training. "We feel a conversation will resolve the issue," said Hinatsu. "I think it's an awareness thing. They probably didn't even realize there was a trail there nor the other significant concerns with regard to cultural and natural resources."...more

If instead of a police dept. this had been a private gun club doing some target shooting, do you think the Forest Service would have chosen to not ticket them and handle the whole thing with a "conversation"?

No comments: