Field reports: Program helps you know your GoPro

PHOTOGRAPHY – A free clinic on using a GoPro camera to capture outdoor adventure action is being offered by REI at 7 p.m. on Thursday.

The program will focus on the popular camera’s user interface, video capture, image settings and accessories.

Preregister: rei.com/spokane.

Disabled hunters apply for timberland access

HUNTING – April 4 is the deadline to apply for the 2014 disabled hunter vehicle access permits to otherwise gated areas on Inland Empire Paper Company lands. Permits will be distributed in a lottery drawing.

Applications are available through the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council, (509) 487-8552. 

Safari Club sets fundraising banquet

GIVING – The  Inland Empire Chapter of Safari Club International will hold its 32nd annual benefit dinner and auction on March 15 at the Mirabeau Park Hotel in Spokane Valley.

The banquet includes door prizes and a variety of raffles and auctions with chances to win firearms, domestic and international hunting and fishing trips, furniture, art and more. 

Proceeds go to educational programs, scholarships for students working toward degrees in conservation, veterans and physically disabled outdoor activities, humanitarian aid, hunter-rights activities and local projects like tours through the Little Spokane River Fish Hatchery.  

Make reservations online at iesci.org.

Contact: Christel Fredericks, (509) 245-3133 or 570-2800.

Eagle sightings at Hanford set record

EAGLE WATCHING – A record number of bald eagles have been counted at Hanford this winter, possibly attracted by the record fall chinook run.

Hanford scientists spotted 60 eagles during boat trips on the Columbia River in December, said Michael Sackschewski, an environmental scientist for Mission Support Alliance.

During the 1950s just two or three eagles would be seen during the winter at Hanford, he said. That grew to about 20 a year during the ’70s and then 40 per year during the ’90s.

By 2011 and 2012 researchers were counting about 50 eagles each year.

Some of that increase came as populations across the lower 48 states rebounded from near extinction from hunting and pesticide poisoning in the mid-20th century. But this year’s record-breaking number also may be because of the larger than usual number of salmon in the Columbia River, Sackschewski said.

More upriver fall chinook returned than any time in the past 75 years, according to Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.