PORTLAND — The Pacific Northwest pear crop will be later than last year — which is expected, given the cooler spring. But the puzzling aspect is that it’s lighter for the fourth year in a row.

“It may be good for grower returns and we will have enough pears. It’s not like a crop failure, but it’s a little disconcerting because until the record crop in 2013 we used to have ups and downs, the alternate bearing cycle,” said Kevin Moffitt, president of The Pear Bureau Northwest in Portland.

The Northwest’s fresh pear industry’s promotional arm forecast a 17.6 million, 44-pound box crop for 2017 at its June 1 annual meeting at Portland’s Embassy Suites Hotel.

That’s down 2 percent from 18 million boxes from the 2016 crop and down 10 percent from a five-year average of 19.6 million boxes.

“It’s puzzling. We’re not positive but we think it’s weather, hot summers causing more fruit drop than in the past,” Moffitt said.

Two days earlier in Brollier Key Orchard in Monitor, Wash., west of Wenatchee, Alex Sanchez and Gabby Cortez were thinning Starkrimson pears. The small, purple pears looked scarce enough on trees to maybe not need thinning.

Michael Key, the owner’s son, said d’Anjou is very thin.

“You shake the tree and it self thins. You wonder if you’ll have a crop left. We think it was the cold winter,” Key said.

“It’s been an earlier and bigger drop this year. We heard it’s mostly in the Wenatchee district,” Moffitt said, adding Yakima and Medford are also down and that only Hood River, also called Mid-Columbia, is above last year.

Bosc appears to be the variety hardest hit at 30 percent lower estimate than last year, he said.

There will be solid volumes for domestic sales and the key export markets of Mexico, Canada, India, China and United Arab Emirates, but overall exports will be no larger than from the 2016 crop, Moffitt said.

As of May 31, 4.1 million boxes of the 2016 crop had been exported, which was 12.5 percent below 2015, he said. Exports should finish the season in August at 4.4 million to 4.5 million boxes, he said.

Imports have been down slightly this spring because of a smaller Argentinian crop, which is good, he said.

While lighter, this year’s crop is later than normal, because of a cold winter and cool spring, following two years of warm springs and early pick starts.

Wenatchee and Hood River began picking Starkrimson on July 26 last year, both early records. This year harvest is forecast to start in Medford with Comice and Seckel on Aug. 2. The crop is 17 to 20 days later than last year for most varieties and about a week later than normal, Moffitt said.

California’s crop probably is later, too, but there’s been no estimate yet, he said.

The Pear Bureau renewed grower assessments at 38.5 cents per box for promotions, 3.1 cents for research and 3.3 cents for Pear Bureau administration and funding the Northwest Horticultural Council.

The preliminary domestic and foreign promotions budget will be about $6.4 million, down $1 million for the second year in a row because of smaller crops. With federal Market Access Program money it will be about $9 million.

The forecast of winter and summer-fall pears by district is: Wenatchee, 7.8 million boxes; Hood River, 7 million; Yakima, 1.9 million and Medford 890,500.

The forecast for all districts of top varieties by volume: 8.9 million boxes of d’Anjou; 4.4 million Green Bartlett; 2.2 million Bosc and 1 million Red d’ Anjou.

The 2016 crop was 91 percent shipped as of May 19 versus 95 percent a year earlier. A little over 1.5 million boxes remained to be sold versus 900,000 a year ago.

Domestic sales have been slow this year because of competition from the large apple crop and export sales have been slowed by the strong dollar and economic issues in other countries, Moffitt said.

Yakima and Wenatchee prices of d’Anjou were $23 to $27 per box for U.S. No. 1 grade, size 80s on May 31, the same as April 24 versus $26 to $30.90 a year earlier, according to USDA.

Bosc was $24 to $27 versus $26.50 to $28 on April 24 and was sold out a year earlier.

SALEM — Oregon farm regulators would not lose a biological control program for weeds, as feared earlier this year, under the latest budget proposal before lawmakers.

The weed biocontrol position at the Oregon Department of Agriculture was set to be cut under Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s proposed biennial budget for the agency.

Under the 2017-2019 ODA budget approved by a key group of legislators on May 31, though, the weed biocontrol program would receive more than $250,000 for the biennium.

Weed biocontrol typically involves deploying insects or pathogens that prey on specific undesirable plants, such as cinnabar moth larvae consuming tansy ragwort.

The weed biocontrol position is now vacant but ODA could begin recruiting a new expert if the budget is adopted by the full Legislature and a state government hiring freeze is lifted, said Lauren Henderson, the agency’s assistant director.

Rural weed control departments worried that ending the biological control program would ultimately lead to more money being spent on increased herbicide sprays.

“Without this position being filled, weed departments are relying on the best guess to gather, place, and redistribute the biocontrols,” said Theodore Orr, Umatilla County’s weed supervisor, in written testimony.

Aside from preserving weed biocontrol, ODA’s budget proposal also contains good news for dairy farmers and other “confined animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, which are inspected by state regulators.

Under Gov. Brown’s proposal, $250,000 dedicated to CAFO inspections would be eliminated from the general fund portion of ODA’s budget, with the burden instead shifting to “other funds.”

“If that shift had happened, we would definitely have to raise the fees,” said Henderson.

The Subcommittee on Natural Resources of the Joint Ways and Means Committee has approved a budget that leaves the $250,000 for CAFO inspections in the general fund category, so fees wouldn’t be hiked to cover that gap.

Even so, the subcommittee’s budget does decrease the general fund portion of ODA’s budget to $23.3 million, down from $24.6 million during the previous biennium.

Much of that reduction is accomplished by shifting certain expenses from the general fund to “other funds” and federal funds, with the overall budget growing to $118 million, up from $112 million during 2015-2017.

For example, nearly $1.4 million for food safety programs would be shifted from the general fund to the “other” category, but ODA believes it has enough cash on hand for the next two years to prevent a fee increase, Henderson said.

Part of ODA’s administrative costs — $300,000 — is also shifted to “other funds,” but this change alone won’t force a fee increase, he said.

“It does put a burden on the other funded programs,” Henderson said.

DENVER (AP) — Forecasters say Hawaii and pockets of the Southeastern and Southwestern United States could face above-normal danger of significant wildfires this summer.

The National Interagency Fire Center’s summer outlook released Thursday shows the risk on the Big Island of Hawaii is expected to be above normal through September.

Forecasters say western Nevada faces above-normal fire danger from July through September. The risk will be high in inland Southern California in July and in parts of Northern California during August and September.

Southeastern Arizona and western New Mexico could have above-normal risk in June.

Forecasters say fire danger will be below normal through July in the Rocky Mountains and in a large swath of the Eastern U.S. from Texas to the Atlantic. The risk will return to normal in late summer.

The Oregon Legislature gave its final approval Wednesday to a bill that puts permanent limits on suction dredge mining.

The practice has been controversial because of noise and concerns about harm to fish habitat and water quality.

Suction dredge, or placer mining, is a kind of motorized in-stream mineral extraction. Picture a lawnmower motor floating on top of a pontoon in a river. The motor powers a large vacuum hose, which is used by a swimming miner to suck up sediment in the search for gold.

Fishing and environmental groups have been trying to limit the practice in Oregon for years. They succeeded in passing a partial moratorium on suction dredge mining back in 2013.  The current bill would slightly modify and codify the restrictions.

While allowing suction dredge mining to continue, the new bill would protects 20,700 miles of rivers and streams considered “essential salmon habitat.”  It restricts when suction dredges can be operated in proximity to a residence or campground.  It also requires permitting by the state.

“The main goal is to prevent this kind of hobby, recreational mining activity from undoing the hundreds of millions of dollars in salmon habitat restoration that we’ve been focusing on for decades,” says Nick Cady, Legal Director of Cascadia Wildlands.

The group has supported Senate Bill 3, which passed the House Wednesday, 38-20. The bill cleared the Oregon Senate in April. It now goes to the governor to be signed into law.

Since the moratorium passed five years ago, the number of suction dredge permits in the state has plummeted — from a recent high of about 2,000 in 2012 to just 156 last year. And while 156 suction dredge mines won’t undo hundreds of millions of dollars in salmon restoration work, a relatively small body of scientific work on the issue does point to the potential for negative effects on aquatic wildlife.

Mining enthusiasts have disputed that their hobby hurts the environment. They say the bill violates federal mining laws and will have negative economic consequences.

Samantha Everett works at Armadillo Mining Shop in Grants Pass. She says her livelihood depends on the miners who patronize the shop being able to access places to mine.

“Oregon’s in deficit, and they’re removing money out of our state?” she said, “I don’t understand the logic.”

She says state lawmakers are trying to close public lands miners have legal access to under federal law.

A large percentage of the suction dredge operations are in southwest Oregon, which has a long mining history.

“They’re locking down … a culture and way of life,” Everett says.

California banned suction dredge mining in 2009. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates the practice in Idaho. Washington has much more permissive rules governing placer mining.

SALEM — Nearly $1 million has been approved for predator control by a key group of Oregon lawmakers despite Gov. Kate Brown’s recommendation to cut the funding.

Roughly $450,000 dedicated to predator control is included in the budget for the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s next biennium that was passed May 31 by the Subcommittee on Natural Resources of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

A matching amount is also included in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s budget, which has also won a “do pass” recommendation from the subcommittee.

While each budget must still pass muster with the full Joint Committee on Ways and Means and be voted on by the Legislature, the subcommittee’s recommendation carries a lot of weight.

The approximately $900,000 in funding would be directed to USDA’s Wildlife Services division, which kills predators that predate on livestock.

Earlier this year, Brown recommended eliminating the state’s contributions to Wildlife Services to help reduce Oregon’s $1.4 billion budget shortfall in 2017-2019.

County governments also contribute money to Wildlife Services, but Oregon ranchers worried the loss of state funding would greatly diminish the USDA’s predator control efforts.

Wildlife Services is viewed by ranchers as playing a crucial role in mitigating livestock depredation, but environmental groups accuse the agency of indiscriminately killing wildlife instead of using non-lethal methods.

As part of the ODA’s budget, lawmaker included a budget note saying the agency should seek assurances for Wildlife Services that it won’t use cyanide traps, which have been implicated in the death of a wolf and a pet dog recently.

Rep. Brad Witt, D-Clatskanie, said the cyanide traps are “utterly inhumane” and he was “overjoyed” by the recommendation.

“We have these things out there, and we don’t know where they are,” said Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland.

However, Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, and Rep. Rick Lewis, R-Silverton, voted against including the recommendation.

Katie Fast, executive director of the Oregonians for Food & Shelter agribusiness group, said the subcommittee’s decision to fund predator control shows that livestock industry representatives were persuasive in their support for the program.

“People made their case,” she said.

The “do pass” recommendation is important, but in this year’s climate, nothing is final until the legislative session is done, Fast said.

Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, said he voted against the ODA’s budget because lawmakers should first figure out how to cover the $1.4 billion shortfall.

It would be better to start with a comprehensive plan rather than approve individual budgets in a piecemeal fashion, Esquivel said. “You can’t say we’re broke and then up people’s general fund budget.”

Oregon State University's 148th commencement ceremony will take place Sunday, June 17, at Reser Stadium, in Corvallis, and some local area students will be receiving their diplomas.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A judge called a New Hampshire man a “bully vigilante” and sentenced him Wednesday to more than seven years in prison for his role organizing armed backers of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy after a standoff with U.S. agents in 2014.

Gerald “Jerry” DeLemus became the first person sentenced for his ties to the confrontation that became a rallying cry for those who want vast stretches of federal land in the U.S. West put under local control. Eighteen others are in custody.

DeLemus has been jailed for almost 16 months, so the sentence means the 62-year-old former U.S. Marine will spend about six more years behind bars. His attorney, Dustin Marcello, said he will appeal.

DeLemus arrived at the Bundy ranch hours after the tense armed standoff that led to the release of the rancher’s cattle and was hailed as a victory in a decades-long fight over government-owned land.

He then spent more than a month in an encampment organizing armed patrols and serving as an intermediary between a self-styled militia and local authorities.

He had been expected to get a six-year sentence after pleading guilty last August to conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S. and interstate travel in aid of extortion.

But Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro in Las Vegas added time after faulting DeLemus for trying to withdraw his pleas. She said she didn’t think he accepted responsibility for his actions.

“I have to say, Mr. DeLemus, that you unfortunately are blinded by the information you choose to believe,” she said.

Instead of advising Bundy to abide by court orders to pay 20 years of overdue grazing fees or let agents round up his cattle from public land, Navarro said DeLemus became “a bully vigilante, threatening peacekeepers of the community.”

“I never heard you say you told Mr. Bundy ... to follow the law,” she said.

DeLemus told the judge that he traveled cross-country with weapons because he’d heard that government snipers surrounded the Bundy home. He said he was willing to “take a bullet” to protect the family.

“My concern was that someone would get hurt,” he said, choking back tears. “It wasn’t the cows. I didn’t want that family injured. God will know in the end.”

DeLemus said he never would have shot at law enforcement. He cast himself as a martyr to his Christian beliefs and cited a biblical passage that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

“I may not have given it out there,” he said of the standoff near Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. “I’m giving it now, in jail.”

DeLemus once ran for sheriff and mayor in his hometown of Rochester, New Hampshire, and served as a delegate to the Republican National Committee.

His wife, Susan DeLemus, a former Republican state lawmaker, sat among Bundy supporters in court, where several waved and thanked DeLemus as he was led away.

“We’ll make it through this,” she said later.

Bundy, two of his sons and two other defendants are due for trial later this year. Six others, including two other Bundy sons, may not be tried until early next year.

SALEM — Pacific Coast Producers, a grower cooperative in Lodi, Calif., is buying the processing portion of Oregon Cherry Growers in Salem.

Pacific Coast Producers processes and packages fruits and tomatoes for private label retail and food service sales. It plans to operate OCG as a stand-alone subsidiary that will continue to use the OCG name and operate OCG facilities in Salem and The Dalles. The deal is expected to close by June 17.

OCG’s fresh cherry business will continue independent of the transaction as Cascade Fruit Growers.

“We believe this acquisition will be positive for the future of Oregon Cherry Growers, for our employees and our growers,” Tim Ramsey, president and CEO of Oregon Cherry Growers, said in a news release.

Founded in 1932, OCG is made up of almost 60 family farms in the Willamette Valley and Columbia River Gorge. The cooperative is the largest grower-processor of sweet cherries in the world, including fresh, maraschino, glace, frozen, IQF, dried and canned cherries, as well as a wide variety of dried fruit, servicing the food service, retail and industrial ingredient channels.

“We appreciate Oregon Cherry Growers’ 85 years of quality, service and innovation and their experience in supplying cherry ingredients to customers around the world,” said Dan Vincent, president and CEO of Pacific Coast Producers.

Values and strengths of the two cooperatives align well and the deal will allow Pacific Coast Producers to grow and further serve customer needs, he said.

Pacific Coast Producers represents growers of peaches, pears, grapes, apricots, apples and plums. It is the premier private brand supplies of canned fruits and tomatoes.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission heard from dozens of people with diametrically opposed views when it took its wolf plan review on the road to hearings in Klamath Falls and Portland this spring. When the commission sits down with ODFW staff June 8 in Salem, members will sift those viewpoints with their own to determine how the state will manage a top predator that wasn’t here when the plan was first adopted a dozen years ago. Adoption of a five-year plan is expected late this year.

Potential changes are on the distant horizon. Ultimately, the state will decide whether wolves are hunted like cougars and bears, whether USDA’s APHIS Wildlife Services — loathed by conservation groups — will investigate livestock attacks, whether to give livestock producers more leeway to kill wolves, whether to set population caps, and more.

A model of where Oregon’s wolf management may be headed can be found in Idaho, which was the source of the first wolves to enter Oregon and has much more experience balancing the presence of an apex predator with the interests and economic well-being of hunters and livestock producers.

Idaho has an estimated 800 wolves — probably more — and has actively managed them since federal officials took wolves off the endangered species list statewide in 2011.

Compared to Oregon, which documented 112 wolves at the end of 2016, Idaho’s numbers are staggering.

In 2015, hunters and trappers legally killed 256 wolves in Idaho, the same number as in 2014. Another 75 wolves were “lethally controlled.” Of those, 54 were killed in response to livestock depredations or by producers protecting herds. Another 21 wolves were taken out to protect deer and elk populations in Northern Idaho.

In all, Idaho documented 358 wolf deaths in 2015; two fewer than in 2014. Figures for 2016 were not available.

According to Idaho Fish and Game, the number of sheep and cattle killed by wolves has been “stable to declining” since the state began allowing hunting in 2009. In 2015, wolves killed 44 cattle, 134 sheep, three dogs and a horse.

Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore has described Idaho’s wolf population as healthy and sustainable.

Department spokesman Mike Keckler said the state has proven it can manage wolves in balance with livestock and prey species.

“There’s no doubt state management of wolves has been a success in Idaho,” Keckler said. “We remove wolves when they cause problems, we’re not afraid to do that. We move quickly when problems occur.”

The thought of Oregon adopting such an attitude doesn’t sit well with conservation groups.

“This is not Idaho,” Cascadia Wildlands legal director Nick Cady said pointedly during ODFW’s May 19 hearing in Portland.

Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild warn the state shouldn’t loosen its wolf management rules. Rob Klavins, Oregon Wild’s field coordinator in Northeast Oregon, said Oregon’s adherence to its adopted plan was one of the reasons there wasn’t more of an outcry when the department shot four members of the Imnaha Pack in 2016.

During the Klamath Falls and Portland ODFW hearings, representatives from the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, Oregon Hunters Association and Oregon Farm Bureau urged changes.

Among other things, producers say ODFW staff is spread too thin and sometimes can’t respond quickly to wolf attacks. They favor allowing Wildlife Services to investigate livestock attacks as well, and make the call on whether wolves were responsible. They oppose a draft plan proposal to change the lethal control standard to three confirmed depredations or one confirmed and four “probable” attacks within a 12 month period. The current standard is two confirmed depredations or one confirmed and three attempted attacks, with no time period set.

Todd Nash, a Wallowa County commissioner and the Cattlemen’s Association wolf chair, said a neighbor has eight cows. If wolves kill three in one night, he asked during the Portland hearing, does the producer have to endure two more attacks before lethal control is taken?

The groups also believe ODFW should continue collaring wolves, and should set a population cap for wolves in Oregon.

ODFW Director Curt Melcher said the commission heard good points from all sides.

“Even though folks don’t agree, they all got along just fine,” he said. “It was a respectful process. The other remarkable thing is that nobody is saying there shouldn’t be any wolves in Oregon. That wasn’t the case not too long ago. Everybody recognizes we’re going to have wolves in Oregon and we’re going to have to manage them.”

Melcher said Oregon’s plan anticipated reaching a point in the future where hunting becomes a part of wolf population management, as it is with other game animals. He said the original plan drafters also anticipated wolf management, including lethal control, becoming more routine. It is logical for Wildlife Services to help on depredation investigations he said. As wolves increase in number and geographical range, investigations become a workload management issue for ODFW, he said.

“I think we’ve done a good job so far,” he said. “We’ve navigated through potentially difficult waters and in large part have done it efficiently.”

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Andre Shavers was sentenced to five years on felony probation after authorities burst into the house where he was living in one of Oakland’s most heavily policed neighborhoods and found a quarter ounce of marijuana.

After the 2007 raid, Shavers couldn’t leave the state without permission. He was subject to police searches at any time. He walked to the corner store one night for maple syrup and came back in a police car. Officers wanted to search his home again.

All the while, cannabis storefronts flourished elsewhere in a state where medical marijuana was authorized in 1996.

Now Oakland and other cities and states with legal pot are trying to make up for the toll marijuana enforcement took on minorities by giving them a better shot at joining the growing marijuana industry. African-Americans made up 83 percent of cannabis arrests in Oakland in the year Shavers was arrested.

“I was kind of robbed of a lot for five years,” Shavers said. “It’s almost like, what do they call that? Reparations. That’s how I look at it. If this is what they’re offering, I’m going to go ahead and use the services.”

The efforts’ supporters say legalization is enriching white people but not brown and black people who have been arrested for cannabis crimes at far greater rates than whites.

Recreational pot is legal in eight states and the nation’s capital. California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada approved ballot questions in November. They join Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia, which acted earlier. Twenty-nine states permit medical marijuana.

Massachusetts’ ballot initiative was the first to insert specific language encouraging participation in the industry by those “disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement.” The law does not specify how that would be accomplished.

In Ohio, a 2016 medical pot law included setting aside 15 percent of marijuana-related licenses for minority businesses. In Pennsylvania, applicants for cultivation and dispensing permits must spell out how they will achieve racial equity.

Florida lawmakers agreed last year to reserve one of three future cultivation licenses for a member of the Florida Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association.

There have been setbacks as well. The Maryland General Assembly adjourned last month without acting on a bill to guarantee a place for minority-owned businesses that were not awarded any of the state’s initial 15 medical marijuana cultivation licenses.

There’s no solid data on how many minorities own U.S. cannabis businesses or how many seek a foothold in the industry. But diversity advocates say the industry is overwhelmingly white.

The lack of diversity, they say, can be traced to multiple factors: rules that disqualify people with prior convictions from operating legal cannabis businesses; lack of access to banking services and capital to finance startup costs; and state licensing systems that tend to favor established or politically connected applicants.

“It’s a problem that has been recognized but has proven to be relatively intractable,” said Sam Kamin, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law who studies marijuana regulation.

In 2010, blacks constituted 14 percent of the U.S. population but made up more than 36 percent of all arrests for pot possession, according to an American Civil Liberties Union study released in 2013 . The report found African-Americans were nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested for cannabis possession.

That study did not report Latino arrests because the FBI data on which it was based did not track Hispanics. But a 2016 study by the ACLU of California and the Drug Policy Alliance found Latinos were cited at 1.4 times the rate of white people for marijuana infractions in Los Angeles and 1.7 percent the rate in Fresno.

The Minority Cannabis Business Association has drafted model legislation for states considering new or revised marijuana laws, including language to expunge pot-related convictions and to encourage racial and gender diversity among cannabis businesses.

“The people who got locked up should not get locked out of this industry,” said Tito Jackson, a Boston city councilman and mayoral candidate. He suggests Massachusetts give licensing preference to groups that include at least one person with a marijuana conviction.

The Oakland City Council in April voted to set aside half of medical cannabis licenses for people who have been convicted of a marijuana crime or who lived in one of 21 police districts with disproportionately high marijuana arrests. Candidates must meet income restrictions.

Complicating matters is that marijuana remains illegal under federal law — a fact seen as unlikely to change under President Donald Trump. That makes most banks reluctant to lend money to startup cannabis businesses, which often must rely instead on personal wealth.

An Oakland-based nonprofit known as The Hood Incubator provides training and mentoring to minority cannabis entrepreneurs.

“Maybe they lack the money to get into the industry or they might have, you know, gotten arrested in the past for oh, what do you know? Selling weed. And now they can’t actually get into the legal industry,” said Ebele Ifedigbo, one of the group’s three co-founders.

Under Oakland’s program, applicants who don’t qualify for a so-called equity license can still get preference if they “incubate” a minority-owned business with free rent or other help.

Dan Grace, president of Dark Heart Nursery, is nervous about finding a partner but ready to make the program work. Debby Goldsberry, Magnolia Wellness dispensary’s executive director, said the industry is primed to change and expand.

“Why? Because there’s a prohibition that’s been out there targeting people in our communities in Oakland, and it’s very unfair,” she said.

Oakland hosted a business mixer this month that attracted several hundred people, including retirees who have never smoked a joint and people who served time for marijuana offenses and established cannabis businesses.

That group included Shavers, who hopes his drug-related record helps him get office space and investors to grow his delivery service, The Medical Strain.

“It’s a blessing in disguise,” he said, “but not the blessing I would recommend.”

———

Salsberg reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

PORTLAND — SAIF’s discount to Oregon AgLink members for supplemental workers’ comp coverage has been increased to 6 percent effective July 1, the association has announced.

The current discount is 2 percent.

“This is a big deal,” Geoff Horning, executive director of AgLink, said. “At a time when so many in the agricultural community are looking or ways to save money, this program saves our members money on a service they are required to have.”

The discount is calculated by the state each year, and is a ratio of actual losses divided by expected losses.

“The group continues to earn a discount as long as the collective members’ performance is better than what the rating bureau would have expected,” Pat Morrill, Agency and Group Program coordinator for SAIF, said.

To be eligible for the discount an agricultural entity must be a member of Oregon Aglink at the time of their renewal and have a mod rate of 1.0 or better. The discount does not take effect until the company’s renewal date, but is good for one calendar year regardless of the July recalculation. Thus, a member who has an October renewal, for instance, would not receive the increased discount until October, but would keep the discount until their next renewal. At that time the new recalculated discount would take effect.

“We’re proud of the partnership we have with SAIF,” Horning said. “They are an organization committed to providing agricultural workers with a safer work environment. They’ve helped us develop numerous safety videos, and their ag seminars are a staple throughout Oregon. At the end of the day, the discount is just the cherry on top. Agriculture comes with a fair amount of risk to our employees, and the important thing is creating an environment where all of our workers come home safely to their families every night. SAIF really is committed to making that happen.”

Anybody with questions can contact the Oregon Aglink office at info@aglink.org, or join the association at www.aglink.org/membership/join.

Tuesdays

Oregon State University's 148th commencement ceremony will take place Sunday, June 17, at Reser Stadium, in Corvallis, and some local area students will be receiving their diplomas.

Sept. 23, 1915 – May 20, 2017

Capital Press

Idaho wheat farmers are behind on their spring planting.

About 78 percent of the state’s spring wheat crop was planted the week of May 15, compared to 99 percent the same time in 2016, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. The five-year average for this time of year is 100 percent complete.

“We’re way behind schedule,” said Blaine Jacobson, executive director of the Idaho Wheat Commission.

Spring wheat was planted in southwest, southcentral and southeast Idaho, but the delays were in the biggest growing area, the prairies of northern Idaho, due to snow, rain and a late spring, Jacobson said.

Farmers were eligible for crop insurance beginning May 15. Growers have to decide whether to attempt a spring crop or take a crop insurance payment for prevented planting.

“There’s a lot of worry about planting this late and how late the harvest would be, whether they would get it out of the field before the fall storms start,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson expects an overall crop similar to last year’s, if the northern region is able to plant. Winter wheat went in with good moisture, he said.

“It’s been cool so far, which sometimes helps wheat grow,” he said. “If it gets too hot too fast, it stunts it, but it’s been really good growing conditions for the winter wheat so far.”

For the same week, Washington’s spring wheat was 95 percent planted, down from 100 percent last year. The five-year average for this time of year is 100 percent.

“With the excellent moisture and growing-degree days, the spring crop could catch up,” said Washington Grain Commission CEO Glen Squires.

Squires believes wheat yields could be higher than USDA projections of 67 bushels per acre for the state.

“We’re just waiting for the crop to develop,” he said.

Eighty-seven percent of Oregon’s spring wheat crop has emerged, according to NASS. The crop was probably three to four weeks late in getting planted on average, but will likely make up some of that delay when the weather warms up, said Blake Rowe, Oregon Wheat CEO.

“With average weather, we might be a couple weeks late to harvest, but I wouldn’t look for much of a yield hit,” Rowe said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A dry wash cuts through rolling hills dotted by desert plants at Lindsay Chiquoine’s research site near Lake Mead, but the only scenery that seems to interest her is right at her feet.

The UNLV restoration ecologist is staring down at a patch of dirt topped with tiny blackened lumps and spires. But what looks like dried mud is actually a complex community of organisms waiting to spring to life with the first drops of rain.

“It’s like a living carpet,” she says. “It’s almost an ecosystem in itself.”

Chiquoine specializes in the study of biological soil crusts, a once-overlooked world of highly specialized mosses, lichens, photosynthetic bacteria and their byproducts that bring life to open spaces in arid environments.

When healthy and intact, this living ground cover no more than a few inches thick can reduce erosion, control dust, improve fertility, absorb water and store carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global warming.

Chiquoine says so-called bio crust is found in dry-land settings worldwide, from Ohio to Antarctica. By some estimates, it could make up as much as 70 percent of all the living ground cover in the Mojave Desert.

“The surprising thing is people come out here and they don’t even see it. It’s just dirt to them,” Chiquoine said. “This is an important part of the ecosystem, and it’s often ignored.”

RESURRECTED BY RAIN

On a Tuesday morning Chiquoine was checking the last of 96 different research plots, some of them fenced with chicken wire, along a road in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The plots are part of an ongoing study of living crusts in an area disturbed by the realignment of the road almost a decade ago. In places, Chiquoine and her research team attempted to reintroduce the crust and boost its recovery using a variety of treatments.

So far, she said, they have succeeded in improving soil stability by spurring crust development at the microscopic level, but nothing they have tried in the field has produced the lush, beautiful crusts that develop naturally under the proper conditions.

At one such natural patch, Chiquoine leans in for a closer look. Before long, she’s bent over in a practiced crouch, her nose just a few inches from the ground. She snaps photos, collects samples and taps her observations into a tablet.

One of the most amazing things about bio-crusts, Chiquoine said, is their ability to lie completely dormant when dry. They don’t die exactly. They simply cease all function until the rain returns.

To demonstrate, Chiquoine pours water on a small patch of black spires. Almost immediately, the brittle formations swell and grow spongy, as patches of moss, once brown and almost invisible, flare emerald green. A sweet scent wafts from the resurrected crust, filling the air at ground level with what desert dwellers know as the smell of a downpour.

TOUGH BUT BRITTLE

To Matthew Bowker, one of the leading experts in the field, biological soil crust is like a stopwatch that only ticks when the ground is wet.

“Whenever it rains, (the organisms) wake up, and that’s when they do everything,” said Bowker, a Las Vegas native and UNLV graduate who now works as an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University’s School of Forestry. “The only time they’re active is when it rains.”

And that’s not the only useful desert adaptation. “That dark color you see is a kind of sunscreen,” Bowker said.

But living crust is as fragile as it is resilient. Bust it and it’s likely to stay that way for a very long time.

Bowker said there are patches of the stuff in parts of eastern California that still bear the scars from General George Patton’s desert warfare training 75 years ago.

“It could be centuries of recovery in some areas,” he said. “Nobody really knows because no one has been watching these things.”

At the northern end of Lake Mead, Chiquoine pointed out a set of fresh-looking tracks punched through the crust near her research plot. She said they’re probably her footprints from when she was setting up the plot back in 2012.

“It’s hard to be light out here,” she said.

FROM LAB TO LANDSCAPE

Chiquoine isn’t the only scientist in this emerging field who is looking for ways to repair some of the damage done in the name of human progress.

Bowker and his research team can now grow several species of soil organisms in the lab, turning small patches of harvested crust into large ones. The next step is to see if those admittedly coddled, lab-grown colonies can be turned loose to make crust in the wild.

“Once you’ve grown them, they may or may not be able to hack it in the cruel world,” he said.

Bowker and company are about to launch one such an experiment on federal land in the Rainbow Gardens area just east of the Las Vegas Valley, where the planned expansion of a gypsum mine will serve as a donor site. “We’re getting funding from (the Bureau of Land Management) to see if this is a viable restoration strategy,” he said.

Bowker and Chiquoine hope their work will lead to the development of effective and economical new products and procedures that can “restore life” to pipeline rights-of-way, shuttered mines, decommissioned solar arrays and other large land disturbances.

As Chiquoine put it: “Crust isn’t doing much if it’s just laying around in a Petri dish.”

An Oregon livestock nutrition company has prevailed in a lawsuit over trade secrets against a former employee who was found to have intentionally destroyed evidence.

A federal judge has entered a default judgment against Yongqiang Wang, the former employee, as punishment for deleting emails and giving away a computer likely containing information related to trade secrets owned by Omnigen Research.

U.S. District Judge Michael McShane said the “extreme measure” of a default ruling against Wang was justified because he severely interfered with the orderly administration of justice in the case.

“These actions have deprived the plaintiffs of evidence central to their case and undermined the court’s ability to enter a judgment based on the evidence,” McShane said.

Roger Hennagin, the attorney representing Wang, said he could not comment on the ruling because he hasn’t yet been able to discuss it with his client, who works in China.

The complaint against Wang was initially filed last year by Omnigen, a company founded by former Oregon State University professor Neil Forsberg and later sold to Phibro Animal Health for $23 million.

The lawsuit accused Wang of planning to sell feed additives in China that were based on trade secrets stolen from Omnigen, a company that employed him between 2005 and 2013.

Omnigen’s feed additives, which counteract hemorrhagic bowel syndrome in cattle, are used by roughly 20 percent of the U.S. dairy cow herd and the company hoped to expand its reach to China.

Wang obtained “sham” patents in China from confidential information he accessed while working for Omnigen and secretly launched two companies, Mirigen and Bioshen, to sell the additives in that country, the complaint alleged.

In a counterclaim against Omnigen, Wang denied relying on his former employer’s trade secrets and claimed Forsberg unjustly enriched himself by failing to share profits with Wang, as earlier promised.

According to McShane, the case was “plagued” by evidence problems “from its inception,” with Wang deleting more than 4,000 files from his computer despite a preliminary injunction requiring him to preserve evidence.

While many of the files were recovered, some documents that were probably relevant to the case were permanently destroyed, the judge said.

Both Wang and his wife also deleted emails detailing their involvement in the formation of Mirigen and Bioshen and donated a desktop computer to Goodwill shortly after the preliminary injunction was issued, McShane said.

While the default judgment means that Wang has lost the case, the judge still intends to hold a hearing to establish damages owed to Omnigen.

His tracking collar went dead in 2015, but OR-7, the wandering wolf, is alive and well. This spring, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trail camera caught him trotting along with what a wildlife biologist said is an elk leg in his mouth.

Federal wildlife biologist John Stephenson said OR-7 was taking food back to his den. For the fourth consecutive year, OR-7 appears to be denned up with the same unidentified female who joined him in the Southwest Oregon Cascades in 2014.

The Rogue Pack, of which he’s the alpha male, numbered six over the winter. This spring, Stephenson saw tracks in the snow of at least five wolves. OR-7 has shown up in trail camera photos several times this spring, most recently on May 18.

“He looks good,” Stephenson said.

OR-7 is now 8 years old, which is somewhat old for a wolf in the wild, Stephenson said. It became Oregon’s best known wolf when it dispersed from the Imnaha Pack in Northeast Oregon in 2011 and cut a diagonal across the state and into California. Because he was wearing a tracking collar, wildlife agencies and the public could follow his travels, and for better or worse he came to symbolize the return of wolves to Oregon’s landscape,

OR-7 was the first documented wolf in California since 1924, but eventually returned to Oregon and established what ODFW named the Rogue Pack in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. He and his mate have produced several litters of pups over the years.

His mate has never been caught or collared and is something of a mystery. Analysis of her scat, however, showed she is related to wolves from Northeast Oregon or Idaho.

Stephenson said he hopes to fit a new tracking collar on OR-7, his mate or one of the other adults in the pack.