For the second year the Willamette Valley Ag Expo will offer an OSHA forklift operator certification class on Wednesday, Nov. 12.

Cost for the class is just the $4 admission to the Expo.

The class will run from 10:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. with 2 hours of classroom and then outdoor driving sessions. The driving tests will be scheduled at different intervals in the afternoon. This is a 3-year certification.

The class is presented by the staff of Overton Safety Training.

The class includes all materials, required classroom and driving tests.  Upon satisfactory completion attendees will receive a 3-year certification card and certificate.  Class space is limited to 40 and reservations are required. Register online at www.wvaexpo.com

The Expo also offers CORE Pesticide training provided by Wilco and Oregon State University Linn County Extension. The course will provide 4 credit hours and is free with your admission to the Ag Expo. CORE training will be held on both Tuesday and Thursday, Nov. 11 and 13, and starts at 10 a.m. each day. Reservations are not required for these trainings and more information is available from the OSU Extension office at 541-967-3871. Details about CORE are available at www.wvaexpo.com

The entire schedule of classes and presentations available at this year’s Willamette Valley Ag Expo is available online at www.wvaexpo.com.

The Expo will be Nov. 11-13 at the Linn County Expo Center on Knox Butte Road off Interstate 5 in Albany.

Federal authorities will need to review the environmental effects of removing an invasive weed before the plants can be yanked from the Columbia River.

Over the summer, several new patches of flowering rush were found growing in shallow waters of the river near Umatilla, Ore., which is the first time the weed was discovered in Oregon.

Flowering rush is already problematic for irrigators in Washington, Idaho and Montana because it grows so thickly that the flow of water in canals is impeded. The weed can also clog irrigation intakes and create habitat for introduced fish that prey on native salmon.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture wants the flowering rush plants to be pulled out before they have a chance to spread further, but the sites can’t be treated without permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over the river.

To grant those permits, the federal agency must review the proposed removal under the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and conduct an archeological assessment of cultural resources at the sites, said Damien Walter, a biologist for the corps. The corps may also need to negotiate a contract with divers who would pull the weeds.

The corps wants to comply with the review requirements of those statutes as quickly as possible, he said.

Removal of the new flowering rush sites will be reviewed separately from a broader “big picture” proposal to remove aquatic pests from the Columbia river, which has been studied for several years, Walter said.

“The bottom line is there are still some hoops to jump through,” said Tim Butler, supervisor of ODA’s noxious weed control program.

Ideally, ODA wants the flowering rush removed before the plants go dormant during winter, at which point their leaves fall below the water line and they’re no longer visible, said Tim Butler, supervisor of the agency’s noxious weed control program.

However, the ODA will settle for covering the plants with mats weighed down with sand bags, which would at least prevent them from spreading until they can be removed later, he said.

But event that step might require formal review.

Butler said he understands that the federal government must work within the constraints of NEPA and the ESA, but it’s unfortunate these laws may delay the removal of an invasive species that poses real environmental threats.

“It’s amazing with these issues how we seem to shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes,” he said. “It should be a no-brainer to say we need to act on this. The risks are much higher by not doing anything.”

The fastest review options for removing the weed would involve the Army Corps of Engineers obtaining a “categorical exclusion” from more in-depth studies under NEPA and an “informal consultation” with the National Marine Fisheries Service under ESA.

However, the exact time frame for review is currently unclear, Walter said.

Even if the new flowering rush sites are removed quickly, it may not end the threat of the weed further invading Oregon, said Jenifer Parsons, aquatic plant specialist at the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Larger sites of the species are established further upstream in the Columbia river and in the Yakima river, she said. “There’s fragments floating down from those populations as well.”

A pollinator health task force is recommending that Oregon lawmakers reactivate a statewide pesticide use reporting system and pay for a “state of the art” facility to diagnose bee diseases.

The Oregon Legislature created the task force last year to make recommendations for improving pollinator health instead of restricting the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, as proposed in previous legislation.

In recent years, beekeepers have reported high levels of hive losses and a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which bees abandon their hives.

Pesticide critics have claimed that neonicotinoid pesticides are part of the problem, pointing to a massive die-off in Wilsonville, Ore., that was linked to two such chemicals last year.

Members of the task force — which included representatives of pesticide users, beekeepers and conservationists, among others — approved a report to the legislature on Oct. 27 after several months of deliberations.

Despite the group’s diverse viewpoints, it was able to agree on a variety of proposals, such as improved information for pesticide users, pollinator-specific training for licensed applicators and the development of a statewide plan for protecting pollinators.

The task force’s “general agreement” on the reactivation of Oregon’s pesticide use reporting system is noteworthy, as the program was controversial prior to losing funding in 2009.

Scott Dahlman, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, represented pesticide users on the task force and did not oppose the recommendation.

While he is lukewarm about resurrecting the reporting system, Dahlman said he would consider the possibility under the right circumstances.

“If it’s done the right way, we’re not opposed to it, but it’s not something we’re going to be pushing for, either,” he said. “I’m not going to kick and scream if we do it the right way, but it’s tough to do the right way.”

It’s better for agriculture to help shape any pesticide reporting system rather than simply hope it doesn’t happen, said Jeff Stone, executive director of the Oregon Association of Nurseries and a task force member.

“I think it’s going to be part of the water quality side of the equation, eventually,” he said.

Aimee Code, pesticide program coordinator for the Xerces Society insect conservation group, said she was surprised but pleased the task force agreed the system should be revived.

Pesticide use is an important piece of the puzzle in determining potential impacts on pollinator health, she said. “We need to know how and where they’re used.”

The report also recommends that legislators spend $500,000 on new equipment for Oregon State University’s honey bee lab and fund four technicians and supplies at $500,000 a year as part of a “state of the art bee health diagnostic facility.”

Ramesh Sagili, honey bee professor at OSU, said he is glad the report sets out a broad array of strategies for restoring pollinator health rather than fixating on one subset of pesticides.

The task force ended up focusing a lot of attention to outreach and education, he said. “That is a critical aspect, reaching out to the public.”

The report includes numerous proposals that task force members were unable to agree upon, like requiring an applicator’s license for anyone who regularly uses pesticides in their job and random hive inspections by state officials.

While it’s possible that some legislators might latch on to such controversial ideas, they’re unlikely to gain traction since the task force was able to reach consensus on other proposals, said Dahlman of Oregonians for Food and Shelter.

Code of the Xerces Society said the consensus recommendations may not go far enough for pollinator protection. It’s valuable for legislators to see the more hard-hitting proposals considered by the task force, regardless of their potential inclusion in a bill, she said.

“It might pique their interest but I don’t know if it will be something that will be able to pass the majority of both chambers,” Code said.

Tickets are available for Dine Around Oregon, the progressive-style dinner held each year in conjunction with the Willamette Valley Ag Expo.

The dinner will be 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, and features four hearty buffet-style serving areas located in each of the Expo buildings.  Each station features a different selection of culinary delights.  Tickets are exchanged for “passports,” which guide diners through the stations at their leisure.

Proceeds from the dinner go to funding the scholarships granted annually by the Willamette Valley Agriculture Association, which sponsors the annual Expo. The dinner and Expo are at the Linn County Expo Center, just off Interstate 5 on Knox Butte Road in Albany, Ore. Some 500 tickets will be available for this year, and the association expects they will sell out again.

“Manning farms is preparing the lamb. Pat Manning has quite the reputation for his lamb,” said Tom Wells, board member for the association.

Diners will enjoy selections of Oregon beef, pork and lamb with sides dishes, soups, salads and desserts from local growers and producers, including cranberries from Spring Acres Cranberries, Oregon cheese products from the Oregon Dairy Commission and soups from Norpac foods.  4 Spirits Distillery will be there with samples and no-host beverage stations will be scattered throughout the event as well.

Tickets are available online at www.wvaexpo.com. Ticket price is $11 and includes admission to the Expo. Because this is a catered event tickets sales close on Friday, Nov. 7.

“You just won’t find such a great meal or low price every day, except for the special luncheon deal we also offer,” said Jill Ingalls, who produces the progressive dinner.

The association is fortunate to have great sponsors keeping the cost of the tickets low, she said.

“This is a full and hearty meal worth much more than the ticket cost — plus you get to see the amazing displays of agriculture equipment and services while visiting with friends in between.  People really love it,” Ingalls said.   

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon will test a new road tax option that would charge drivers for each mile they travel, instead of the tax now added when filling up at the pump.

The state Department of Transportation said the test will start in July with 5,000 volunteers, KGW-TV reported.

Drivers will be charged 1.5 cents a mile, with their distances tracked through one of several options, including a daily diary, GPS system or odometer device.

Drivers in the trial will get a monthly bill, and then the department will follow that with a rebate check to offset the money they already spent on the gasoline tax.

Right now, Oregonians pay a gas tax of about 30 cents per gallon.

The pay-per-mile program was created as a possible alternative to the gas tax.

The department has been warning since at least 2001 that revenues from the gasoline tax will dwindle as vehicles become more efficient, and it has conducted two rounds of tests involving GPS devices to track mileage.

But a bill to set up a per-mile road tax went nowhere in the 2013 session of the Oregon Legislature, where three-fifths votes are required to raise taxes.

“ODOT’s mission is to maintain safe highways for Oregonians. We can’t do that if we don’t have the funding to do the repairs and the maintenance that we need,” said ODOT spokeswoman Michelle Godfrey. “With the gas tax failing, there is going to be a shortfall very, very soon.”

A Portland non-profit will use a USDA Rural Development grant to expand markets for western juniper, which could help keep greater sage grouse off the endangered species list, aid Eastern Oregon ranchers and provide jobs.

It starts with a $64,990 USDA grant to Sustainable Northwest, the non-profit, which will explore commercial uses of western juniper, a knotty, twisty wood that’s difficult to mill. The idea is to certify engineering design values for juniper, which is naturally rot-resistant and for now is largely limited to use as landscape timbers, sign posts, garden boxes and the like.

Oregon State University and the West Coast Lumber Inspection Bureau will assess the design values over the coming year. A bigger market for lumber made from western juniper could have an echo effect in Eastern Oregon, where removing the tree is seen as a key factor in helping sage grouse recover.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide in 2015 whether to list sage grouse as endangered. Western junipers are a problem because they crowd out sagebrush and grasses favored by the birds, suck up water and provide perches for hawks, ravens and other predator birds that prey on young sage grouse or eat eggs.

A 2013 study by the Nature Conservancy showed sage grouse leks, or breeding areas, do not exist where junipers and pinyon pines cover more 4 percent of the area.

Western juniper encroachment in Eastern Oregon is estimated at 6 million to 10 million acres; the Nature Conservancy study concluded an investment of $8.75 million annually could eliminate encroachment near all known Oregon leks within the next decade.

Killing junipers through prescribed burns is an acceptable treatment, but mechanical removal — logging — provides a more immediate benefit, according to the study. To make cutting juniper worth the expense, however, an expanded lumber market is necessary.

Oregon cattle ranchers and producers throughout 10 other western states believe an endangered listing for sage grouse would be devastating, bringing grazing restrictions and other regulations. In an attempt to head off listing, voluntary efforts have sprung up in several states. In May, Harney County ranchers in Southeast Oregon signed agreements to improve sage grouse habitat on up to 1 million acres of private rangeland. In return for management changes, including juniper removal, ranchers will be sheltered for 30 years from additional regulations even if the bird is listed as endangered.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — Spiky clumps of Oregon grape are just beginning to emerge in a sea of brown needles, charred bark and blackened rock blanketing southwestern Klamath County.

“It burned hot,” said Andy Geissler, pointing to naked trees and gnarled shrubs that were scorched in the 35,000-acre Oregon Gulch Fire in August.

“I haven’t seen a green needle in a while.”

On Wednesday, Geissler, a Western Oregon field forester for the American Forest Resource Council, and a representative from Boise-Cascade toured a portion of the 17,000 acres blackened in Klamath County; roughly 5,000 of those acres are public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Before the Gulch Fire ignited on July 31, the land was covered with grassy flats, shrubs, oak woodland, pine and other conifer. Now, timber managers are scouring the area to find out what’s left and if it has any value.

“Timing is the key. These trees burned and they’ve got a shelf life,” Geissler said. “It’s kind of a risky venture to put bids in on salvage wood because you just don’t know what you’re getting into.”

According to BLM forester Shane Durant, salvage logging has already begun at the Gulch Fire site.

He said the agency met National Environmental Policy Act requirements with a special exclusion that allowed timber slated for harvest on an existing sale to be salvage logged.

Durant pointed out that much of the BLM land affected by the fire is designated as Oregon and California Railroad Act (O&C) land.

He said the land was heavily logged about 100 years ago, but has since been managed as part of the O&C program intended to provide money to counties through timber production. Of the 4,870 acres burned in Klamath County, only 818 acres are public domain. The rest is O&C land.

“Half the money from those timber sales goes to the counties,” Durant said.

According to Dennis Lee, a forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Klamath-Lake District, depending on their diameter, burned trees are typically salvageable. He said timber value isn’t degraded until trees start rotting or they become infested with insects or “blue stain” fungus.

“If you get to a tree quickly, before the blue stain sets in, it’s still a good, viable log,” Lee said. “If the value goes down, it makes it harder to profit from harvesting the trees.”

Blue stain is caused by microscopic fungi that infects sapwood and causes discoloration in the shape of wedges, specks, spots, streaks or patches. Stains come in a variety of colors — not just blue including shades of yellow, orange, purple, and red. Blue stain fungi do not cause decay and do not impact the strength of the wood.

“We’re trying to error on the side of if they could live, we’ll leave them. If they die, they’ll just be another snag,” Durant said.

But eventually, dead trees will fall down, Lee said.

“And downed wood material is certainly good for the critters,” Lee said.

Jordan Beckett, a public lands advocate for K.S. Wild, agreed that dead snags can provide excellent habitat for wildlife. But, he said, as of now, K.S. Wild does not support salvage logging at the Gulch Fire site.

According to Beckett, K.S. Wild, an organization that advocates for forests, wildlife and waters of the Klamath and Rogue River basins, is concerned that BLM is not leaving enough large snags and downed wood for wildlife habitat.

“Large snags and downed wood left to naturally regenerate are unlikely to burn a second time, and they provide outstanding wildlife habitat,” Beckett said.

He said the organization also plans to monitor how many slash piles are created from logging activities.

“Post-fire logging increases fire hazard and fire severity if there are later unexpected fire events,” Beckett said.

Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild, said if resource managers want to generate complex old growth stands, complex young growth must precede it.

“Science has shown overwhelmingly that salvage logging is bad for ecosystems,” Heiken said.

According to Lee, fallen trees, whether scorched or not, provide food for bugs and birds, and create microsites for new tree growth by allowing moisture to accumulate and providing shade.

Lakeview BLM spokeswoman E. Lynn Burkett said the Gulch Fire burned hot and fast for several reasons. During the fire, conditions and fuels — like needles and the duff layer — were exceptionally dry.

Durant said fire has always been at play in this neck of the woods, but the stands of trees are not necessarily natural. He said 100 years ago, forests had less understory growth and were more open, meaning flames would be less concentrated in one area.

“You could run a fire through them without killing a lot of the trees,” Durant said.

The agency will probably start replanting this fall, he said.

“We’re leaving all the green trees. All the trees we think will survive.”

An Oregon task force on genetically engineered crops agrees that more regulatory clarity is needed for biotechnology but diverges on the specifics of any governance scheme.

Earlier this year, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber convened a task force to frame the debate over genetic engineering and issue a report to guide lawmakers during the 2015 legislative session.

After six months of discussions, the task force has now released a draft version of its report to the public.

While task force members believe there should be a “path to coexistence” among biotech, conventional and organic growers, they were divided as to whether preventing cross-pollination among such crops should be mandated by the government or conducted on a voluntary basis.

During an Oct. 23 task force meeting, members negotiated revisions to the draft.

Marty Myers, general manager of Threemile Canyon Farms, said he would like the report to emphasize the possibility of farmer-to-farmer cooperation.

“Farmers are quite good at this and have shown examples of being able to coexist in the past,” he said.

However, there have clearly been conflicts over cross-pollination, as evidenced by farmer participation in lawsuits over biotech sugar beets and alfalfa, said Ivan Maluski, director of Friends of Family Farms, which is critical of biotech regulations.

“I don’t think we would be here if it had been smooth sailing all the way on coexistence,” he said.

The topic of liability for cross-pollination also highlighted the members’ contrasting perspectives.

Suggestions that organic and conventional farmers could buy insurance to cover the risk of cross-pollination by GE crops were deemed unfair by members who said biotech companies should not be absolved from responsibility while the burden falls entirely on growers.

Some members thought biotech seed developers should be liable for harms caused by cross-pollination but others argued this approach is unfair because companies would be held “liable for actions beyond their control,” the report said.

The problem of liability is also technical, said Greg Loberg, manager of the West Coast Beet Seed Co.

The report should reflect that there is no way to ensure that seed is absolutely free of biotech genes — there has to be a testing threshold, rather than just “zero,” he said.

“In order to have compensation or enforcement, you have to have a test,” Loberg said. “What test?”

The draft report also said government policy should “clarify the interaction between state and federal law” for GMOs and define the role of state agencies in regulating biotechnology.

However, the task force did not reach consensus on what level of regulatory oversight is sufficient.

Some members were confident in conclusions by federal agencies that deregulated biotech crops are equivalent to conventional ones, while others didn’t think these studies were of adequate duration and worry about long term impacts to human health and the environment.

The State of Oregon’s current authority to regulate biotech crops and its ability to expand that oversight was another subject of dispute.

At this point, the Oregon Department of Agriculture only sets “control areas” designating where GMOs can or cannot be grown if the crops are still regulated by USDA. Once they’re deregulated, the ODA believes it no longer has authority over those crops.

“There were varied and strong perspectives among members on whether ODA should or could take on a larger role at present or if its authorities were changed,” the report said.

Oregon Consensus, a mediation program that’s assisting the task force, will adjust the draft language to incorporate changes discussed during the recent meeting.

“We want to find a solution everybody can live with,” said Peter Harkema, project manager for the program.

The task force plans to ask the public to comment on its report at a meeting in Salem, Ore., in mid-November, though a firm date has yet to be set.

A draft version of the report is available online at www.oregon.gov/gov/gnro/.