Earning an Eagle by stopping cattle

When Hunter Hassell of Bend was a fifth-grader at Lava Ridge Elementary, his teacher, Ryan Shaffer, taught the class about the importance of watersheds and clean water. So when it came time for Hunter, now 13 and a seventh-grader at Sky View Middle School, to earn his Eagle Scout Badge, “I didn't want to do something that's just sort of ordinary, like putting up a flagpole,” he said Tuesday. Recalling Shaffer's lessons, he decided he wanted to earn his badge doing something water-related. Hunter called Trout Unlimited and learned about a remote natural spring near Mitchell, located northeast of Prineville. “Basically, cattle had been getting into this spring and making the water dirty with their fecal material, and they'd been punching holes in the bottom of the spring by stepping in it,” he explains. The spring is located about 50 feet from the headwaters of Jackson Creek, which feeds into Deep Creek, a tributary of the North Fork Crooked River. The holes around the spring caused the water temperature to creep upward, affecting the ability of redband trout to spawn there, “so it's also making it harder for them,” he adds. Hunter planned the project, which entailed placing a box over the spring and running a pipe to a large trough, with the help of Paul Smith and Bob Lightley of the Paulina Ranger District of the Ochoco National Forest...read more