BAKER CITY, Ore. (AP) — Oregon wildlife officials will allow a cattle rancher to kill two wolves from a new pack in Baker County along the Idaho border.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said Tuesday the wolves had killed three calves and hurt four more over a two-day period.
The rancher had requested the right to kill the entire pack, but ODFW set the limit at two animals.
The rancher has until May 4 to kill up to two wolves and Oregon wildlife officials can also kill them.
The wolves were designated as a new pack after a winter count showed it has eight wolves.
Wolf advocates criticized ODFW’s decision and said it was inhumane to allow the killing when the breeding female in the pack is pregnant.
A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management violated environmental law by rounding up wild horses in Eastern Oregon after a 2016 fire.
Friends of Animals, a nonprofit group that filed a lawsuit against BLM, has sought to overturn the agency’s approval of the roundup, which could lead to some horses being returned to the Three Fingers Management Area in Malheur County.
The BLM initially conducted an environmental assessment on gathering and removing wild horses from the 62,500-acre area in 2011, but then decided on a smaller-scale roundup in 2016.
Shortly before the operation was set to begin in August 2016, however, the Cherry Road wildfire ignited in the area, burning about 15,000 acres of pasture — roughly half the range used by wild horses in the management area.
While the planned roundup was canceled due to the fire, BLM soon decided to conduct an “emergency gather” due to the lost forage and limited water sources for the animals.
Under the emergency gather, the BLM approved removing 150 horses — up from about 50 before the fire occurred — leaving about 80 to 120 in the area.
Friends of Animals alleged the emergency action “went far beyond what was necessary to control the immediate impacts” of the fire without a proper review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
Instead of permanently removing the horses, BLM could have examined “relocation, temporary removal, fencing and providing supplemental water” to mitigate the fire’s immediate effects, the group argued.
U.S. District Judge Michael Simon has found that BLM’s emergency gather went further than necessary to counter the fire’s immediate impacts, requiring additional analysis under NEPA.
“Its stated rationale for conducting the gather was not just to control the immediate effects of the fire, but to ensure survival of the horses over the next two seasons, and aid in the habitat’s recovery,” he said.
The BLM claimed the emergency action met that requirement because it was based on reviews conducted for the previous roundup decisions and other plans for the region.
However, the judge disagreed that BLM took the necessary “hard look” at the emergency gather’s environmental consequences, since the agency didn’t analyze the effects of the fire itself or why it was necessary to remove more horses.
“The Emergency Gather Decision does not discuss whether there are any new circumstances, information, or effects not previously analyzed since the earlier NEPA documents,” he said.
While the approval was “arbitrary and capricious” contrary to the law, the judge said he will separately deliberate on the appropriate remedy for this violation.
Luncinda Bach, attorney for the government in this case, said she couldn’t comment on the ruling. Capital Press was unable to reach an attorney from Friends of Animals for comment.
HALFWAY, Ore. — Baker County ranchers submitted a request April 9 asking the state to kill wolves preying on cattle in the low hills surrounding Halfway.
The request asks that collared wolf OR-50, involved in repeated kills in Wallowa County last year, and seven additional wolves traveling with him, be killed to quell chronic cattle loss to wolves in northeastern Baker County.
According to George Rollins, Oregon Cattlemen’s Association wolf committee co-chaiman, rancher Chad Delcurto turned out 130 cow and calf pairs into a private pasture on Wednesday, April 4. The cattle were held overnight in a corral so the mothers and calves could find each other in a safe enclosure.
On Thursday, the cow/calf pairs were driven up from the corrals to higher ground. Rollins said the cattle were held to make sure they paired up again. There were no wolf sightings that afternoon, yet the next day, an employee of Pine Valley Ranch was scouting for a hunting trip and saw wolves chasing and attacking Delcurto’s cattle.
“He (ranch employee) ran to them, video taped them and then contacted everyone he could get in touch with Chad,” Rollins said.
Delcurto assembled a crew on horseback to check the cattle. The horseback riders rode into the middle of wolves among the cattle and attempted to chase the predators away.
While checking the herd the horseback crew found two dead calves approximately one mile apart from each other. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staff in Baker County as well as Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash and Deputy Rob Adams performed an investigation.
“A picture was taken of a cow standing over her dead calf with wolves 20 feet away,” Rollins said.
Rollins said another crew was assembled on April 7to gather the entire herd and determine if there were any further losses. During the gathering the horseback riders discovered wolves attacking another calf.
“Riders harassed the wolves (five wolves were visible at the site) and drove them over the ridge west of where the attack took place,” Rollins said.
The calf had significant bites with visible open wounds on both rear legs. Rollins said it was unable to travel and was left behind with his mother who was also showing lameness. At the corrals, 130 cows were counted and 124 calves, including the pair left on the hillside. Four of those calves showed visible wounds on their rear legs and hindquarters.
The calf left on the hillside was later euthanized and the carcass investigated. Again, wolves were seen in close proximity during the investigation.
“So at this point Chad had three calves confirmed killed, four confirmed injured and three missing in 48 hours,” Rollins said. “If you total that up, sold as 550 pound calves, that’s a $10,000 loss.”
According to Michelle Dennehy, of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, OR-50 moved into the Pine Creek Wildlife Unit in Baker County last fall and joined up with a female wolf, OR-36.
Rollins said there have been regular sightings of wolves within 400 yards of the Pine Valley Ranch shop outside of Halfway where he recently retired as manager. Fish and Wildlife biologists have repeatedly hazed wolves away from the ranch headquarters.
“The ODFW guys have done a remarkable job hazing — they were concerned there would be depredations in the spring time,” Rollins said. “They ran wolves probably 20 miles with helicopters back into the forest to the Imnaha River again and that lasted about 36 hours.”
In the next few days Rollins said eight more producers are getting set to turn out cattle in the low hills where Delcurto’s cattle are grazing. Convinced the wolves will continue attacking livestock, Rollins said he anticipates a decision from the state on the kill request this week.
Heavy precipitation across much of Idaho’s midsection during March bodes well for water users such as Galen Lee, who farms between Caldwell, Idaho, and Ontario, Ore.
“We haven’t had to make a change for the current year or in recent years,” said Lee, who operates Sunnyside Farm LLC near New Plymouth, Idaho.
Strong recent precipitation coupled with ample carry-over storage in reservoirs in the wake of the high-water 2017 help ensure many Idaho farmers can move forward as planned.
March precipitation totaled about 165 percent of the 30-year average across a swath of central Idaho encompassing the Boise River system to the west and the Big Wood, Little Wood, Big Lost and Little Lost rivers to the east, said Ron Abramovich, a water supply specialist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Boise.
These basins are now up to about 75 percent of their average snowpack compared to 45 to 70 percent a month earlier.
Snowpack totaled 50 to 80 percent of the 30-year average for March across southern Idaho including the Owyhee drainage to the west, the Bear River Basin to the east, and the Bruneau, Salmon Falls and Oakley basins from west to east in the middle.
Owyhee was on the low end of the range, and the Bear River Basin was on the high end. Abramovich said streamflow forecasts across this area call for 40 to 70 percent of normal runoff.
“Water supplies will be adequate this year across Idaho due to carryover storage and the snowpack we currently have in the mountains,” Abramovich said.
Lee said the Black Canyon Reservoir, in the Emmett-Horseshoe Bend area, is well-supplied. That benefits Sunnyside and other farms served by associated canal companies.
“If there were a predicted shortage, we would make a change. We would have to,” said Lee, board member and past president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. For example, he would consider planting more wheat and less corn, which uses more water.
He said crops suited to year-to-year changes include wheat, corn and even sugar beets, subject to growers’ minimum targets. Crops that stay in the field long-term — and offer less flexibility — include mint, alfalfa and asparagus.
Sunnyside Farm grows about 500 acres of corn and 229 acres of beets. Other acreage totals include peppermint at 200, alfalfa hay at 180 and asparagus at 35. Sunnyside also operates a 280-head dairy and small feedlot.
Going forward, “we are in pretty good shape,” Lee said. “We have had some water this year.”
The Idaho Water Supply Outlook Report for April 1 is expected to be available by April 6 at https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/id/snow/.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Forget about bike-share stations in Chicago or pedestrian walkways in Oakland. That’s so Obama-era.
In the Trump administration, a popular $500 million transportation grant program is focused more on projects in rural areas that turned out for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. That means more road and rail projects in GOP strongholds such as Idaho, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, and fewer “greenways,” “complete streets” and bike lanes.
The latest round of these grants has nothing for New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. Money in those Democratic heavy states went instead to projects in Trump-friendly regions: repainting a bridge in New York’s North Country, contributing to a highway project in Modesto, California, and upgrading an interstate highway in southern Illinois.
It’s a refocusing from the priorities of the previous administration, which gave most of these TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants to urban areas represented by President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.
“More than 64 percent of this round of TIGER funding was awarded to rural projects, a historic number that demonstrates this Administration’s commitment to supporting the country’s rural communities,” the Transportation Department said in a release announcing the grants last month.
“I was very pleased,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, when asked about the focus on rural areas. Maine won $10.8 million to help repair three rural bridges on routes critical to the state’s timber industry.
The program was established under Obama’s 2009 economic recovery bill. The grants, distributed at the discretion of the administration, are just a small fraction of the overall federal transportation dollars when compared with more than $50 billion distributed annually to states by formula from the highway trust fund.
Trump has twice targeted the grant program for elimination, only to sign a huge spending bill into law last month that tripled its budget to $1.5 billion.
Questions arose during the Obama administration about political favoritism when grants consistently went in greater numbers to congressional districts represented by Democrats. For example, in 2013, about two-thirds of TIGER money was awarded to such districts.
One of those grants went to help Florida International University construct a pedestrian bridge over a busy road. The structure collapsed last month, killing six people.
Grants are awarded according to a competitive process that analyzes criteria such as economic benefits, safety, state of disrepair, and the environmental benefits of projects. The Government Accountability Office looked into the program a few years ago at the request of then-Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and found that projects with lower grades often won out over top-rated projects.
Of the 41 grants announced by the Trump administration, 25 totaling $271 million were awarded to projects in congressional districts represented by Republicans. Districts represented by Democrats garnered 14 projects and $190 million. Two grants worth $25 million went to projects spanning district lines.
That’s a reversal from the Obama administration, which in its last year in office provided just $102 million in grants to rural areas. That was just above the 20 percent minimum required by the law that established the program.
The Obama administration funded numerous urban projects centered on pedestrian walkways and bike trails. More than one-third of Obama’s final round of grants featured bike-friendly projects. A 2016 grant, for instance, helped pay for a “multi-modal greenway” in Lexington, Kentucky, to integrate a network of bike and pedestrian trails.
The Trump grants contain just a handful of such projects, including a pedestrian and bike trail along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and preservation of a historic railroad pedestrian bridge in Mill City, Oregon.
The Trump administration is focused more on economic development projects such as port upgrades in Alabama, Baltimore and New Orleans. Some $25 million would help Arizona ease congestion from a busy U.S.-Mexico port of entry in Nogales.
Other projects include reopening an inactive freight rail line in Idaho, easing traffic in Big Sky, a tourist destination in Montana, and contributing to a highway bypass around Lincoln, Nebraska.
A port project in Alabama would build a “roll on/roll off” facility that would serve several automobile manufacturing plants. Fort Smith, Arkansas, would benefit from repair projects for three deteriorating freight rail bridges. An additional $10 million would replace rail lines servicing farmers and energy producers in southern Illinois.
While Oregon’s mountain snowpack is in much better shape than it was just two months ago, it is likely too little, too late.
April is usually the time when snow peaks around the state, though the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service reports all basins are still behind on snowpack, with most measuring between 40 and 70 percent of normal levels.
The news does not bode well for stream flows or drought conditions heading into summer, said Scott Oviatt, NRCS snow survey supervisor.
“Snow and cooler weather in March was not enough to bring snowpack levels up to normal,” Oviatt said. “Mountain snowpack peaked well below normal this winter at most locations in Oregon.”
Areas closest to the Columbia River seemed to fare best over the winter, with the Hood River, Sandy and Lower Deschutes basins at 94 percent of normal. The Umatilla, Walla Walla and Willow basins also reached 93 percent of normal.
Southern Oregon, and especially southeast Oregon, are in much rougher shape. The Malheur and Owyhee basins both received less than half their usual snowpack, and the Klamath Basin just barely at 50 percent. Gov. Kate Brown has already declared a drought in Klamath County.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is not forecasting much in terms of relief. The next three months will more than likely see average to above-average temperatures across the state, along with below-average precipitation.
“Our best hope is a cool spring that helps to prolong the snow we have further into the season,” Oviatt said.
The NRCS released its April stream flow forecast on Friday. Not surprisingly, it predicts that rivers closest to the Columbia River are expected to have average to near average flows. Others may be “well below normal,” depending on their location.
“Water users that are not able to take advantage of reservoir storage will likely experience significantly reduced water supplies this summer, especially in the southern and southeastern basins of Oregon,” the report states. “The governor declared a drought emergency in Klamath County in March and more counties may follow.”
Summer stream flows could be as low as 30-60 percent of average in the Klamath, Harney, Crooked, Owyhee, Malheur, Lake and Goose Lake basins. The silver lining for Eastern Oregon irrigators is the status of reservoirs, which are storing close to normal amounts of water. Once again, the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Willow basins are at the top of the heap with reservoirs at a collective 123 percent of normal.
The lowest reservoir levels can be found in the Rogue and Umpqua basins of western Oregon, at 88 percent of average.
EUGENE, Ore. — The growing consumer appetite for organic food has caused a chain reaction through the agriculture industry, all the way through to farm input suppliers.
Rising interest in organic farming has spurred the creation of new products and companies seeking to supply those growers with organic fertilizers, pesticides and other goods.
Over the past 20 years, the number of products listed for organic use by the Organic Materials Review Institute has increased from fewer than 200 to more than 6,000.
OMRI, a nonprofit based in Eugene, Ore., is charged with ensuring those crop, livestock and processing products comply with organic standards established by the USDA.
In just the last year, the number of products listed by OMRI has shot up 20 percent.
There is some confusion about the institute’s role in the organic industry, said Peggy Miars, its executive director.
Companies occasionally try to convince OMRI to approve a product even though it contains a prohibited substance, not understanding the organization doesn’t make such calls, she said.
OMRI doesn’t decide whether it’s appropriate for a substance to be allowed in organic production — that responsibility falls to the USDA’s National Organic Program and an advisory group of industry stakeholders, the National Organic Standards Board.
“We never advocate for or against a particular substance,” said Miars.
Instead, the institute evaluates the formulations of branded products to determine if they’re composed of substances that are permitted by USDA.
When a substance is proposed for inclusion in organic production, the USDA may also hire the institute to research the material’s impacts on the environment and human health.
However, OMRI doesn’t make recommendations and stays out of controversies about approving or prohibiting substances, said Miars.
“One reason OMRI is respected is because we are neutral,” she said. “We don’t go one way or another.”
The vast majority of products listed by OMRI — 86 percent — pertain to growing crops, and most of those are fertilizers and soil amendments.
The remaining 14 percent are fairly evenly split between livestock products and processing products, such as those used to make cheese and wine.
In recent years, there have been a lot of new innovations with anaerobic digestate. This liquid and solid waste comes from anaerobic digesters, such as those that generate power from dairy manure, said Kelsey McKee, OMRI’s review program and quality director.
OMRI’s role is to ensure the digestate byproduct doesn’t contain substances that are prohibited in organic production, she said.
Input suppliers are also developing new products containing specific beneficial microbes and mycorrhizal fungi, McKee said.
These soil amendments go beyond general compost: Certain bacteria and fungi can reduce pressure from pathogens or maximize nutrient availability, she said.
OMRI determines whether these microorganisms are genetically engineered, which is excluded from organic farming, or are grown in synthetic media that aren’t allowed.
“Different microbes can have different roles,” McKee said. “We are looking at where are they getting it, how are they growing it.”
Before OMRI was founded two decades ago, organic certifiers such as Oregon Tilth and California Certified Organic Farmers would review branded products for compliance with organic standards.
As the work became increasingly time-consuming, these and other organic groups chipped in financially to launch OMRI, which would be dedicated to this function.
With the climbing number of products proposed for listing, the institute has been swamped with work.
When Miars was hired seven years ago, the organization received about 40 applications a month. It’s now up to 130.
Since the organization wasn’t willing to compromise on thoroughness, the backlog has lengthened OMRI’s review periods, Miars said. “We had a reputation for being really slow.”
A hiring spree that increased OMRI’s staff by 50 percent over the past two years has reduced the wait time. In late 2016, the median review process took seven months, but it’s now down to two months.
OMRI is also automating its application process to require less data-entry from employees, which the institute hopes will further improve efficiency.
“We are relying more and more on technology,” Miars said.
Cutting down on mind-numbing tasks serves another worthwhile function: Making jobs at OMRI more rewarding.
Recruiting and training educated workers costs money, so the nonprofit must focus on retaining them, she said. “It’s good to see people want to stay with OMRI and grow with us.”
To that end, the institute encourages its employees to give presentations and write articles about obscure materials-related dilemmas.
For example, can paper bags with colored ink be used in organic compost? The answer is yes — the ink is considered an unavoidable environmental contaminant.
The institute has also set its sights beyond the U.S.
In 2012, OMRI started a program to review materials that are compliant with Canada’s organic standards, and it’s looking to replicate the effort in Mexico.
Currently, organic materials review in Mexico is conducted by organic certifiers, Miars said. “There are certifiers and growers in Mexico who would love it if we could launch that program tomorrow.”
Organic Materials Review Institute
Executive director: Peggy Miars
Founded: 1997
Headquarters: Eugene, Ore.
Employees: 56
Function: Reviewing branded products for compliance with organic standards.
Listed products: More than 6,000
Product categories: More than 86 percent are crop-related, 7 percent are processing-related and nearly 7 percent are livestock-related.
Product origins: 70 percent are from the U.S., 13 percent are from Mexico, 7 percent are from Canada, and 10 percent are from 36 other countries.
Bear Branch Farms, a small family-run farm near Stayton, Ore., will host its third annual open farm day Saturday, April 21, from noon to 3 p.m. The public is invited for tours and spend the afternoon.
“It just gets people onto the farm, so kids and families can get connected to where their food comes from,” said Janis Newsom, who owns the farm with her husband, Nate. “They can go walk the fields, walk around the greenhouses, pet and feed the animals, ask gardening questions, the whole gamut.”
Bear Branch Farms grows more than 100 different fruits and vegetables, which it sells on a Community Supported Agriculture model, or CSA, where customers pay up front for “shares” of the harvest.
Newsom said they will be raffling a half-price CSA membership during the event. Foodology, a mobile kitchen from nearby Stayton, will also be on site. Newsom said families can bring chairs if they would like to picnic at the farm.
Bear Branch Farms is at 40929 Huntley Road SE. For more information, call the farm at 503-769-3025.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A state agency has refused to provide a county sheriff and prosecutor in Oregon with a list of medical marijuana grow sites, marking the latest friction over marijuana between local and state officials.
On March 13, Oregon Health Authority official Carole Yann told Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel and Sheriff Shane Nelson that the law doesn’t permit the agency to provide the list.
Instead, local law enforcement — on a case-by-case basis — can verify the registration status of a site through a data base or call the medical marijuana program managed by Yann, she said.
On Thursday, Hummel and Nelson challenged that justification and said they need the list to help identify illegal grow sites.
“I respectfully suggest that providing Sheriff Nelson and I with the addresses of medical marijuana grow sites does not run afoul of Oregon statutory law,” Hummel wrote to Yann in a letter that was also signed by Nelson.
On Tuesday, officials in another county sued the state in federal court, asserting that Oregon laws that made pot legal are pre-empted by a federal law that criminalizes it.
The Josephine County Board of Commissioners in December tried to ban or restrict commercial pot farming on rural residential lots, but the state Land Use Board of Appeals put the restrictions on hold.
The county has petitioned the Oregon Court of Appeals and sued in federal court.
The cases illustrate a continuing struggle by local, state and federal officials over legalization of marijuana in Oregon and other states.
In ballot measures, Oregon voters legalized medical marijuana in 1998 and recreational cannabis in 2014. Some jurisdictions in Oregon were allowed to opt out of allowing recreational marijuana businesses.
Deschutes County, in the high desert and mountains of Central Oregon, decided in 2016 to allow them after previously banning them in unincorporated areas.
But county commissioners said this week they may try to prohibit new marijuana businesses until the rules are better enforced.
Hummel and Nelson complained in their Feb. 7 letter to the health authority, which regulates medical marijuana, that local law enforcement often can’t tell whether medical marijuana grow sites are legal or illegal because the agency hasn’t provided a list of authorized sites. They asked for a list of licensed medical growers.
Hummel said Thursday that state law doesn’t prohibit the health authority from providing the list. He asked Yann to specify if the Legislature prohibits it, or if the health authority chose to require law enforcement to make case-by-case requests for information.
In their letter, Hummel and Nelson included a thumb drive containing every address in Deschutes County. They told Yann to verify whether each is a registered marijuana grow site.
Local farmers and ranchers from the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon are hitting the road for San Francisco to witness a pivotal court hearing that may determine when they can finally start irrigating their crops this year.
It is yet another chapter in the ongoing dispute to balance water rights for agriculture and endangered fish along the Klamath River.
Water users are especially nervous now heading into summer, as Oregon Gov. Kate Brown already declared a drought emergency in Klamath County on March 13. Snowpack is just 51 percent of normal across the basin, and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service predicts stream flows between April and September may range anywhere from just 24 to 58 percent of average.
Or, as Scott White of the Klamath Water Users Association put it, “This is not a fun time down here.”
“People have just been trying to get by,” said White, KWUA executive director. “Anxiety is through the roof in this basin right now.”
Yet the Bureau of Reclamation, which administers the Klamath Project, still has not been able to announce a water allocation or irrigation start date for the season. That’s because the agency is hung up on a previous court ruling that requires 50,000 acre-feet of stored water for in-stream flows to wash away a deadly parasite that attacks coho salmon, known as C. shasta.
The injunction, filed Feb. 8, 2017 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, essentially calls for three types of flows to combat C. shasta. The first is a “flushing flow” of 6,030 cubic feet per second for 72 hours, which must be completed every year before the end of April. There is also a “deep flushing flow,” which is required every other year but not for 2018.
The last is what’s known as “dilution flows,” which are contingent on the presence of C. shasta spores in the river. If water tests higher than five spores per liter, that triggers the release of 3,000 cubic feet per second for seven days below Iron Gate Dam to cleanse the stream. If that doesn’t work, water releases are ramped up to 4,000 cubic feet per second for another seven days.
Dilution flows are no longer needed once 80 percent of the salmon have migrated out to the Pacific Ocean, but White said that date can be difficult to pin down, and is making it difficult for water users to plan for the summer. Releases also cannot interfere with water needed for endangered sucker fish that inhabit Upper Klamath Lake.
The Yurok Tribe, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Klamath Riverkeeper and the Hoopa Valley Tribe sought the injunction to protect juvenile coho after several years of deadly C. shasta outbreak.
The KWUA, along with Klamath Irrigation District, Sunnyside Irrigation District, Ben Duvall Klamath Drainage District and Pine Grove Irrigation District, recently filed a motion to stay the court’s injunction. U.S. District Judge William Orrick will hold a hearing Wednesday, April 11 to consider the argument.
White said the water users association has reserved a bus with 45 seats to take farmers and ranchers down to the hearing in a show of support. It is possible Judge Orrick may rule from the bench that very day, and White said he is optimistic about the outcome.
“That’s really all we have to live on, is hope and faith that the judge will see things our way,” he said.
The Bureau of Reclamation has proposed an irrigation start date of April 19 and water allocation of 252,000 acre-feet — roughly 36 percent less than full allocation for the project.
Glen Spain, Northwest regional director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, said they sympathize with basin farmers, but unless something is done to stop the onslaught of C. shasta, it may push Klamath salmon to extinction.
“For us, it’s an existential problem,” Spain said. “We don’t exist as salmon fishermen without salmon.”
The PCFFA represents most of the West Coast commercial fishing industry. Like farmers, Spain said they are helping families to put food on the table. Unfortunately, with an over-allocated river, he said, the demand for water is turning good people, and valuable industries, against one another.
“We need that water in the river. Farmers understandably need it on their crops. And there is not enough to go around,” Spain said.
The late start to irrigation season is already a killer for farmers and ranchers struggling to turn a profit, White said. He hopes this ordeal will demonstrate these types of issues are best worked out at the local level, instead of handed down by the court.
“Not only is it expensive, but it’s never an ideal outcome,” White said.
Anyone interested in taking the bus to San Francisco can contact the KWUA office at 541-883-6100.
PORTLAND — Environmentalists are urging a federal judge not to throw out a lawsuit they filed 15 years ago alleging that grazing harms the threatened bull trout in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest.
Last year, a federal magistrate judge found the Oregon Natural Desert Association and Center for Biological Diversity had failed to prove that livestock grazing along two rivers in the forest is to blame for the protected species’ decline.
The plaintiffs have objected to his recommended dismissal of their complaint, which was originally filed more than 15 years ago.
During oral arguments held April 5 in Portland, the environmental groups asked U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman to instead rule that grazing authorizations along the Malheur and North Fork Malheur rivers violated federal laws.
Fewer than 50 bull trout now inhabit each of the waterways, which together should support about 2,000 of the fish, said Mac Lacy, attorney for the plaintiffs.
The U.S. Forest Service has authorized livestock grazing on seven allotments covering tens of thousands of acres without analyzing the site-specific effects as required by law, Lacy said.
In recommending the lawsuit’s dismissal, the magistrate judge incorrectly found that attainment of “riparian management objectives” for the fish can be measured at the “watershed or landscape scale,” the plaintiffs claimed.
The agency cannot decide it has met these objectives based on “habitat indicators” that don’t mirror reality while ignoring actual measurements that show stream conditions are worsening, Lacy said.
Grazing must be suspended if it prevents a “near natural rate of recovery” under the National Forest Management Act, while the Forest Service faces a similar obligation under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, according to the plaintiffs.
“It’s not just a non-degradation requirement,” Lacy said. “It’s an enhancement requirement.”
Stephen Odell, attorney for the government, argued that it’s up to the Forest Service to decide how best to measure compliance with recovery strategies for the fish.
The agency has relied on the most relevant data collected over thousands of hours, he said. “It’s extremely rigorous.”
Riparian management objectives are “dream stream” benchmarks that would exist under ideal conditions and are meant to measure progress, Odell said.
However, the Forest Service doesn’t have to attain these standards to comply with its recovery strategies for the bull trout, he said.
Odell also revived an argument against the environmentalist lawsuit that was rejected by the magistrate judge.
The plaintiffs have challenged more than 100 agency decisions regarding grazing, which amounts to an improper attempt to change the Forest Service’s entire grazing program, he said. Such “programmatic” revisions are meant to occur during rule-making or in Congress, not in federal court.
Instead of finding faults specific to each of the actions, the plaintiffs make the same “blanket assertion” to challenge all of them, Odell said.
Just two weeks after completing the first Resource Education and Agricultural Leadership Program, otherwise known as REAL Oregon, Matt Mattioda was able to put his newly refined skills to the test.
Mattioda, who works as the chief forester for Miller Timber Services in Philomath, Ore., was informed by a client that Oregon Treasurer Tobias Read was interested in touring a project site to better understand how trees are harvested on the landscape.
“I had a chance to show him what we’re doing,” Mattioda said of the visit. “If we don’t reach out and engage folks ... then whatever comes our way, we’re just going to have to deal with it.”
Thanks to REAL Oregon, Mattioda said he is comfortable advocating for his industry to a high-ranking state official. The program was conceived by businesses to engage natural resources professionals in career and leadership training — everything from government relations and conflict resolution to public speaking and presentation.
Over the course of five months, Mattioda and 29 others attended two-day sessions around the state, each with a local focus. The first class graduated March 8, which included 10 agricultural producers, three forestry workers, four government employees and 13 people from natural resource support industries.
In addition to leadership training, Mattioda said REAL Oregon provided an opportunity to network and build bridges across industries.
“I have really grown to appreciate what other folks do in natural resources, whether you’re a rancher or a farmer,” Mattioda said. “We’re all in this together. Even if some folks have differences in opinion, let’s rally around and focus on those things we have in common.”
REAL Oregon was established in 2017 and is similar to programs in 34 other states around the country, including neighboring Washington and Idaho. Greg Addington, program director, said the sessions are meant to break people out of their “silos,” and understand the bigger picture for natural resources.
In hindsight, Addington said the first year could not have gone any better.
“I think we’re on to something here,” he said. “There’s a big need for it in the state.”
Addington, who owns a consulting company in Klamath Falls, Ore., and is the former executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, said he already has a list of more than 200 names recommended for future classes. He is now working on the application and curriculum for the class of 2018-19.
Last year’s program kicked off in November with a trip to Ontario, Ore., where participants learned about production agriculture. The group then traveled to Newport in December for a session on commercial fisheries; Medford in January for timber; Salem in February for the short legislative session; and Pendleton and Boardman in March for irrigated farming and livestock.
“The networking that occurs with such a diverse group of people is just awesome to watch,” Addington said.
Megan Thompson, director of field services for Cascade Cherry Growers and Sage Fruit Co. in The Dalles, Ore., said the networking was especially valuable for her.
“At some point, we’re all fighting a very similar fight,” Thompson said. “We all have similar causes, and similar drives, and we all need to work together for those causes.”
Thompson added the field trips they took on location further drove home the point.
“It was a great experience,” she said. “I think it’s made 30 new advocates for agriculture.”
More information about REAL Oregon, including an application form, is available online at www.realoregon.net. The program costs $5,000 per person, though half of the funding is covered by business sponsors.
