Last week, I headed to the Oregon Coast for my annual trek with a personal history friend I met a quarter of a century ago. (Now that certainly makes me feel old.)

Although she lives in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, Paula and I seldom see each other during the year. But every fall, we spend a week at Newport, Oregon, working on writing and editing projects. I stay upstairs, she works downstairs and we catch up over meals or during occasional outings. After all, who can resist a trip to the Tillamook Creamery while at the Oregon Coast?

The last couple of years, I’ve been baffled to see gas prices at the Oregon Coast so much lower than what I’ve been paying in Washington and the rest of Oregon.

While the national average gas price on Sunday was $3.072, I’ve been paying about $3.60 a gallon at Love’s Truck Stop at Napavine while the cost in Olympia and Seattle is much higher. Washington’s average gas price is $3.987 a gallon for regular, which is better than the $4.464 charged a year ago. In Oregon, the average price was $3.542 for a gallon of regular on Saturday, down from $4.145 a year ago. The average price of gas in Oregon is 45 cents cheaper than in Washington even though our gas tax is only 9.4 cents higher (49.4 cents per gallon — the third highest in the nation — compared with 40 cents per gallon in Oregon).

So why then when I filled up my tank in Newport did I pay only $2.87 a gallon? When I was younger, we always filled up with gas in town because the cost at the coast was astronomical. Not anymore. The gas price at Circle K even dropped two cents a gallon during the week we stayed in Newport.

I Googled for answers but didn’t find any. So then I turned to artificial intelligence and asked ChapGPT, which pointed to local taxes in places like Portland and Washington’s Climate Commitment Act of 2023, which boosted costs by requiring polluters to purchase allowances for carbon emissions. It also pointed to supply and demand.

“Newport’s proximity to fuel distribution centers and lower demand compared to larger cities like Portland can lead to reduced transportation costs and lower prices at the pump,” ChapGPT wrote.

But if that’s the case, why were gas prices always higher at the coast for decades?

Shore birds

While at the Oregon Coast, I thought of a presentation this month of the Lewis County chapter of the American Association of University Women by Allison Anholt, shorebird and colonial waterbird lead biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the daughter of AAUW member Marcy Anholt. She gave us a glimpse of the work done behind the scenes such as using radio bands to track migration of coastal birds and cordoning off nesting grounds to protect wildlife habitats.

She ran through the listings — endangered, threatened, sensitive, species of greatest conservation need (which are reassessed every 10 years) and delisting.

Anholt spoke of how interconnected life is and the way human activity and climate change can affect wildlife habitats and the survival of certain species of birds. Some do better in warmer weather while others can be threatened with extinction.

“The biggest impact to birds are human development,” she said. “Windows can kill up to a billion birds per year.”

Domestic cats also kill birds. “Keep your cats inside,” she said.

Pollution in streams, lakes and on coastlines can affect the health of invertebrates, which she described as an indicator species.

“I believe we have an obligation to protect these species,” she said. “That’s my philosophy and why I’ve chosen this career.”

The ultimate goal is to recover wildlife species, so they’re no longer listed under the Endangered Species Act, she said. They can be delisted.

One of the greatest success stories is the California condors, a large vulture species that was nearly extinct. It had dwindled to 13 birds before their fragile eggs were raised artificially and returned to the nests of adult condors, which brought back the population.

“It is still on the Endangered Species List, but that’s brought their population back to multiple hundreds of individuals,” she said.

She also noted that the “eagle population is a conservation success story.” DDT pesticides sprayed in the 1950s entered streams and affected fish, which were eaten by eagles. That affected the calcium in their eggshells, making them so fragile they broke when the eggs were laid or when the birds sat on them for nesting. Then Rachel Carson, a marine biologist with a wildlife refuge in Maine named after her, wrote a book that started the conversation movement in the 1960s and managed to get DDT banned.

Anholt spoke of efforts to protect Western snowy plover eggs and hatchlings. Washington state listed the bird as endangered in 1981 and the federal government followed suit in 1993. Recovery efforts have proven successful in boosting numbers although the work continues.

“Our recovery goals are that we are set to maintain three secure breeding areas in Washington,” she said.

Anholt also spoke of the American white pelican, one of the largest birds in North America, which faces increased threats from predators as climate change has reduced water levels in the intermountain West and exposed their island habitats. And she talked about the red knot, a shore bird that stops on oyster mud flats in Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay only between late April and late May en route from Baja California to Alaska and Russia. It’s not listed as endangered, but biologists are studying whether it should be.

What can citizens do to help protect the shore birds?

People can obey signage and posted rules to protect camouflaged birds and eggs. They can leash their dogs to protect chicks, eggs and shore birds and pay attention to signals from birds fluttering around or peeping. Pack out trash to protect habitats.

And help count birds that fly through the county on Saturday, Dec. 21, during the Lewis County Christmas Bird Count. Contact coordinator Rachel Hudson at lightningdash09@yahoo.com for more information. (The Olympia area bird count is on Dec. 15.)

Last year, 35 people participated and identified 109 different species of hawks, egrets, warblers, owls, Steller’s jays, sparrows, goldfinches and other birds.

“That’s the longest running community science program,” Anholt said. “It’s been going on nationwide for over 100 years, and it’s the single biggest indicator that we’ve lost a ton of bird species.”

My friend Kerry Serl of Napavine has participated the last two years and already signed up for next month’s count. And for 15 or 20 years, she has joined in a global bird count from Feb. 14 to 17. For information, see https://www.birdcount.org/. 

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.