PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

When I served as deputy director of the Oregon Economic Development Department back in the late 1980s, we were under substantial pressure to help to produce an “Oregon comeback.”

The phrase referred to the fact that Oregon had endured an economic recession, a fact that prompted the Democrat candidate for governor to run on the phrase – “an Oregon comeback.”

But during that time, which all the political back and forth, my colleagues and I worked hard to produce results for Oregon.

One of them was the subject of a Washington Post article the other day under this underline, “CSI Ashland? Oregon forensic investigators crack animal crime cases.”

Incredible to remember that I was on point for this investment in Oregon by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to create what was then called “a raptor investigation facility.”

At the time, I wasn’t even sure of the definition of the term “raptor,” but I soon learned as I worked with local officials in Ashland to cite the new facility in this picturesque southern Oregon town – another virtue because economic results were scheduled to occur outside metropolitan Portland.

I report this, not to take credit for the result, but rather to share credit for it because anything good that occurs with the Oregon economy is due to the actions of a group, not an individual.

Here are excerpts from the article:

“ASHLAND — The young golden eagle on the operating table showed no outward signs of trauma. An X-ray had revealed no fractures.

“But this bird, a protected species, was dead — and that’s why it was here, beak-up in a laboratory. It had been shipped to this picturesque college town by federal agents somewhere in the West who suspected it had been electrocuted by power lines. Now its carcass was evidence in an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against a utility company.

“A veterinary pathologist was about to cut open the bird in the hope of determining its cause of death. This unusual federal facility, the world’s only full-service forensics lab for wildlife crimes, analyzes thousands of creatures that each year cross its threshold in the form of carcasses, parts and products. Its mission is to use science to find how the animal died – and often, to figure out what kind of animal it was.”

“’In police work, you know what your victim is — it’s Homo sapiens,’ said Ken Goddard, a former crime scene investigator who now directs this place, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory. ‘Our first job is to figure out what a victim is.’”

Reading Goddard’s name also struck a chord with me because, back then, he was involved in helping to locate the new facility in Ashland. Part of the reason, frankly, was Ken told me he wanted “to live there.”

Crime against wildlife is a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that experts say is only increasing as poaching and trafficking networks grow more sophisticated and move into dark corners of the Internet. When authorities interrupt that enterprise, the lab in Ashland is often a critical stop in their investigations. Its scientists run DNA tests, examine bullets, identify poisons and compare remains to some 35,000 specimens in the lab’s reference collection – “a ghoulish panoply of pelts, bones, feathers and claws,” as the Post called it.

The one-story, 40,000-square-foot lab is a federal building, but it feels almost quaint, compared with the fortresses in Washington. Visitors don’t pass through metal detectors, though evidence is sometimes X-rayed upon arrival. A new parking lot barrier gate was installed this summer to deter truck bombers, not because of a specific threat, but because it’s protocol at government facilities.

Beyond the desires of the federal official, Goddard, the facility ended up in Ashland, a town flanked by two mountain ranges just north of the California border, in part because a local chiropractor pushed Oregon senators to support the project, even as Oregon Economic Development Department officials cooperated with the federal government and local officials to orchestrate the siting.

So, the siting still ranks as an achievement for Oregon, but, before the process, if you have asked me if I was going to be involved in locating a raptor investigation facility in Oregon, I would have said, “no.” Now, reflecting on the past, I can say, “yes.”