ST. LOUIS (AP) — Post Holdings plans to spend $90 million to buy an egg producer that serves the Northwest in a deal announced a few months after the cereal maker’s egg supply took a hit from a deadly bird flu outbreak.

St. Louis-based Post said Wednesday that Willamette Egg Farms LLC will be combined with its existing Michael Foods egg business after the deal is completed. The company expects that to happen early in its first fiscal quarter of 2016.

Willamette owns two egg production facilities in Oregon and Washington.

Post Holdings Inc. said in May that roughly 20 percent of its egg supply had been impacted by a deadly bird flu outbreak that hit the Midwest.

In June, Michael Foods sued an Iowa egg farm, accusing it of breaching its contract after bird flu disrupted the egg supply.

Michael Foods primarily supplies extended shelf-life liquid and precooked egg products and eggs used in food ingredients.

Shares of Post Holdings closed at $67.33 on Tuesday and have soared more than 60 percent so far this year.

IMBLER, Ore. — The spark from a cutting machine that ignited a blaze at Barenbrug USA’s seed-cleaning facility near Imbler earlier this year did more than damage the facility. It also served as the catalyst behind the purchase of the facility by Blue Mountain Seeds.

After the March 31 fire, Barenbrug decided to stop cleaning seed at the facility, creating an opportunity for Blue Mountain to expand.

“We needed room to expand,” said Bill Merrigan, manager of Blue Mountain Seeds. “We were right at capacity, both cleaning capacity and storage, and we were out of land to build on. We viewed this as a good opportunity.

“If growers choose to increase grass seed acres in Union County, we’ll have the facilities to handle it,” he said.

The purchase includes the plant’s 4-acre lot and 5 acres connecting an existing Blue Mountain seed-cleaning facility and the former Barenbrug plant.

The purchase also includes a slightly damaged seed-cleaning line, which Blue Mountain plans to refurbish and use for cleaning fine-leaf fescue and bluegrass seed. A second line was destroyed in the fire.

Blue Mountain has already begun storing seed in the west end of the Imbler facility, which was not damaged in the fire, Merrigan said. That section alone adds about 2.5 million pounds of seed storage capacity to Blue Mountain’s current capacity of 12 million pounds, he said.

Depending on how much of the facility Blue Mountain rebuilds, it could increase its storage capacity by another 2.5 million pounds, he said.

“We may not rebuild that facility the way it was,” Merrigan said. “We may put up a new building, or we may try and change the design of that building. That is something we are discussing right now.”

After the fire, Barenbrug USA decided to reinvest in a seed cleaning facility it operates in Boardman, Ore., rather than rebuild the Imbler plant, said company CEO and President James Schneider.

The Tangent, Ore.-based company has since added square footage to its Boardman plant and installed a third seed cleaning line, which is dedicated to cleaning bluegrass seed.

“Overall, it increases our capacity because it makes it more centralized,” Schneider said. “We will actually be able to clean more product.”

Adding to the incentive to sell the facility was its age, Schneider said. “It was an old facility, and because of our strategic plans, we felt it better to reinvest in our Boardman facility.”

He added: “We are thankful that good came out of such an unfortunate event. Blue Mountain Seeds has always been a great neighbor, and we can’t think of a better outcome than for the sale to allow both our companies to continue to invest in future growth.”

Barenbrug plans to continue contracting with growers to produce seed in the Grande Ronde Valley, Schneider said.

“We’re not abandoning the Grande Ronde Valley,” he said. “We still have a field man based there and we are contracting directly with growers there. But we are now cleaning that seed in Boardman.”

Among its plans for the facility, Blue Mountain is considering redesigning the plant’s seed storage facility with modern specs, improving the company’s capacity to handle modern seed production.

“Most of our warehouses were designed in the ’60s and ’70s,” Merrigan said. “They were set up for small trucks, smaller combines and smaller fields. And back then, harvest used to last a month.

“Today it is big combines and big trucks and harvest lasts about two weeks, and these warehouses aren’t designed for that,” he said. “We have small bins and a lot of labor involved in filling those bins.”

The sale leaves Blue Mountain Seeds as the only commercial grass seed cleaner operating in the Grande Ronde Valley.

AURORA, Ore. — In considering the ideal vegetable, a farmer will often desire different attributes than a chef.

Yields and disease resistance are generally top of mind for the farmer, while the chef may focus on flavor and appearance.

The Culinary Breeding Network, managed by Oregon State University, aims to help plant breeders bridge this divide by getting farmers and chefs to communicate what they’re looking for in a vegetable.

“There’s a lot of power in bringing these people into the same room together,” said Lane Selman, an OSU agricultural researcher who helped start the network.

The network organizes events such as the upcoming vegetable variety showcase, scheduled for Sept. 28 in Portland, where the participants from various sectors of the food industry can compare notes on new cultivars.

“A lot of it is focused on flavor and culinary applications,” said Timothy Wastell, a chef who consults for the network.

The network was spawned in 2009, after breeder Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed released open-pollinated new pepper varieties to replace a popular hybrid cultivar that was discontinued.

Seed companies frequently drop hybrid vegetable varieties if they don’t generate enough sales, even if the cultivars are important to some growers, said Selman.

Open pollination allows farmers to save seed, as they’re not dependent on the two parent cultivars used to produce hybrids.

When Morton developed several new pepper varieties, chefs tended to prefer those without a sunken stem, as it eases cutting in a busy kitchen environment.

“These are things plant breeders don’t necessarily think about,” said Wastell.

The episode convinced breeders and OSU that chefs and retailers should be involved in the variety development in an organized manner.

“We started realizing, ‘Wow, this is something missing,’” Selman said. “We know what farmers want, but we don’t know what end users want.”

Breeders often focus on developing cultivars that are “true to type” — that fit the vegetables traditional characteristics — but these traits may not necessarily be important to buyers, she said.

By getting input from chefs and other end users, the breeders can incorporate information that wouldn’t otherwise be on their radar, Selman said.

Flavor and other attributes that are important to chefs don’t conflict with agronomic qualities because the Culinary Breeding Network doesn’t showcase varieties that would be unappealing to growers, she said. “I don’t bring the dogs in.”

Oregon State University is involved in other cooperative programs with seed producers.

The university is paid by several seed companies to grow out vegetable varieties at its North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

The plots serve as a “learning farm” for new growers while providing breeders with information about how the cultivars perform at that location, said Nick Andrews, small farms extension agent at OSU.

Unlike a farmer, OSU doesn’t harvest the vegetables, which allows seed companies to see how well plants hold up in the field past maturity, he said.

Seed companies can also bring their customers to the location to demonstrate new varieties, Andrews said. “It’s a public location.”

Marty Myers, the general manager of a diversified dairy and crop farm in Boardman, Ore., has been appointed to the Oregon Board of Agriculture.

The company he operates, Threemile Canyon Farms, has about 50,000 cows and also raises potatoes and organic produce on more than 90,000 acres in the Columbia River Basin.

“I’ve got a diverse background in agriculture,” said Myers, noting that he worked on farms through high school and college.

Myers said Oregon Gov. Kate Brown asked him to join the advisory board, which makes policy recommendations for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, due to his past experience with task forces on dairy air quality and biotechnology, as well as his involvement in international trade programs.

“I try to find solutions rather than take hard line positions,” he said.

The appointment is not without controversy, however.

Friends of Family Farmers, a group that advocates for environmentally responsible agriculture, criticized Brown’s choice as misguidedly bending to corporate farming.

“For us, it shows the governor wants to take agriculture in the direction of industrialization,” said Ivan Maluski, the group’s policy director.

Maluski said Threemile Canyon Farms isn’t representative of sustainable farming in Oregon because it’s a “mega-operator” that causes air pollution and generates large amounts of manure.

It’s also concerning that Myers will be able to guide ODA policies that affect his company, which could create a conflict of interest, said Maluski. “They don’t need special access.”

Myers said it was offensive to label his operation as a “factory farm,” as it’s run by two families.

“It’s a group of families that have come together and we’re farming,” he said.

The dairy has a digester that captures methane from manure and turns it into renewable energy, Myers said. “When you look at air quality, we’re very proud of what we do.”

The company employs 300 full-time employees and is regularly subject to customer audits to ensure animal welfare and other best practices, he said. “Large does not mean it’s bad. It gives the critical mass to do things the right way.”

BEND, Ore. (AP) — The power company PacifiCorp is asking Oregon to change green power rules so as to reduce contract lengths and lower the amount of renewable power it is required to accept.

The Bulletin in Bend reports that the company has asked the Oregon Public Utility Commission to lower contract terms for qualified renewable power generators from 15 years to three. It has also requested to lower the limit on renewable power projects that the utility must connect to its system from 10 megawatts to 100 kilowatts.

Critics of the request say it will stifle growth of renewable energy sources by making them difficult to finance.

PacifiCorp officials argue that the fixed-price, long-term contracts don’t work with the short-term nature of the energy market.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service is planning to cut down trees that are encroaching on meadowland at Marys Peak.

The Statesman Journal reports timber company Georgia Pacific is paying over $175,000 to harvest about 3,000 trees Tuesday in the popular recreation area east of Corvallis.

Retired Siuslaw National Forest ecologist Cindy McCain is a member of the Corvallis-based Marys Peak Alliance who says noble fir reduce meadowland by about a half meter each year. The tree growth has fractured what was a single meadow in 1948, impacting habitat and views.

Five years of studying the issue led the federal agency to collaborate with the Marys Peak Alliance to remove the trees.

Work will cause periodic closures of camps, trails and roads.

ONTARIO, Ore. — A free pesticide collection event for agricultural producers in Malheur County will be held Oct. 23.

The first-ever such event for farmers and commercial applicators in Eastern Oregon was last year.

Oregon State University Cropping Systems Extension Agent Bill Buhrig, who is helping coordinate the event, said, “It’s a pleasant surprise” that another free collection is being held so soon. “We’re trying to get the word out to everybody to take advantage of it.”

A total of 10,506 pounds of unusable pesticides were collected during the 2014 event and organizers are expecting a similar amount this year, said Kevin Masterson, toxics coordinator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The collection event is being funded by ODEQ and the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the work has been contracted out to Clean Harbors Environmental Services.

Masterson said a household hazardous waste collection is being held the day before and because Clean Harbors is the waste collector for both events, it made sense to hold another pesticide collection.

“It allows us to stretch our dollars further by pairing those two events,” he said.

The pesticide collection event will occur from noon to 4 p.m. at Ontario Sanitary Service, 540 SE Ninth Ave. in Ontario.

Growers must fill out an application and pre-register with Clean Harbors. The pre-registration requirement is only for logistics purposes so the company can schedule drop-off times and not be overwhelmed, said Graham Gadzia of Clean Harbors.

People can use only their first names if they wish, he said.

“The only reason I ask them for a name at all is so I can contact them and make an appointment,” he said.

Buhrig said the sole purpose of the event is to get rid of unwanted pesticides and the registration information is for internal use only and won’t be shared with any government agency or third party.

After an application is submitted, Clean Harbors will call the grower and schedule a drop-off time.

“You can register under a fake name as long as you remember that fake name when they call,” Buhrig said.

If growers are unsure what a product is, they can just describe the quantity and physical state of the waste as best they can on the form, he said.

Empty containers will also be accepted.

Applications must be returned to Clean Harbors by Oct. 9. For more information, contact Gadzia at (503) 953-6397 or by e-mail at gadzia.graham@cleanharbors.com, or call Buhrig at (541) 881-1417.

Registration forms can be downloaded at http://extension.oregonstate.edu/malheur

SALEM — Oregon’s minimum wage won’t rise in 2016, which is expected to save money for farms and other businesses but also invigorate advocates of a higher rate.

Due to stagnant inflation, as measured by the federal “consumer price index” for urban areas, the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries will keep the minimum wage at $9.25 per hour next year.

Both supporters and opponents of a higher wage floor believe that the flat rate will be used as an argument in favor of a substantial increase.

“It’s a mixed blessing, politically,” said Jenny Dresler, state public policy director for the Oregon Farm Bureau.

While it should be good news for low-income workers that prices aren’t rising sharply, the unchanged minimum wage will likely spur political action, said Steve Buckstein, senior policy analyst for the Cascade Policy Institute, a free market think tank.

“It probably will increase pressure in the legislature, or through a ballot initiative, to raise the minimum wage next year,” he said. “Both efforts will be bolstered politically by the fact the minimum wage is staying flat.”

Proponents say the unchanged rate is based on a nationwide measurement of inflation and doesn’t reflect unique factors, such as increased housing costs, seen in Portland and elsewhere in Oregon.

“To bring people out of poverty, we need at least $15 and in places like Portland, more than that,” said Jamie Patridge, chief petitioner for a 2016 ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage.

Patridge said he was disappointed by the flat rate but acknowledged that it will likely convince people that the current inflation-based system is inadequate and persuade them to take action at the ballot box.

“It’s probably positive for our campaign but negative for low-wage workers,” he said. “Workers should not be living in poverty. Every worker should be paid a living wage.”

The Oregon Center for Public Policy, a non-profit that supports increasing the minimum wage, said the rate would be $19 per hour if it had tracked worker productivity for the past half-century.

“We’re seeing growing support for some action,” Tyler Mac Innis, policy analyst for OCPP.

To achieve economic security in Oregon, a single adult with a child needs to earn roughly $45,000-$51,000 per year, depending on the region, according to the group. With the current minimum wage, a worker earns $19,240 per year.

“It’s certainly not good news that it’s staying flat. It highlights the fact minimum wage workers need a significant increase in the minimum wage,” said Mac Innis.

Dresler, of the Oregon Farm Bureau, counters that farmers in the state compete against others in the U.S. and internationally, so a higher minimum wage puts them at a disadvantage.

Oregon already has the second highest minimum wage in the nation behind Washington, she said.

“That keeps us less competitive than it does our neighbors” in the Midwest and South, Dresler said.

Farms in Oregon are currently highly diverse, but a major hike in the minimum wage would likely convince growers to transition to crops that are less labor intensive, she said. “That would be one of the reactions to that sort of increase.”

Other types of companies will have to raise prices, lay off workers or reduce benefits to cope with a higher minimum wage — or they’ll simply go out of business, said Buckstein of the Cascade Policy Institute.

“There are always unintended consequences,” he said. “There’s no magic pot of money that businesses have to pay more wages.”

The wolves found dead in Northeast Oregon’s Wallowa County last month were blamed for killing a calf in June, according to an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife report.

State police have asked the public’s help investigating the deaths of the Sled Springs pair, whose bodies were found within 50 yards of each other during the week of Aug. 24. Police did not disclose the killings until Sept. 16, saying they didn’t want to tip off the person or people responsible. The spot where the wolves were found is north of Enterprise.

Police and wildlife officials have not disclosed how the wolves died. The investigation began when a tracking collar worn by the pair’s female, OR-21, emitted a mortality signal. She and her mate were found dead.

Wolves in northeastern Oregon are protected under the state’s endangered species law, and killing them is a crime. State police have referred to the case as a “criminal investigation.” Wolves west of Highways 395, 78 and 95 are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The feds have delisted Oregon wolves east of those highways, but the state listing and management plan hold sway in that corner of the state.

ODFW biologists have not spotted the pair’s pups, which are thought to be about five months old. Department spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said the pups — their number is unclear — are weaned and typically would be free-ranging at this point. Wolves are secretive, and not seeing them would not be unusual.

Meanwhile, the Mount Emily pack in Umatilla County has recorded five attacks on sheep since June, four in August alone.

Under Phase 2 of Oregon’s wolf plan, which changes as the number of breeding pairs increases, a producer can ask ODFW for “lethal control” of wolves after two confirmed “depredations,” as they are called, or one confirmed attack and three attempts. All five attacks have been confirmed, but the producer has not formally asked the department to take action, Dennehy said. The attacks happened on a public land seasonal grazing allotment that expires Oct. 1, she said.

JEFFERSON, ORE. — It’s like leasing ground to the future. On about 90 acres that in the past was planted in vegetables and corn for silage, researchers are raising varieties of fast-growing poplar trees that can be used to make bio-fuels and other products.

It’s an idea that’s been promoted and federally funded for several years, but the promise of making fuel and industrial chemicals from renewable plants instead of petroleum has yet to fall in step with market reality.

If the two link up — believers say it’s inevitable — Pacific Northwest and Northern California farmers might have another crop to consider.

Jefferson, Ore., landowner and farmer Rob Miller, who leased about 90 acres to GreenWood Resources, a global timber company based in Portland, said marginal land in Oregon’s Willamette Valley might be ideal for growing hybrid poplars.

Acreage in the 45-mile stretch from Albany south to Eugene that is not irrigated and is used for grass seed production, for example, might work for poplars, he said.

The trees regrow after being cut and can produce six crops in a 20-year period. After the initial planting cost, they require little care and can be harvested and chipped with forage cutting machinery. With additional irrigation water likely to be hard to get in the future, growing trees for bio-chemicals is an attractive option, Miller said.

“It would be a really good crop if the market turned around,” he said.

There’s the rub. The U.S. push to develop alternative fuels is stalled by a drop in oil prices and reserves tapped by fracking technology. Bio-fuels require simultaneous cart-and-horse development of expensive refineries and the acreage to feed them.

But many believe bio-fuels’ time is coming. The environmental cost of fossil fuels, instability in the Middle East and the limit of U.S. supplies could raise oil prices.

“Which puts this stuff right back into the sweet spot,” said Rick Stonex, westside tree farm manager for GreenWood Resources.

GreenWood is part of the Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest consortium, which includes other industry partners and researchers from six universities. The consortium is one of six research efforts funded by the USDA since 2011, compiling a total of $146 million.

The ultimate goal of the project is to produce “drop in” fuel that is compatible with conventional cars, trucks and aircraft. Given the state of the oil industry, however, the partners are focusing on high-value bio-chemicals such as acetic acid, ethyl acetate and cellulosic ethanol, that are produced in the first stages of the bio-fuel process. Those chemicals can replace petroleum-based products used to make plastics, paints and even runway de-icer.

In additon to the Jefferson project site, researchers are growing hybrid poplars in Hayden, Idaho; Pilchuck, Wash.; and Clarksburg, Calif.

GreenWood also has a poplar plantation growing alongside Interstate 84 near Boardman, in Eastern Oregon. Those trees are intended to feed a refinery planned by ZeaChem Inc. The company plans to break ground on the plant next spring.

Sixteen students who will be freshmen at Oregon State University this fall toured the Jefferson test plot Sept. 15 with GreenWood’s Stonex and Rich Shuren, the company’s director of tree improvement operations.

One of the students asked Stonex if bio-fuels would be viable in his lifetime.

“I think you guys will see it,” Stonex replied.

PORTLAND — A high-rise to be built using cross-laminated timber panels is co-winner of a $3 million USDA prize designed to spark the use of timber products in tall construction.

Framework, a 12-story project in Portland’s upscale Pearl District, split the Tall Wood Building Prize Competition with a project in New York City. The USDA sponsored the competition in conjunction with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the awards Sept. 17.

The Portland project will have ground floor retail, five levels of office space, five levels of workforce housing and a roof top amenity space.

According to the developers, the building’s design is intended to “communicate at street level the project’s innovative use of wood and engineering technology in the development of a high rise structure, along with its relationship to the rural economy.”

The building will feature an engineered wood core and lateral system to withstand earthquakes, and cross-laminated timber floor panels up to 50 feet long.

The design team is led Thomas Robinson, of LEVER Architecture. Construction schedule details were not immediately available.

Cross-laminated timbers, or CLT, are panels made by bonding dimensional lumber in perpendicular layers. Boosters of the technology say the panels — which can be up to 8- to 10-feet wide, 10 to 20 inches thick and 64 feet long — are strong, lightweight and much faster to install than standard steel and concrete construction.

D.R. Johnson, a mill in Riddle, Ore., south of Roseburg, is the first U.S. manufacturer certified to make the panels. State and industry officials believe CLT technology could revitalize Oregon’s timber industry.

JOHN DAY, Ore. — The Canyon Creek Complex continues to burn, but many people are already asking whether the blaze would have been less severe had the forest been managed better.

Dave Traylor, a member of the Grant County Public Forest Commission, is one of many voices questioning whether enough thinning and slash cleanup was done in past years on the 1.7-million-acre Malheur National Forest.

“We’ve got to make some changes because we’re losing our forest,” he said as the blaze reached 110,000 acres. “What we’re doing is not working.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Malheur National Forest Supervisor Steve Beverlin agrees.

“We do need drastic change,” he said.

Even Aron Robertson, communications director for environmental group Oregon Wild, thinks there are ways to decrease wildfire risks with precise thinning practices.

But overall, their prescription for change is vastly different.

Traylor thinks the forest needs more active management, including a significant increase in grazing and logging.

“That means cattle in the woods eating grass down and not letting it just dry up and become fuel, and we need to do some logging. Not clear-cutting, but spacing out trees and taking out dying trees. We can provide jobs and create a healthy forest that is fire-resistant and protects the water.”

A lack of proper forest management, including thinning, salvage sales and slash cleanup, was a significant factor in the size and severity of the Canyon Creek Complex fire, says Prairie City resident Levi Voigt.

“The only control you have over a wildfire is to reduce the amount of fuel in the forest,” he says. “I believe a reduction in the amount of fuel out there would have reduced the severity of the fire.”

It was Voigt who asked Beverlin during a community fire update meeting in Prairie City Aug. 31 whether the Canyon Creek Complex fire would serve as a learning lesson in forest management.

Beverlin said it would.

There is no denying that forest fires are increasing in frequency and intensity across the American West, and it’s no different on our local forests and rangeland.

But Beverlin says that is mainly because we’ve been so good at wildland firefighting for so long. He said before European settlement arrived in Oregon pre-1860, historically 100,000 acres burned on average each year on the Malheur National Forest — roughly the acreage burned up this year by the Canyon Creek Complex. Beverlin said fire scars in the rings of virgin timber has shown how often fire came through the area.

But those fires, while spreading wide, were of low intensity. They burned up grass, downed limbs and dead trees, but large healthy trees were strong enough to survive. The fires therefore kept it a healthy ecosystem, restoring nutrients while cleaning out fuels.

In the last fifty years, Beverlin said this is the first time fire burned the average amount of acreage that burned up in the forest before human intervention.

“If you look at how active we’ve been the last couple years, I’m not sure we could go at it any harder,” said Beverlin, pointing out prescribed thinning projects on a map in his office.

Bob Vidourek, a retired U.S. Bureau of Land Management forester in John Day, lives on Little Canyon Mountain, a few miles south of John Day and just east of Canyon City.

Before he retired 7 years ago, Vidourek guided a series of projects that resulted in most of the 2,500 acres of BLM land on the mountain being cleaned up.

That included the thinning of forest stands, the cleaning up of a significant amount of slash from the forest floor and timber salvage sales. The projects occurred from 2003-2007.

One of the projects was a 10-year BLM stewardship contract that was purchased by a local company that hired a lot of sub-contractors to do the work.

Because of the work that was done, when the Canyon Creek Complex fire came roaring toward his property, which was placed under a Level 3 “leave immediately” evacuation order, Vidourek, whose home abuts the BLM land, says he was never really worried.

“I knew if it got into that stand, it wouldn’t burn too hot,” he says.

The fire did burn some of the BLM land as it roared up the south side of the mountain, but it slowed considerably after it reached the northern part of the mountain and left most of the BLM land unscathed or lightly burned.

It stopped about 1,000 feet above Vidourek’s property.

“It killed everything on the other side of the mountain. I’m confident the work we did slowed the fire down … and probably saved some of these houses,” he says, pointing in the direction of eight other homes near his.

Grant County rancher Alec Oliver says the fire barely touched a pasture his cattle lightly grazed this spring.

“I was surprised at the difference between the area where we grazed earlier this year compared with the area across the fence that hadn’t been grazed in a year,” he says.

What angers a lot of locals, Oliver says, is the lawsuits that have stopped a lot of proposed forest management work resulted in the damage caused by the Canyon Creek Complex fire.

Traylor, Voigt and Vidourek don’t lay the blame on the Forest Service. Rather, they blame environmental groups that have sued to stop proposed thinning, slash clearing or logging projects.

“It’s not the Forest Service; it’s the environmental groups that have them handcuffed,” Vidourek says.

Traylor says based on past promises that never materialized, he doubts forest management practices in the Malheur National Forest will change much, despite the severity of this fire.

“They’re going to tell us they’ll do something but the truth is they won’t do anything that amounts to anything,” he says. “They are not listening to us.”

Robertson said he too understands the danger of living too close to an unhealthy forest, just crossing your fingers until it lights. And he said that more thinning projects may make sense in urban/forest interfaces, which accounts for much of rural Grant County.

But he said there are different definitions of reasonable forest management, and groups like his disagree with others on how best to create a healthy forests.

“Some projects call them thinning projects, but they look more like clearcuts,” he said.

Robertson said the fire has refocused the organization’s efforts on making a forest “more resistant” to devastating blazes.

“Fires like these are tragic, and we have to do what we can to stop them from being so powerful,” he said.

Beverlin said the Forest Service is willing to do what it can, but can’t make everyone happy.

The Forest Service fields complaints across the board. Often, people complain about logging projects too close to roads or homes, saying it is loud work and ruins their view. Beverlin said people also complain about smoke in the air when crews try to do prescribed burns in spring and fall, when they can keep control over them and use them to clean out downed fuels. He gets complaints from some groups when they take a more active role, complaints from others when they are more hands-off.

Beverlin said he will continue to work with the public to try to find the right amount of management, the right amount of logging, the right amount of firefighting, the right amount of letting nature do its thing.

“We know what a healthy forest looks like,” he said. “We want to get it to the place where fire helps our forest, doesn’t hurt it.”

Wolf pups from Northeastern Oregon’s Sled Springs pair haven’t been seen since their parents were found dead within 50 yards of each other during the week of Aug. 24th, an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife spokeswoman said.

Oregon State Police have been investigating the killings since the wolves were found dead in Wallowa County, but didn’t make the case public until Sept. 16.

“We didn’t want to tip our hand,” spokesman Lt. Bill Fugate said.

Wolves are protected under state and federal endangered species laws, and killing them is a crime. OSP is asking anyone with information about the case to contact Senior Trooper Kreg Coggins at 541-426-3049, or call the agency’s TIP line at 1-800-452-788, or email TIP@state.or.us.

Fugate said OSP won’t disclose the cause of death at this time.

Oregon Wild, the Portland-based conservation group that pushed for conditions adopted in Oregon’s wolf management plan, said the deaths were “definitely a cause for suspicion.”

“Wolves have been killed illegally in Oregon before, and there is a very vocal minority that enthusiastically encourages it,” the group said in a prepared statement.

The investigation began when a tracking collar worn by OR-21, a female, emitted a mortality signal, ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said. The female wolf and her mate were found dead.

The pair had pups that would be about five months old and weaned at this point, Dennehy said. The pups hadn’t been seen as of Wednesday morning, but wolves are secretive and the pups should be free-ranging by now, she said. It’s unclear how many pups the pair had.

Water levels in reservoirs across Oregon are two-thirds below average as summer ends, but autumn and winter weather may not offer much help, experts say.

Mountain snowpacks that provide irrigation water and replenish reservoirs are facing another tough year as the “El Nino” atmospheric pattern bodes for warmer winter weather.

“There’s a lot of concern those reservoirs won’t fill,” said April Snell, executive director of the Oregon Water Resources Congress, which represents irrigation districts.

At this point, the deviation toward higher temperatures over winter is projected to be among the three most significant variations since the 1950s, said Tom Di Liberto, meteorologist for the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service.

“We do expect it to be one of the strongest ones,” he said.

While a strong El Nino is reliably associated with warmer weather, the impact on precipitation is less clear — the event generally indicates drier conditions in Oregon, but that’s not inevitable, he said.

“El Nino is never a guarantee of a certain set of outcomes,” Di Liberto said. “Weather can be chaotic.”

Areas of low pressure tend to usher in storms toward the southern West Coast during El Nino winters, but it’s tough to say where this “anomaly” will be strongest, so the Northwest may also be affected, he said.

With higher temperatures, though, the precipitation isn’t as likely to come in the form of snow, he said.

Aside from El Nino, another significant weather pattern to watch is the Arctic Oscillation, which determines whether storms around the North Pole will spread out and impact lower latitudes.

This trend may either enhance or conflict with the effects of El Nino, though it’s too early to tell at this point, Di Liberto said. “Those are the type of patterns we don’t have a ton of predictability with.”

Soil moisture is another consideration heading into winter, as the ground must be saturated before snowpacks become available in the form of runoff, said Scott Oviatt, Oregon snow survey supervisor for the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“We’re worried that we’re going into the water year with a deficit,” he said, noting that some regions in Oregon have experienced several years of insufficient moisture. “That has made the situation worse and it’s why we’ve been so susceptible to wildfire this year.”

Despite the “exhausted” soils, it wouldn’t be desirable for Oregon to see “high intensity” precipitation that would lead to flash flooding, he said.

That risk is particularly acute in areas that have suffered from wildfires, since ash impedes the soil’s ability to take on water, Oviatt said.

It’s preferable for the state to encounter a progression of “low intensity” storms that will replenish moisture without overwhelming the soil, he said.

Low stream flows across Oregon in 2015 caused water regulators to shut off irrigation for junior water rights holders weeks ahead of normal, said Diana Enright, spokesperson for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

Water calls also went back further in time in terms of priority date — the John Day River, for example, was regulated back to 1876, while Fifteenmile Creek in the Hood River area was regulated back to 1861, according to OWRD. In other words, irrigators with more recent priority dates had irrigation shut off.

It was also unusual that irrigators in the Northwest corner of Oregon were subject to water calls, Enright said. In Polk County, for example, Rickreall Creek was regulated back to 1940 and the Luckiamute River was regulated to 1964.

Longtime area residents said they hadn’t experienced such shortages before, Enright said. “We don’t usually regulate in those areas.”

With the possibility that more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, the management of reservoirs may need to be reconsidered, said Snell of the Oregon Water Resources Congress.

Water is traditionally released during winter to ensure adequate flood control, but if recent conditions are the “new normal,” those requirements must be balanced against the need for adequate water during summer, she said.

If there is an upside to the drought, it’s that more people are thinking about the need for water supply management and development, Snell said. “It’s an eye-opener for folks.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon workers who make the minimum wage will not be getting a raise in 2016.

Oregon’s minimum wage is re-calculated each year because of a state law passed by voters in 2002 that ties the minimum wage to inflation.

Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian says inflation as measured by the federal Consumer Price Index was not high enough to trigger an increase in pay for 2016.

Oregon’s minimum-wage workers will continue to make $9.25 per hour.

Avakian says the CPI does not capture cost increases such as skyrocketing rents in Portland. He says it’s time for the state Legislature to boost the minimum wage, perhaps to $13.50 an hour.

SALEM — Penn State University entomologist John Tooker didn’t provide Oregon growers with any silver bullet solutions to slug control during his visit to the Willamette Valley last week.

But Tooker shared strategies Pennsylvania growers have used to lower slug pressure and encouraged Oregon growers to consider implementing some of them.

“I would ask you to think about ways to incorporate some of these ideas, recognizing our annual cropping system in Pennsylvania is different than what you have here,” he said at an Oregon State University Extension meeting in Salem on Sept. 10. “By implementing these ideas, a couple of growers who have fully embraced them have made their slug populations go away.”

Slugs are by most accounts among the worst pests in Oregon grass seed production, if not the worst. They accounted for nearly $100 million in damage to the $500 million crop in recent years. The mollusk also is responsible for substantial crop loss in several other field and row crops.

Tooker, who has become a leading expert in slug control in recent years, said growers and researchers in Pennsylvania have found that use of cover crops and predator beetles, in the absence of insecticidal seed treatments, can be a successful formula for keeping slugs at bay.

To start with, he said, slugs prefer certain cover crops over cash crops — a preference growers can use to their advantage.

“If you give them a choice between a rye plant and a corn plant, they will choose the rye every time,” he said.

Complementing the direct benefit of keeping slugs off grower’s primary crop, rye and crimson clover plants serve as hosts for beneficial insects that feed on slugs.

“The rye distracts the slugs, allowing them to feed on something they like better than the cash crop, and it improves the ground beetle population,” he said. “Those two things together are taking the pressure off the cash crop, letting it get out of the ground and grow.”

Some growers in Pennsylvania have even started planting cash crops directly into a standing green cover crop, Tooker said. They follow that with a treatment of glyphosate, which kills off the cover crop, but while the cover crop is dying, it is still palatable to the slugs and still fostering beneficial insect populations, he said.

“It is more management intensive,” he said, noting that growers incorporating this technique are not using insecticidal seed treatments and, instead, have increased scouting for insect pests and are treating only when needed.

“But,” he said, “what growers who are doing this have found is they are getting the best yields that they’ve ever had.”

Tooker showed evidence that treating seed with neonicotinoid insecticides can reduce ground beetle populations and, subsequently, increase slug pressure.

“Slugs are consuming the insecticide and the beetle gets it from the slug,” he said.

He added: “On average, we see more slugs where you have the insecticide than where you don’t. That is the exact opposite of what a grower expects. That insecticide on the seed is supposed to protect the crop from early-season insect pests. But insects aren’t at play here.

“There is no reason to think an insecticide will kill a mollusk, and no reason to think a molluskicide will kill an insect,” he said.

Tooker also provided evidence that when applied at night, nitrogen applications at 20 gallons to the acre can reduce slug populations — sometimes as much as 75 percent.

“This is not easy on your plants,” he said, “but the general thinking is the benefit you gain by knocking back the slug population outweighs the cost of dinging up you corn or soybeans with nitrogen.”

He said farmers in Pennsylvania have grown frustrated with the efficacy and rainfastness of the common slug bait metaldehyde.

OREGON CITY — He was speaking to a class of beginning beekeepers, but Joe Maresh’s advice probably could apply to all the prospective farmers who attended Oregon State University’s one-day Small Farms School:

“Take your stings.”

In other words, accept the fact that you will take your lumps in agriculture. But that doesn’t deter the people who continue to flock to OSU’s popular small farms programs. At least 175 registered for the Sept. 12 farm school workshops and demonstrations held at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City southeast of Portland.

Classes offered through the day ranged from horse and sheep handling and emergency veterinary care to pasture management, small engine basics and how to grow blueberries.

Maresh, president of the Portland Metro Beekeepers Association, led about 30 students through the basics of keeping pollinators and collecting honey.

Among his tips: Get into your hives frequently to see what’s going on, join a bee club and get one or two good beekeeping books, not a bunch.

“Avoid beekeeping on the Internet,” Maresh advised. “The Internet is not your friend.

“You can ask five different beekeepers a question,” he added, “and get eight different answers.”

Outside at the college’s expansive crop plots, Aaron Guffy of East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District talked irrigation basics with two dozen beginning farmers.

In a fast-paced discussion of screens, filters, pump pressure tanks and variable frequency drives, Guffy emphasized the need to focus on getting water from one place to another.

“Before you decide the beginning” of an irrigation system, he said, “decide the end.”

The turnout for farm school was indicative of the continued intense interest, especially in urban areas, about where food comes from and how it’s produced, said Garry Stephenson, director of OSU’s Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems.

That interest can energize agriculture as legions of baby boomer farmers near retirement age.

“We have a generation of people in their twenties and thirties who are interested in going into farming as a business and as a statement of how they see the world,” Stephenson said. “One of the hopes we have is that they will eventually scale up and become medium-size farms.”

Not all the farm school students were youngsters, however.

John Hergenrather, attending from Hood River, said he’s 70 and his wife, Rhea, is 65. They own a garden store and cafe, and recently bought an adjacent 6.5 acres on which they hope to grow food and plants to supply their business.

“We ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing becoming farmers now?’” Hergenrather said with a laugh. “Lord knows.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has resumed killing double-crested cormorants so the birds eat fewer juvenile salmon migrating down the Columbia River despite an ongoing legal battle with conservation groups.

The Oregonian reports that contracted workers shot 200 cormorants last week on East Sand Island as part of a program to reduce the size of North America’s biggest cormorant nesting colony by 57 percent over four years. The killings come after a nearly two-month break that allowed adult birds to take care of their hatchlings.

Since May the agency has killed 358 birds and oiled more than 5,000 nests to keep eggs from hatching.

Five conservation groups are challenging the killing in court. A U.S. District Court judge is expected to rule on the case in spring 2016.

Six ranch families will be able to defend their livelihoods against an environmentalist lawsuit that challenges grazing in Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest.

A federal judge recently allowed the ranch companies to intervene as defendants in a case filed earlier this year by three environmental groups — Oregon Natural Desert Association, Friends of Living Oregon Waters and Western Watersheds Project.

The plaintiffs claim the U.S. Forest Service unlawfully authorized grazing in the Sprague and Sycan river basins, allowing cattle to trample streambanks and damage the habitat of threatened bull trout and other native fish.

The complaint alleges violations of the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

If the federal government’s grazing permits are invalidated, the ranchers fear the practice will be disallowed or restricted on allotments that they depend on for their income, according to court documents.

In some cases, the ranches have been operated by the same families for several generations, dating back to the 1800s, according to declarations filed by the families.

“It is, of course, in our own interest to make sure that the forage will be healthy and plentiful so we can continue to make use of our permitted animal unit months,” said Brenda Morgan, one of the intervening ranchers, in a court filing.

Darrell Jacobs of the Obenchain Cattle Co. said his ranch has voluntarily undertaken riparian conservation, such as building several ponds on private land to keep cattle away from streams.

Bar-2 Livestock, a family-owned company that runs about 1,000 cattle on private and public lands, noted that the entire 10-mile stretch of creek on its allotment has been fenced off from cattle.

The recent return of beavers in the Sycan River also points to the “upward trend and progression of rangeland health,” according to Daniel Withers, a rancher involved in the case.

Apart from the ranch companies, a firm associated with the J.R. Simplot agribusiness company also holds grazing permits in the area and was allowed to intervene as a defendant.

The parties in the case have agreed to file court documents arguing their positions in time for a court hearing next April.

Oregon’s hazelnut growers didn’t expect a repeat of last year, when a disastrous freeze in Turkey brought record prices as candy, spread and snack makers chased replacement supplies.

But this season’s initial minimum price of $1.22 a pound for field-run hazelnuts, announced by the Hazelnut Growers Bargaining Association, is the second highest on record.

The starting price packers were willing to pay last year was $1.70 a pound, thanks to the freeze that decimated the world’s leading nut producing region, and the price jacked up to $1.81 by season’s end.

Oregon produces only 5 percent of the world supply, but is nonetheless the second-leading production area and was ready when buyers came calling.

Bargaining association President Doug Olsen said the 2015 starting price is fair, considering the circumstances.

“Everybody knew the price was going to come down,” Olsen said in a news release. “Last year’s was an anomaly.”

Turkey expects a good crop this year, while currency devaluations there and in China — a major buyer of Oregon hazelnuts — make American products more expensive by comparison.

In addition, an over-supply of walnuts gives end users another nut option, according to the bargaining association’s news release.

Oregon growers are projected to produce about 39,000 tons of hazelnuts this year. Willamette Valley growers have been adding 3,000 to 5,000 acres per year for several years running. In some cases, farmers have replaced grass seed or row crops with hazelnut orchards.