Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to reconsider the dismissal of the criminal case against a Nevada rancher who led a 2014 armed standoff with government agents.

States’ rights activist Cliven Bundy and his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy have a right to their beliefs but don’t have a right to obstruct federal law enforcement officers, wrote Dayle Elieson, the interim U.S. Attorney in Nevada, in a court filing Wednesday.

Elieson said the Bundys sought all along to “deflect responsibility” and blame the federal government even though they risked the lives of more than 20 officers who were “simply doing what they were told to do.”

The Bundys and their supporters “demonized the uniformed men and women in the wash, conflated their jobs with their identities, and claimed that their work was immoral,” Elieson wrote.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro last month dismissed the criminal case against Bundy, his two sons and a Montana militia leader. The judge cited what she called flagrant misconduct by federal prosecutors who failed to fully share evidence with defendants.

Elieson doesn’t say in the filing if her office will appeal to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Trisha Young, a spokeswoman for the office, declined to answer the question.

Bundy’s attorney, Bret Whipple, didn’t return request for comment to The Associated Press but told the Las Vegas Review Journal that prosecutors may be trying to buy more time to decide on an appeal. Whipple told the Review Journal the filing contains no new information and is without merit.

After the case was dismissed and Cliven Bundy was let out of jail, the rancher who has become an icon in conservative and anti-government circles said that it’s up to the states, not the federal officials, how to manage vast expanses of rangeland in the U.S. West

“I don’t recognize the federal government to have authority, jurisdiction, no matter who the president is,” Bundy said last month.

Elieson argues in the new filing that Judge Navarro should have dismissed individual counts rather than the entire case.

She contends that the dismissal sets a dangerous precedent for law enforcement by encouraging the public to disrespect the law.

“This case has major ramifications for all public lands law enforcement officers,” Elieson said. “These officers often work alone in remote rural areas of the country with no available back-up if confronted with danger.”

ONTARIO, Ore. — Garry Bybee and Isao “Kame” Kameshige are the newest members of the Idaho-Oregon onion industry hall of fame.

Kameshige, 92, has grown onions in the region for 68 years, while Bybee, 79, has farmed onions in this area for 45 years.

They were inducted into the hall of fame Feb. 6 during the 58th annual meeting of the Idaho and Malheur County, Ore., onion growers’ associations.

Both men have served on numerous onion industry committees and boards.

“Garry and Kame are a couple of highly deserving people for this award,” said Clint Shock, director of Oregon State University’s agricultural research station near Ontario.

The southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon onion industries are closely linked. They established a joint hall of fame in 1986.

Bybee has turned over operation of his farm in the past few years to his son, Marc, and his wife, Tamara.

“To be honored by the onion industry after 45 years is indeed an honor,” said Bybee. “It’s been a hell of a ride.”

He credited others for any success he has had during his farming career.

“I’ve seen the highs, I’ve seen the lows, I’ve seen the middle, I’ve survived and it’s because a lot of friends, a lot of business partners and a lot of growers have helped me survive through all these years,” he said.

Bybee said it’s hard for him to digest the amount of change that has taken place in the onion industry over the past five decades.

“When we first started, everything was manual,” he said. “Everything was done by hand. Now, virtually the only thing that is still done by hand is sorting. Technology is changing every day and I can’t imagine what’s going to happen in the next 45 years.”

Kameshige’s two sons, Randy and Brian, run the family farm while Kame helps taxi workers around the farm.

Randy Kameshige told Capital Press his father is “pretty low key about accolades. He just liked to do his part and help out where he could. He’s always inquisitive, always trying to learn and not afraid to try something different and always open to learning something from somebody else, too.”

The family farm has faced a lot of tough times over the decades but the key to Kame’s success has been hard work and not incurring a lot of debt, Randy Kameshige said.

“His philosophy was, stay away from debt,” he said. “He didn’t over-extend himself and when times were tough, we didn’t have a lot of debt.”

Kame started growing onions in the Ontario area in 1949 on 37 acres. His farm has grown to 700 acres today.

Warm weather and meager mountain snow could spell a difficult water year ahead for Oregon farms.

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service released its monthly water supply outlook report for February, and overall conditions are not looking good in most basins across the state.

Of 137 monitoring stations, every single one recorded below-average snowpack as of Feb. 1. Most were less than 50 percent of normal, according to the NRCS.

Julie Koeberle, snow survey hydrologist, said the chances for a full snowpack recovery are low, but stressed there is still time for conditions to improve. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for cooler and wetter weather over the next three months, offering a glimmer of hope.

However, if Oregon expects to fully catch up on snowpack by April 1, the next two months would have to deliver 125-225 percent of normal precipitation, with all of that falling as snow.

“Water managers will need to carefully evaluate water supplies this summer if snow and spring rains fail to bring relief,” Koeberle said.

Northeast Oregon continues to boast the highest snowpack in the state, at 64 percent of normal in the Grande Ronde, Powder, Burnt and Imnaha basins, and 55 percent of normal in the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Willow basins.

Those averages drop as low as 38 percent in the Willamette Basin, 35 percent in the Owyhee Basin and 33 percent in the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon, where streamflow forecasts between April and September are all project to be less than 60 percent of normal.

John Wolf, manager of the Klamath Irrigation District, said his board met for more than four hours Thursday to discuss drought planning.

“It’s pretty bleak down here right now,” Wolf said. “We’re all praying for a February or March miracle.”

Already, Wolf said the district is planning to move back water availability by about two weeks, from April 15 to April 23 or 24. He added it is still not clear whether the state will allow drought permits for wells this season.

“Nothing is really cast in stone yet,” he said.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, operated by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has painted most of eastern, central and southern Oregon in either “abnormally dry” or moderate drought conditions.

Despite low predicted streamflows, reservoirs continue to store average or above-average amounts of water, providing a much-needed buffer for farmers heading into summer. The lowest reservoir levels for any basin as a whole is 98 percent of average in the Rogue and Umpqua basins of southwest Oregon. The highest are in the Owyhee and Malheur basins in southeast Oregon, at 139 percent of average.

Oregon farmers and agricultural groups are divided about the cost versus benefit of a proposed carbon “cap-and-invest” bill that is expected to dominate the 35-day legislative session.

Supporters argue that climate change is already causing more extreme weather patterns, putting crops and farmers at risk.

Opponents, on the other hand, say a carbon cap will raise fuel prices and cost Oregon jobs, while making little to no difference on global greenhouse gas emissions or climate change.

The Legislature held a hearing this week, and the House Committee on Energy and Environment may hold another work session Monday, Feb. 12, to discuss the contentious policy.

The issue may be moot for now, though, since lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have suggested the short session is not enough time to pass such a complex bill.

Still, farmers and ranchers are key players in the debate that could have long-lasting consequences moving forward.

Rising costs

Under cap-and-invest, the state would place a limit on carbon emissions and then charge those companies for “allowances” to exceed the limit, which can be sold or traded on the open market.

The cap would gradually be reduced lowered over time, and the money raised by the program would be placed in funding pools for climate-friendly state initiatives, such as renewable energy development.

Oregon’s proposal would take effect in 2021 and require companies that emit more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon annually to purchase allowances. But agriculture groups such as the Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Cattlemen’s Association and Northwest Food Processors Association are concerned the bill would raise food and electricity prices at a time when growers are already facing razor-thin margins.

Jenny Dresler, director of state public policy for the Farm Bureau, said cap-and-invest would cost a mid-size producer in the Willamette Valley an extra $3,000 to $5,000 per year, and $11,000 to $16,000 for custom farming businesses.

The burden, Dresler said, could be staggering for families struggling to make ends meet.

“They are going to see a pretty significant hike in their fuel costs alone,” Dresler said in an interview with the Capital Press.

In written testimony submitted to the Legislature, Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said the bill would drive up costs for cattle producers. Incentive programs offered under the bill would also “require ranchers to devote precious time and resources to a cumbersome application process,” he added.

As for energy-intense food processors, the worry is that cap-and-invest would push companies across state lines.

Craig Smith, director of government affairs for the Northwest Food Processors Association, said most companies already have manufacturing plants in nearby Washington and Idaho, and may leave Oregon altogether if the cost of doing business becomes too high.

“When you start to tinker with the economy this way, it just has some unintended consequences,” Smith said. “Those are real jobs.”

Even if Oregon managed to eliminate all emissions, Smith doubted it would make a dent on the world’s carbon output.

“If you look at Oregon’s carbon footprint, it’s almost non-existent,” he said.

Changing climate

According to reports, global carbon dioxide emissions were expected to reach 41 billion metric tons in 2017. Oregon emits roughly 63 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s .001 percent of the world’s output.

Brad Reed, spokesman for the Renew Oregon coalition pushing for cap-and-invest, acknowledged that Oregon’s carbon footprint is comparatively small, but took issue with the argument.

“Just because Oregon can’t grow enough potatoes to feed the entire world, do we not grow potatoes here?” Reed said. “We do our part.”

Plus, Reed said Oregon would not be going it alone — the state would join carbon pricing markets in California and Quebec and Ontario, Canada, which combined make up the fourth-largest economy in the world.

“That has a lot of weight,” he said. “Looking at it purely economically, it is really to Oregon’s advantage to get moving on this.”

But farmers who support cap-and-invest say it is about more than dollars and cents.

The Oregon Climate and Agriculture Network, or OrCAN, is a volunteer-run organization that formed in late 2017 to advocate farming practices that sequester more carbon in soil, such as reduced tillage or cover cropping.

Working with Renew Oregon, OrCAN rallied support from 138 small farms, ranches and vineyards which signed on to a letter urging Gov. Kate Brown and lawmakers to pass cap-and-invest.

“Our rural communities are observing dramatic changes in the climate, which we must address or lose our livelihoods,” the letter reads. “When climate change exposes our crops to extreme and unpredictable temperatures, our yields and economic security are threatened.”

Potential benefits

Megan Kemple, a nonprofit director in Eugene, serves as director of OrCAN. She said extreme weather is leading to more unpredictable growing seasons and farm damage of its own.

For example, Kemple said major snowstorms battered the Eugene area four years ago, causing several $30,000 greenhouses to collapse. A similar event last winter caused nearly $100 million in damage to onion storage and packing facilities in Eastern Oregon.

“That kind of extreme weather is becoming more and more common,” Kemple said. “It’s a huge challenge for farms.”

A portion of revenue collected by cap-and-invest would go into a climate investment fund, which Kemple said would provide grants to help farmers increase carbon sequestration. Those projects would then generate offset credits, which could be sold back on the market.

“Agriculture can actually be part of the solution when farms implement climate-friendly practices,” Kemple said. “This bill provides funding for them to do that.”

Les Perkins, manager of the Farmers Irrigation District in Hood River, did not speak for or against the bill, but told the Capital Press that funding to invest in small-scale renewable energy projects may have the potential to benefit districts like his.

The FID, which includes 5,888 acres, includes two small hydroelectric projects that have generated $50 million for the district over 30 years. That money has paid for infrastructure to conserve water, such as piping in place of open irrigation ditches.

Water conservation is key, Perkins said, at a time when more winter precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow. Without snowpack on Mount Hood to replenish streams and reservoirs, he said the timing and availability of water during irrigation season is affected.

“You can see those shifts,” Perkins said. “It’s a scary thing to be looking at less snowpack available.”

Sharon Blick, who owns Living Earth Farm on 15 acres west of Eugene, said timing is everything for farmers.

Blick said she is already seeing weather cause bizarre issues on her farm — one year the rhubarb started making stalks in November, when it is usually dormant. Another year her apple tree was blooming as late as Labor Day, when they generally bloom in spring.

“If you can’t predict what the weather is going to do, it’s really hard to get your timing right,” Blick said.

Climate change is already getting worse, Blick said. She supports cap-and-invest to help agriculture in the long run.

“I’m worried about our food supply, really,” she said. “I see things getting worse and worse the longer we wait to do anything about climate change.”

SALEM — A proposal tying the amount of money available to ranchers for livestock losses to Oregon’s wolf population to Oregon’s wolf population has cleared its first hurdle.

Under House Bill 4106, Oregon lawmakers would be required to appropriate money to the state’s wolf compensation fund based on the population of the species, to the extent practicable.

The bill will be scheduled for a work session during the next meeting of the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 13, allowing the proposal to survive an initial legislative deadline, said Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, the committee’s chair.

Several ranchers testified that it only makes sense to increase compensation funding as the number of wolves in Oregon continues rising. State wildlife regulators currently peg the wolf population at more than 100, though some ranchers consider this a low estimate.

In Wallowa County, which is home to eight confirmed wolf packs, it costs up to $30,000 a year to have a range rider patrol for the predators, said Rod Childers, a rancher in the area.

“One range rider is not cutting it,” he said. “There’s no way he can respond to all those different packs.”

The Oregon League of Conservation Voters opposes HB 4106 because it would confirm the “falsehood” that rising wolf populations will necessarily result in more livestock kills, said Paige Spence, the group’s Oregon conservation network director.

“Predation rates have not increased with Oregon’s increased wolf population,” she said.

Sean Stevens, executive director of the Oregon Wild environmental group, said problems with fraud and abuse of the wolf compensation fund should be resolved before the program is expanded.

Counties have recommended the disbursal of compensation funds without sufficient input from local committees, sometimes in areas with no wolves or confirmed depradations, he said.

Childers, the Wallow County rancher, said that wolf compensation funds are well-vetted.

“We do the best we can on the ground,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s widespread fraud in any of our programs.”

In some cases, wolf compensation funds are used to prepare for the arrival of wolves in regions they’ve yet to be documented, said Todd Nash, a rancher and chair of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association’s wolf committee.

For example, the money pays for the disposal of livestock and wildlife carcasses, which would otherwise attract predators, as well as the installation of fladry, which is rope adorned with ribbons to deter predators.

“If they’re being proactive, that’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” Nash said.

SALEM — A proposal to reclassify 1,700 acres in Oregon’s Washington County from a rural reserve to an urban reserve was killed shortly out of the gate.

Under House Bill 4075, the land could have been included in the Portland metropolitan area’s “urban growth boundary” instead of being shielded from development for 50 years.

After the bill’s first public hearing on Feb. 8 before the House Agriculture Committee, proponents and critics of HB 4075 learned it would go no further.

The committee’s chair, Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, said the bill was too “problematic” for a thorough vetting during 2018’s short legislative session.

“This bill will not be moving forward this session in this committee,” Clem said.

Many of the arguments for and against HB 4075 were familiar in Oregon’s ongoing land use debate.

Supporters claimed more development in burgeoning Washington County would fuel Oregon’s economic “engine” of high tech development, which shouldn’t be sacrificed for the “sacred cow” of preserving farmland.

Detractors argued that urbanization should become more condensed before spreading out, saving not only farmland but the agricultural infrastructure — such as machinery and input suppliers — needed to sustain the industry.

However, the discussion over urban and rural reserves also has another dimension due to the a “grand bargain” struck by lawmakers four years ago.

The concept of reserves became part of Oregon’s law use law in 2007, when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1011 aiming to improve the metropolitan region’s long term growth planning.

In 2012, the state’s Land Conservation and Development Commission approved the rural and urban reserve designation developed by Portland’s Metro regional government and the counties of Washington, Clackamas and Multnomah.

Two years later, though, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that LCDC had made several errors in its approval, which threatened to greatly prolong the reserve designation process.

That court decision prompted Oregon lawmakers in 2014 to pass a compromise bill establishing urban and rural reserves, effectively bypassing the bureaucratic process for such designations.

Opponents of the HB 4075 claim that “a deal is a deal,” but if lawmakers go down the road of altering the 1,700 acres in Washington County, it will be difficult to reject future adjustment requests.

“This break of a settlement jeopardizes the reserves,” said Mary Kyle McCurdy, deputy director of the 1,000 Friends of Oregon conservation group.

Steve Callaway, mayor of Hillsboro, acknowledged his city signed onto the “grand bargain” in 2014, but said it didn’t expect so much land to be taken off the market over the next four years.

Hillsboro no longer has enough acres in urban reserves to adequately plan for the future, he said.

Jon Chandler, CEO of the Oregon Home Builders Association, said that “planning theory” in this case has run up against reality, which justifies an adjustment.

“Things change and these assumptions can’t be sacrosanct,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — With a whoosh, Clive, a 7-month-old Harris’s hawk, spreads his wings and takes flight over the wet streets of downtown Portland. The skies are dark and cloudy on a chilly January evening, but Clive’s keen eyes dart from treetop to treetop, scanning.

A few blocks away, Mars, an older hawk, is also patrolling the skies and, a few blocks from that, a third bird is searching the streets.

They’re all looking for one thing: crows.

These hawks are not here of their own volition. They were loosed on the crows of downtown by Kort Clayton, owner of Integrated Avian Solutions, a Portland-based company that uses hawks and other raptors to shoo away problem birds from wineries, dumps and, in this case, business districts.

Clayton was called in after years of fruitless efforts at driving out the bothersome birds. Crows were eating the insulation from building walls. They created such a roar that hotel guests were jolted awake at early hours. Most notably, they left busy sidewalks slickened with poop.

Sheri Scali, senior property manager at a large building near the Keller Auditorium on the south end of downtown, heard them before she saw them. It was early January and as she was heading into work before dawn, she was greeted by the busy cackles of roosting birds.

They hadn’t been there the day before and they were loud, but she didn’t give the flock much thought until the sun came up. Under the light of day, Scali witnessed the mess a large group of crows is capable of creating overnight.

“When we looked down from above, it looked like it had snowed,” she said.

During the day, crows spread out across the Pacific Northwest, scavenging what they can from sites urban and rural alike. But once the sun heads toward the horizon, they seek warmth and safety in numbers, gathering in flocks of up to 10,000 birds and descending on the trees and parks and rooftops of downtown Portland, Clayton said.

During the great snowstorm of early 2017, a Portland Police criminalist snapped a picture of a flock gathered next to headquarters. The crows were so numerous, and contrasted so starkly against the fresh blanket of snow, that the trees looked like mashed potatoes covered in pepper.

Their ubiquity, at least during winter months, makes them hard to ignore.

When flocks, known ominously as “murders,” gather in these numbers, a cacophonous maelstrom announces their evening arrival. Crows are deft communicators and they waste no time telling each other about the exploits of the day. They squawk and bray and bleet from the treetops, drowning out the sounds of the city below.

The din is bothersome, but mostly harmless unless you’re trying to sleep. The problems created by that many birds, fresh back from a day of feeding, is feculent. Or to put it more simply, it’s their poop.

The roosting birds, drawn to the downtown core by warmth and an abundance of food sources, started to become a problem about four years ago when everything beneath their preferred trees quickly took on a sheen of avian excrement. Trees, cars, sculptures and downtown pedestrians all became targets of the droppings.

In 2014, more than 30 crows were found dead in Portland’s urban core. An investigation by the Portland Audubon Society found the birds had been poisoned. Last week, witnesses in Northeast Portland reported seeing some crows “falling from the sky,” while others were found seizing on the ground.

An investigation into the most recent spate of crow deaths is ongoing, but appears to be consistent with poisoning, said Bob Sallinger, conservation director with the Audubon Society.

When the crows began to congregate in such large numbers, complaints poured into Downtown Clean & Safe, a program that works in partnership with the city and the Portland Business Alliance to provide cleaning and security services to the downtown area.

Working with Central City Concern, the city hired crews to pressure wash the streets of the crow-created mess, but it was a sisyphean effort.

“We would pressure wash all night,” said Lynnae Berg, executive director of Downtown Clean & Safe. “And then the crows would wake up and it would look like we had done nothing.”

As it became clear they couldn’t beat the problem with pressure washing alone, they called in a device called the “Poopmaster 6000,” a motorized brick-scrubbing cart that resembles a Zamboni. The Poopmaster worked great on the ground, but did nothing for the bird poop that shellacked benches and newspaper racks and public art.

With all of the obvious solutions seemingly exhausted, Berg and the downtown business community had to get creative.

Enter the hawk.

As far as animals go, crows are near the top tier of intelligence. Their brains are oversized for their small bodies and it shows in their behavior. They communicate in complex and intricate ways. If one bird in the roost discovers a plentiful source of food, they’ll go back and alert the rest. Sometimes, when one of them dies, a group will gather in a tree above their deceased kin in a kind of mourning. They’ve been observed using sticks to pry grubs from holes in logs.

Perhaps most impressively, researchers have shown that crows can remember people who wrong them, for up to five years, and pass that knowledge along to their offspring.

In the mid-2000s, John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington and the author of “Gifts of the Crow,” set out to study some of the birds on campus, as detailed in Audubon Magazine:

As they trapped and banded crows around the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, he and his collaborators wore a latex caveman mask. When they later returned to those locations, either maskless or wearing a Dick Cheney mask the crows had never seen before, the birds ignored them. But anybody showing up in a caveman mask would spark a crowpocalypse. It wasn’t just the trapped birds that responded; apparently others had witnessed the abduction and remembered it. Whole gangs of crows followed the evildoer, scolding and dive-bombing. The birds knew that caveman face, and they didn’t like it one bit.

Like people, these birds hold grudges.

“I am still amazed by them — every time I look I see something different,” Marzluff told The Oregonian/OregonLive. In crows, Marzluff has observed a wide range of behavior, including “language, delinquency, frolic, passion, wrath, risk-taking, and awareness.”

And it’s their intelligence that leads them to gather in great numbers in places like downtown Portland. Around dusk, they come together for what some call a “social hour.” Starting around 4 p.m., thousands of crows gather in the trees along the waterfront or in the South Park Blocks or anywhere else that has large trees. They exchange information about where they’ve found food that day or predators they’ve encountered.

After about an hour of chit-chat, they move to a secondary location to roost for the night. The densely packed buildings provide light and warmth, two of the crows’ top priorities when looking for a safe place to spend the night.

Once they find a place they like, they will call it home for an entire winter.

“The challenge is to manage the conflict between people and birds,” Berg said. Other cities use pyrotechnics and physical hazing to deter the crows, but “we didn’t feel that was right for Portland.”

Once it became clear that the problem of the crow droppings couldn’t be solved from below, Berg looked skyward.

Clayton, owner of Integrated Avian Solutions, has been working with raptors for 25 years. It started as a hobby in his teens when he began hunting ducks with falcons. His interest in birds of prey grew and eventually he turned it into a business, using peregrine falcons, gyrfalcons and hawks to chase nuisance birds — usually starlings, gulls and ravens — from vineyards and trash collection sites.

Last year, when Clayton brought in hawks as part of a pilot program to chase off the crows, it was his first experience flying his birds in an urban environment.

The Harris’s hawk was the obvious candidate. In the wild, they are one of the few raptors to hunt cooperatively so they can work in teams. Any of his falcons would have likely gone after each other before they even noticed the crows.

Each bird is fitted with a light and a bell, as well as a tiny backpack loaded with a GPS tracker. The birds respond almost instantly to food, but on the rare occasion they don’t come back, Clayton tracks them with an iPad he keeps in a fanny pack while he patrols the streets of downtown.

Sporting a neon green vest with “CROW PATROL” emblazoned across the back, Clayton walks the streets of Portland’s business district for a few hours four nights a week, eyes trained upward for sightings of black crows against the black sky, ears scanning for the tell-tale sounds of crow flock.

It doesn’t take much to scatter a flock. The hawks don’t chase the crows, but they are seen as such a threat that even their presence in the area means it’s time to move on. As soon as the hawks take flight, the crows nervously move off to safer territory.

The hawks are innate hunters with instinct to kill, but they’ve been trained not to and they pose no risk to the crows. They operate on a reward system and killing crows doesn’t earn them treats from their handlers.

What does earn them treats is clearing crows and, in that respect, they’ve been quite successful. In their first year, the hawks easily cleared the designated area.

Now in their second year, Clayton and the hawks got started earlier, hitting the streets in late October, and are responsible for clearing a larger area — more than 70-square-blocks of the busiest area of downtown.

On a recent mid-January night, it appeared that Clayton and his hawks were performing their duties almost too well. Over a few chilly hours, Clayton spent the vast majority of his time looking for crows to chase. Ditto for the two other teams of handlers and hawks patrolling the area.

The few flocks they did encounter were just outside of the designated area, right where they should be. And, according to Berg, the crow-related complaints have dropped.

“We feel like we’ve found the right solution to manage the issue,” she said. “We’ve had fewer complaints. People are really satisfied when they see the result.”

One of those people is Scali, the property manager. After she saw her building and the surrounding sidewalks thoroughly coated with crow droppings, she got in touch with the Portland Business Alliance, who called Berg, who let Clayton and the hawks know about the problem area.

They came and cleared the crows much more quickly than Scali anticipated.

“Literally within one day, they were gone,” she said. “It was far beyond what we thought would happen.”

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California commissions that oversee coastal lands and water pushed the Trump administration to leave the state out of plans to expand offshore drilling, warning the state would block pipelines to get oil back to land.

The agencies weighed in ahead of a public hearing Thursday in Sacramento, the only opportunity for people to register their opinions in person in California. Fishermen, environmentalists and other critics planned to protest outside the state Capitol before marching to the meeting a nearby library in Sacramento.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants to open nearly all U.S. coastlines to offshore oil and gas drilling. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Emergency Management has proposed six sales of drilling rights off the California coast and a seventh off Oregon and Washington between 2020 and 2023.

But California’s State Lands Commission said in a letter Wednesday the state will resist the plan.

“Given how unpopular oil development in coastal waters is in California, it is certain that the state would not approve new pipelines or allow use of existing pipelines to transport oil from new leases onshore,” wrote the three commission members — Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Controller Better Yee and Director of Finance Michael Cohen.

The commission oversees the first 3 miles offshore, at which point federal jurisdiction kicks in. It has not allowed drilling in the state-controlled waters since a 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara.

A letter from the California Coastal Commission also warned an oil spill would devastate the state’s tourism economy and natural coastal beauty. They pointed to the Santa Barbara spill, which caused severe environmental damage, hurt local fishermen and dissuaded tourists from visiting.

On Tuesday, more than 100 demonstrators gathered outside Oregon’s state Capitol in Salem to denounce the proposal before planning to go to a public meeting. Twenty-three meetings are planned nationwide, one in every state except Hawaii that touches the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Comments can also be submitted online through March 9.

Democratic attorneys general from a dozen coastal states, including California’s Xavier Becerra, wrote a letter last week urging Zinke to cancel the plans for expanded drilling.

What man takes years to build, Mother Nature can wipe out in a day.

Ginger and Brian Afdahl are learning that lesson the hard way after unusual weather patterns caused the North Fork of the Walla Walla River to wash through their 10-acre homestead east of Milton-Freewater, Ore. Feb. 4. The couple had spent decades investing in improvements to the property, only to watch the river turn it into a tangle of broken irrigation lines, waterlogged equipment and uprooted fences.

“Thirty years of work, and within one night, everything is gone,” Ginger said.

The river continues to flow through the property, carving a deeper and deeper channel. But the Afdahls say they have had to turn away friends’ offers of pushing it back into its proper channel with backhoes because of government regulations meant to protect fish habitats, particularly requirements for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for any work to change or “re-align” a stream’s path.

“They say we can’t run any equipment in the river, and right now my property is the river,” Ginger said.

She said they are working with state agencies to figure out what they need to do to fix the problem and what government help might be available. Beyond destruction of property, Ginger said there’s also the problem of the property’s lease, which defines the property line as halfway across the river. If the river doesn’t move back to its previous channel, she said, there goes half their property.

The National Weather Service in Pendleton has been issuing flood advisories for the Walla Walla River east of Milton-Freewater due to rains and early snowmelt caused by the unusually warm February weather, and on Wednesday issued an updated advisory cautioning that “minor flooding is expected to continue through Thursday and impact residential property and fields along and near the river.”

Flooding at the Afdahls’ property on North Fork Walla Walla River Road started Sunday. Ginger said she had been with her son and husband outside, then went inside for about an hour before her son poked his head in and said, “Mom, you’d better come out here.” What had been a trickle an hour before was now a flood, and soon her six-foot-tall son was waist-deep in water as they worked to move the animals and whatever else they could to the small portion of the property not flooding.

“We were out there until dark,” Ginger said. “I ended up putting my baby goat in my bathtub in my house because she was going to be under water.”

The water has receded somewhat, but Ginger said on Feb. 7 that family members would be working until dark for days to come to try and gather up items washed downstream and repair pasture fences no longer able to contain their goats, sheep, pigs and horse. A shed full of personal storage is totally waterlogged, but she said they don’t have the space yet to pull everything out, spread it out to dry and figure out what might be salvaged.

She said the family doesn’t have flood insurance, because nothing like this has ever happened in 30 years on the property. Their son Chance Afdahl has started a GoFundMe account online at www.gofundme.com/help-for-brian-and-ginger-afdahl to collect donations

When members of Team USA arrive Friday for the Opening Ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, they will again be wearing Oregon wool clothing.

Polo Ralph Lauren, an official outfitter of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams, has partnered with Imperial Stock Ranch in Shaniko, Ore., to make this year’s Team USA uniform sweaters, hats and mittens using U.S. wool.

It took approximately 25,000 pounds of raw grease wool to make the clothing that will be worn by U.S. Olympic athletes during the Opening Ceremony on Friday and the Closing Ceremony Feb. 25.

All of the items were knitted with Imperial Stock Ranch American Merino yarn, a program launched in 2015 with the National Spinning Co. in North Carolina. Imperial Stock Ranch also provided the wool for Olympic sweaters at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

Jeanne Carver, who runs the ranch with her husband, Dan, said they are proud and humble to be part of the Olympic tradition.

“For us, we do work that most people don’t know about,” Carver wrote in an email. “We’re tending the land and animals that give us fiber, that has clothed humankind for thousands of years. To have some of that fiber worn by the best athletes in America on a global stage like the Olympics is still unbelievable for us. It will never stop being a miracle.”

Imperial Stock Ranch traces its roots back to 1851, when homesteader Richard Hinton arrived in central Oregon from the Willamette Valley. Hinton raised sheep, cattle, grain and hay, and by the early 1900s he was the state’s largest individual land and livestock owner.

Though sheep numbers have declined over the decades, the ranch has managed to stay in the commercial wool business. In 1999, Imperial Stock Ranch shifted from selling raw wool to wool products, such as yarn, which Carver said has opened multiple markets.

It was the summer of 2012 — during the Summer Olympics in London — when Carver said they first got the call from Ralph Lauren looking for wool for its “Made in America” Olympic uniforms. That deal changed the future of the ranch, she said, with hundreds of designers and companies suddenly interested in doing business.

“We added market channels and continue to grow in each,” Carver said. “The visibility that resulted from Ralph Lauren telling our story strengthened opportunities with our supply chain partners and broadened our impact.”

Carver said she does not know how long the relationship with Ralph Lauren will continue into the future. Meanwhile, she said the ranch continues to focus on its agricultural operations, supporting local markets and U.S. manufacturing.

Last year, the ranch was also the first in the world to be certified under the voluntary Responsible Wool Standard, focused on sustainable land practices and animal welfare.

Coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics begins Thursday and Friday on NBC.

Oregon’s farm regulators have slapped a $10,640 penalty on a major new dairy near Boardman, Ore., for allegedly discharging waste in violation of permit conditions.

The company, Lost Valley Farm, is also facing two lawsuits filed by contractors who claim they haven’t been paid for installing equipment and providing construction services.

A “confined animal feeding operation” inspection by the Oregon Department of Agriculture found on Dec. 5, 2017, that wastewater from the dairy had overflowed into a pit that’s not authorized for storage, which wasn’t reported to the agency as required.

The dairy, which eventually plans to milk 30,000 cows, was also faulted for maintaining inadequate lagoon storage capacity to deal with runoff in case of a storm.

Another inspection on Dec. 15, 2017, found that liquid and solid manure had discharged from a tank, flowing into areas unauthorized for waste storage, which against wasn’t reported to ODA.

Civil penalties of $10,640 were recently imposed on the dairy for these violations, but the company may request an administrative hearing on the matter by mid-February.

Aside from these violations, the company was issued three notices of non-compliance with its CAFO permit between late June and late November of last year, which required corrective actions.

Capital Press was unable to reach a representative of Lost Valley Farm as of press time.

The situation is concerning to ODA because the Lost Valley Farm facility is brand new, having just begun operating last April, said Wym Matthews, manager of the agency’s CAFO program.

“It’s like a new car, you don’t expect to have trouble with it,” he said.

In this case, though, the problems don’t stem from equipment malfunctions, but rather from management errors that weren’t remedied quickly enough, Matthews said.

It’s difficult to compare the different circumstances under which dairies receive penalties, he said.

However, fewer than 1 percent of the 880 CAFO inspections conducted by ODA last year resulted in fines, and $10,000 for a first penalty is “a decent amount of money,” Matthews said.

“Hopefully, they will get the message and operate according to the permit. That’s our goal,” he said.

Aside from its inspection troubles, the Lost Valley Farm was also recently sued by Daritech, a dairy equipment manufacturer, in federal court for allegedly failing to timely pay more than $340,000 for the installation of equipment.

Another lawsuit seeking more than $390,000 from the dairy was filed last November in state court by IRZ Consulting, which claims the company’s owner, Greg TeVelde, hasn’t fully paid for labor, equipment, materials and other services related to the construction and improvement of real estate.

A third complaint, also filed in state court, sought to recover $1.4 million for labor, materials and other services performed by Laser Land Leveling, Inc., but was dismissed at the plaintiff’s request last November due to a settlement.

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — For the second day in a row, workers have reported mysterious odors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation tank farms.

Two workers reported the odors Tuesday morning outside the SY Tank Farm. They both declined medical evaluations.

Five workers reported smelling odors on Monday.

The Tri-City Herald says workers report odors because they could be from potential harmful chemical vapors associated with waste in the underground tanks.

The tanks contain 56 million gallons of waste left from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The incidents this week were the first since Nov. 28.

The state of Washington has sued the federal government, seeking better protection for Hanford workers in the vapor incidents. The case is pending with the parties working toward a settlement.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The founder of a militia group in Idaho has been accused of keeping nearly $87,000 in rent payments meant for clients.

Brandon Curtiss, 43, of Payette, Idaho, was arrested Tuesday and has been charged with 19 counts of grand theft, The Idaho Statesman reported .

Curtiss collected rent payments on behalf of property owners through Curtiss Property Management and Liberty Property Management Company from 2013 to 2016, according to the Ada County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. He allegedly failed to give the rent money he collected to 19 property owners, including Leslie and Aaron Boyce of the Portland, Oregon, area.

They hired Curtiss in March 2013 to manage two four-plex apartments they bought in Boise.

Before the end of 2013, Curtiss allegedly stopped submitting rent payments, so the couple sued in Ada County District Court. They won a judgment of $19,726, plus $48,823 in attorney fees and costs. They haven’t received any money from Curtiss, Leslie Boyce said Tuesday.

“It has taken way too long for the wheels of justice to begin turning,” Boyce told the Idaho Statesman. “We look forward to seeing Brandon Curtiss answer before a judge and jury for what he has done.”

State police began their investigation in May 2016 after 17 of Curtiss’ clients filed complaints and met with lawyers at the Idaho Attorney General’s Office.

Thirty-six members of his militia group known as “3% of Idaho” resigned in September 2016 after accusing Curtiss of improperly spending $2,901 in donations earmarked for four Idaho men accused in the 2014 armed standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch. State Police spokesman Tim Marsano declined to say Tuesday whether the investigation included those allegations.

The militia group’s Facebook page hasn’t been updated since October 2016, and its website was not active Tuesday.

Curtiss had joined a group of armed men who occupied the headquarters of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge outside Burns, Oregon, in January 2016 in a protest over grazing rights on federal land.

Curtiss is being held on $150,000 bail in a Boise jail and is set to make his first court appearance Wednesday. It wasn’t clear if he had an attorney.

Oregon, Washington, California and seven other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday to rescue the Obama-era Clean Water Rule.

The states, joined by the District of Columbia, claim that discarding the 2015 rule’s definition of “waters of the United States” will leave them vulnerable to pollution flowing across their borders.

“I won’t allow the Trump administration to continue to ignore the law to try to undermine important environmental rules simply because it doesn’t like them,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement.

The lawsuit, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, was filed in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York on the same day as the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers finalized suspending the rule until at least Feb. 6, 2020.

The delay will give the agencies time to reconsider the 2015 rule. In the meantime, a 1980s definition of the waters covered by the Clean Water Act will remain in force.

Before Trump’s EPA suspended the rule, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a nationwide stay. Previously, a U.S. district judge in North Dakota blocked the rule in 13 states, including Idaho.

“It’s worth noting that these lawsuits are over an embattled legislation that’s been put on hold by the courts to prevent it from taking effect. Our delay rule will keep in place that status quo,” an EPA spokeswoman said in an email.

The rule sets the reach of the Clean Water Act. The American Farm Bureau Federation in earlier statements warned that the 2015 rule would expand the act’s jurisdiction to ditches and low spots that are only occasionally wet and would expose farmers to citizen lawsuits for activities as routine as plowing a field.

States have been suing to overturn or uphold the 2015 rule. In an announcement Feb. 1 in the Federal Register, the EPA and Corps said the two-year suspension heads off the possibility that conflicting federal court decisions will cause the rule to vary between states.

“The scope of (Clean Water Act) jurisdiction is an issue of national importance and therefore the agencies will endeavor to provide for robust deliberations and public engagement as they re-evaluate the definitions of ‘waters of the United States,’” according to the notice.

Ferguson has sued the Trump administration 21 times. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a fellow Democrat, said the latest suit seeks to protect “our economy and our quality of life.”

“This (Trump) administration’s continual efforts to roll back crucial protections for our nation’s beautiful spaces and the health and safety of all Americans will not go unchecked,” Inslee said in a statement.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra joined the lawsuit. In addition to New York, the other states involved are Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont.

SALEM — An unintentional omission from an Oregon land use bill in 2017 has re-opened the debate over “accessory dwelling units” in rural areas this year.

Legislation aimed at easing Oregon’s affordable housing crisis, Senate Bill 1051, was approved by lawmakers during the tail end of the previous legislative session.

Under one provision of that bill, ADUs — sometimes called “granny flats” — can be built in areas zoned for detached single-family dwellings in cities with more than 2,500 residents and counties with more than 15,000 residents.

That provision was only intended to apply within “urban growth boundaries,” but that language was inadvertently dropped from the bill’s text.

Unless the mistake is corrected, the bill would allow such dwellings in rural areas outside of cities.

Critics of ADUs in rural areas argue that increasing such housing would strain existing groundwater sources, septic tanks and rural roads.

Lawmakers are now being urged to pass House Bill 4034, which would correct the earlier “scrivener’s error,” by lobbyists from organizations that don’t often agree on development issues: 1,000 Friends of Oregon, a conservation group, and the Oregon Home Builders Association.

The possibility of legislation aimed specifically at ADUs in rural areas is being discussed as part of a separate work group, said Jon Chandler, CEO of the OHBA, which usually advocates for relaxing land use restrictions.

While the problem would seem easily fixed, the situation is awkward because two lawmakers on the House Agriculture Committee — Brad Witt, D-Clatskanie, and David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford — said they weren’t aware the “urban growth boundary” provision was omitted accidentally.

During a Feb. 6 hearing before the committee, Witt said he supported the earlier legislation because he wanted to allow more accessory dwellings in rural areas and would be disappointed to see the provision changed.

“If you strike a deal, you ought to let us all know a deal has been struck,” Witt said, referring to the urban growth boundary limitation.

Representatives of the Association of Oregon Counties and the Oregon Association of Realtors urged lawmakers not to restrict ADUs to cities.

Oregon is facing a housing crisis, so additional ADUs in rural areas would increase the housing supply without spending public money, said Mike Eliason, legislative director of AOR.

The law could be changed to allow counties to choose whether to allow ADUs in rural areas or to establish standards for their development, he said.

The committee’s chair, Brian Clem, D-Salem, chastised these lobbyists for “poor judgment,” noting they might someday be disadvantaged by an error in an otherwise “good faith” compromise.

Clem said that he disagrees with exploiting the error though he’s not opposed to negotiating over ADUs in rural areas.

“I think it’s absurd the tactic that you’re using,” he said.

Wolves did indeed kill a 300-pound adult llama Jan. 30 on private land in rural Union County, Ore. That much is certain.

But wildlife officials are still trying to figure out which pack is responsible for the death, in an area where the population and distribution of wolves is ever changing.

According to the investigation report, wolves chased and killed the llama, owned by retired rancher Howard Cantrell, on his property west of La Grande. Two more of Cantrell’s llamas were also found dead and mostly eaten last December, though investigators stopped short of ruling either of those incidents as a “confirmed” wolf attack.

Cantrell was critical of the rulings. This time, however, there was no doubt — numerous wolf tracks were spotted at the scene of the chase, and the appearance of bite marks were consistent with wolf predation. An apparent chase had also happened several nights before.

The challenge now is figuring out which wolves may be causing the problem. Between the Mount Emily and Meacham wildlife units in the northern Blue Mountains, there are at least four known packs, including the Walla Walla, Mount Emily, Meacham and newly named Ruckel packs, along with more unnamed groups and pairs roaming the woods.

Hans Hayden, assistant district wildlife biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife in La Grande, said investigators believe the most recent llama death may have been caused by a group of three wolves led by the female OR-52.

That is just a hunch, though, and there is still uncertainty especially given the lack of GPS collars on any wolves from the nearby Meacham pack, which preyed on cattle four times in eight days last August on a private pasture in neighboring Umatilla County.

Historically, the Meacham pack would come into the territory where Cantrell’s property lies at the bottom of a steep canyon near Five Points Creek, Hayden said. As more packs become established, that can also rearrange another pack’s territory, he added.

“It’s tough to keep tabs on them,” Hayden said. “We’re still learning how they use these landscapes. It’s all pretty new.”

In the meantime, Cantrell is looking to adopt out his remaining 12 llamas, fearing for their safety.

“They don’t even know which wolves it is. They’ve got no collars on these wolves. They’re coming in from different directions every night,” Cantrell said. “This is ridiculous. The only solution I have is to take the llamas off my property.”

OR-52 does actually have a collar, Hayden said, though it is not a GPS collar. It is a VHF, or “very high frequency” radio collar, which he said does not provide as much information as a GPS collar but lasts longer and is more reliable.

Hayden said he has made numerous trips to Cantrell’s property to check on the location of OR-52. ODFW has also put up additional trail cameras around the area to catch a glimpse of which wolves are passing through.

Over the last few weeks, Hayden said the department has also installed flashing Foxlights and radio-activated alarm boxes to scare wolves from the property.

“We’re trying to do everything we can to help (Cantrell) avoid another depredation,” Hayden said.

ODFW is in the process of preparing its end-of-year 2017 wolf report, which will include the latest statewide pack and population figures. The report will be released in March.

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) — Production of hops has grown dramatically in the United States since 2012, and no more acreage is needed to meet the demand for the plant that flavors beer.

That’s according to a new report from the Yakima-based trade group Hop Growers of America.

Most of the nation’s hops are grown in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

The report says the U.S. has hit a saturation point with production of 104 million pounds last year.

The report says that’s a 77 percent increase from 2012.

The report also found that Idaho has surpassed Oregon to become the second-highest hop producing state at 13 percent of the crop. Washington grows 75 percent and Oregon 11 percent.

At 73 years old, Oregon cherry farmer Ken Bailey says he is getting close to retirement.

Bailey and his brother, Bob, took over daily operations at Orchard View Cherries in The Dalles, Ore. from their parents in the mid-1960s. Now Bailey has taken a step back while the business once again changes hands to the fourth generation of family.

“It’s just been kind of a transition,” Bailey said. “I think, by far, it’s been positive.”

Getting to this point took years of succession planning, Bailey said, sitting down with lawyers and tax accountants to make the best decisions for the farm and family moving forward.

Succession planning was the main topic of discussion at the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Commission’s first meeting Thursday, Feb. 1 in Prineville, Ore. The 12-member commission is in charge of overseeing the state Agricultural Heritage Program, created by the Legislature in 2017 to protect and preserve agricultural lands.

Commission members, including Bailey, were recently appointed by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.

According to a 2016 study by Oregon State University and Portland State University, the average age of Oregon farmers is 60, up from 55 in 2002. As older farmers begin to retire, more than 10 million acres, or 64 percent, or Oregon’s agricultural lands are bound to change ownership over the next two decades.

To make sure farmland stays in production, Bailey said families need to be on the ball when it comes to succession planning — and not wait until faced with an emergency.

“When you’re in crisis mode, it really cuts back on your options,” he said.

Succession planning is just one part of the equation, said Meta Loftsgaarden, executive director of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, or OWEB. The newly formed Agricultural Heritage Commission is also working to develop grant programs for land easements, implementing conservation management plans and on-the-ground technical support for farmers and ranchers.

Agriculture is the state’s second-largest economic driver, with crops valued at $5.4 billion annually. Loftsgaarden said farms also support a myriad of natural resources, including fish and wildlife, which could be threatened if the land is sold to outside developers.

“This (program) is putting a spotlight and focus on the importance of these agricultural lands to all aspects of how we live here in Oregon,” Loftsgaarden said. “We think we can create something that helps dual purposes.”

Established under House Bill 3249, the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Program is the result of collaboration between the Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, Oregon Association of Conservation Districts, Sustainable Northwest and the Nature Conservancy.

Members of the Agricultural Heritage Commission include representatives of farming, OSU Extension Service, fish and wildlife, water, easements and tribal interests. Loftsgaarden said their initial meetings will be focused on setting rules and guidelines for grant programs before returning to the Legislature for funding.

House Bill 3249 provided just less than $200,000 for OWEB to set up the commission. Supporters had asked for $4.25 million, though lawmakers viewed the request as unrealistic.

“We in Oregon have not had a program like this,” Loftsgaarden said. “This program gives us an opportunity to highlight some policy issues that the Legislature might consider.”

Mary Ann Cooper, public policy counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau, said it is imperative for the state to get ahead of the issue before swaths of land begin to transfer ownership.

“Without assistance in passing on that farmland, we might lost it from agriculture forever,” Cooper said.

Kelley Beamer, executive director of the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, said the Agricultural Heritage Commission is a “shining example of Oregonians coming together around a common goal — to protect Oregon’s rich natural resources and agricultural heritage.”

The commission is scheduled to meet again Thursday, Feb. 22 back in Prineville. Bailey said he is confident the group will be able to come to a consensus on future programs.

“I was very pleased with everybody’s knowledge,” Bailey said after the first meeting. “The goal is to develop programs that can help make farm transition easier, and get people to go thoughtfully through the process.”

Members of the commission include:

• Chad Allen, Tillamook (farm/ranch)

• Ken Bailey, The Dalles (farm/ranch)

• Doug Krahmer, St. Paul (farm/ranch)

• Woody Wolfe, Wallowa (farm/ranch)

• Sam Angima, Corvallis (OSU Extension)

• Mary Wahl, Portland (fish and wildlife)

• Bruce Taylor, Portland (fish and wildlife)

• Lois Loop, Salem (agricultural water)

• Derek Johnson, Portland (easements)

• Mark Bennett, Unity (natural resources)

• Nathan Jackson, Myrtle Creek (tribal)

• Will Neuhauser, Yamhill (ex officio, non-voting)

A federal judge has dismissed an Oregon ranch’s lawsuit that sought to block the possible “wild and scenic” designation of a stretch of the Rogue River.

In 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decided a 63-mile segment of the river was “suitable” for protection under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

The Double R Ranch, which owns roughly 1,000 acres along the river, filed a complaint against BLM last year arguing the segment wasn’t “free-flowing” as required by that statute.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association and the Oregon Aggregate and Concrete Producers Association joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs because they feared a designation would restrict grazing and mining.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., has now thrown out the complaint because the harms allegedly suffered by the plaintiffs are too hypothetical to give them legal standing in federal court.

While the local BLM district has found the 63-mile stretch suitable as a “wild and scenic” river, the actual designation would still have to be recommended by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, approved as a bill by Congress and signed by the president, he said.

“In any event, few things are more hypothetical and speculative than Congress passing a specific act of legislation,” the judge said.

Ranchers and miners worry that “wild and scenic” protection will prohibit streambank stabilization projects and lead to the loss of water rights, grazing rights and mining rights.

Even if the designation was finalized, the plaintiffs could still seek permission for various projects and activities along that stretch of the river, Cooper said.

“Plaintiffs do not explain why it is certainly likely that their permits would be denied given that such actions or permits can be approved. Thus, even the last link in the causal chain remains somewhat speculative,” he said.

Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said the ruling was disappointing, since the lawsuit was effectively the last chance to prevent the “wild and scenic” designation.

Once a river segment is deemed suitable, it’s likely to receive federal protection under the statute, which will probably involve grazing curtailments, Rosa said.

“We know our ranchers’ ability to do business would definitely change,” he said.

Rogue Riverkeeper, a local environmental group, had urged the judge to dismiss the case because the plaintiffs didn’t face any imminent injury from the designation.

The 63-mile stretch is unique because three dams that once impounded its water have been removed, and it would connect two segments of the Rogue River already designated as “wild and scenic,” the group said.

Sen. Maria Cantwell wants coastal waters off Oregon and Washington removed from a federal draft plan for offshore oil and gas drilling. The Washington Democrat sounded the alarm during a visit to Vancouver on Thursday afternoon.

“We’re here today to say we don’t want that economy that depends so much on our coastal issues of fishing and natural resources to be destroyed by what could be a catastrophic oil event,” Cantwell said.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Cantwell joined a bipartisan group of 15 congressional delegates from the Pacific Northwest — including southwest Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler — who are opposed to the drilling plan.

Cantwell said it would put Washington and Oregon’s multibillion-dollar fishing industries at risk.

“The idea of drilling off the coast of Washington and Oregon is just wrong,” she said. “The risk to the economy and the environmental impact is just too great.”

Last month, Zinke removed Florida from the draft plan, saying its coast is too important to the state’s tourism market. Cantwell wants the same consideration for the Pacific Northwest. 

In a conference room at the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, Cantwell stood alongside members of southwest Washington’s coastal fishing and tourism agencies.

“Pacific County has been known for oyster farming for over 150 years. It’s part of our foundation, it’s rooted in our culture,” said Kathleen Nisbet-Moncy, a second-generation oyster farmer in Willapa Bay and the chief operating officer of Goose Point Oysters.

“One oil spill could literally devastate the entire estuaries in which we farm,” she said.

In Washington, maritime businesses bring in more than $50 billion to the state and provide 191,000 jobs. Larry Thevik, president of the Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen’s Association, said drilling oil offshore is not worth the risk.

“Offshore drilling projects off our shores offer us minimal gain with maximum risk,” Thevik said. He added that the draft plan is “ill-conceived, reckless and carries risks we don’t want to take, we don’t need to take and we must not take.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is holding a public meeting on the issue in Tacoma on Monday.