Walla Walla County might just be the only place on Earth where you have to brake for bees.

“You can see the signs here,” says Mike Ingham, as he drives by a 20-mile-per-hour speed limit sign with a smaller sign below stating “Alkali Bee Area.” “There’s actually a county ordinance to slow the cars down who go by here, because a speeding car can kill a lot of alkali bees.”

Mike Ingham is a third-generation alfalfa seed farmer outside Touchet, Washington. His family is one of about a dozen in the Walla Walla Valley who are responsible for producing a quarter of the country’s alfalfa seed. That’s a quarter of what’s grown into one of America’s biggest crops — one that feeds cows and livestock the world over. That might sound staggering, but they don’t do it alone: they have millions of tiny, native helpers, thanks to one of the most unique agricultural partnerships in the country.

“This is a really new bee bed, and it is really taking off,” Ingham says, as he drives alongside what initially looks like a barren hillside of parched earth, surrounded by lush, flowering alfalfa fields. But a closer look reveals it’s not barren at all: it’s the bee equivalent of high-density condos. Bees are crawling in and out of thousands of tiny holes.

“If you look up over the horizon there, you can see there’s just a fog of bees,” he says, pointing to the top of the hill. “Nowhere else in the world will you see this.”

The partnership between the farmers and the alkali bees was born out of necessity, with a healthy dose of luck. After the spring snow melt runs out, this stretch of arid land straddling the Washington/Oregon state line gets basically no water through the summer. As a consequence, most in the area, 22,504 acres to be exact, grows alfalfa seed, rotated out with some wheat, because neither requires summer water. The seed is then sold to other farmers to plant as alfalfa hay to the tune of $42 million, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

When American farmers need pollinators, most ship in European honey bees. But honey bees are total cheats when it comes to pollinating alfalfa’s purple blossoms. They hate the way the stamen bops them on the head when they trip the flower, so they sneak in from the side and steal the nectar without pollinating in return.

Alfalfa seed farmers elsewhere buy alfalfa leafcutter bees from Canada instead, which happily trip the flowers but can get quite expensive. But even they are no match for the native alkali bees, with their mesmerizing iridescent stripes, who range 3-to-5 miles per trip and pollinate alfalfa blossoms like evolutionary professionals.

“What we can boast is that these alfalfa seed growers here have yields on a per-acre basis 50 percent greater than anywhere else that alfalfa seed’s produced in the western United States,” says Doug Walsh, an entomologist at Washington State University who works closely with the region’s farmers. “It’s just a beautiful system. It’s neat that we figured out how to make it work.”

One of Marsh’s predecessors first noticed alkali bees’ talent for pollinating alfalfa in the 1950s and began working with farmers to commercialize it. Like many native bees, alkali bees nest in the ground, preferring salty, moist soil. So some farmers started with ditches at the top of salty slopes, so the water would seep down. Others tried trenches full of rocks, soil, straw and water. In recent years, they’ve refined a system of pumps and perforated PVC pipes that run under the ground, which they then cover with tons of table salt.

“We learn what works and what doesn’t work,” says Ingham’s son, Patrick. “We’re such a minority of farmers that do this thing that we’re all left to work together to make it better.”

For the Inghams and their neighbors, cultivating the bee beds has become a way of life handed down and improved on through generations. Tim Wagoner says one of the first jobs his dad gave him when he was little was scaring birds away.

“When the bees come out of the ground, the bees are all wet and they can’t fly, and they got to sit out here like a little salamander on a rock trying to get warm, and the starlings will come in and gobble them up,” he says. “Ever since I was a kid, you’re always excited to come see the bees, and watch them progress and work on the bee beds and expand and do different things.”

So while farmers throughout the West have plowed up the ground where alkali bees nest for crops or inadvertently eradicated them with insecticides, the farmers here have expanded their beds over the decades, at a cost of thousands per acre, and now house a steady population of 18 million bees.

Which isn’t to say it’s always been sunshine and alfalfa blossoms. There have been die-offs in the past due to heavy rains and pesticide use. But with the help of Walsh, who tests for the least toxic pesticides, the region’s farmers have developed a successful integrated pest management program over the past 10 years that involves only spraying when the harmful insects outnumber the beneficial ones by a certain ratio. And they spray only at night when the bees are asleep in their holes. Walsh is also developing remote sensors in the beds to better predict when the bees will first emerge each spring, so farmer’s can alter their spraying to bee-friendly practices over the roughly six weeks the bees are active.

“I sprayed this field a week ago with insecticide, and look, there’s millions of bees right here,” says Wagoner, pointing to the cloud swirling around him. “I think it’s a great opportunity to explain to the people that are anti-pesticide that we are friends of the fuzzies, because we love these bees, and we don’t want to hurt them.”

Voters in Oregon will decide on a similar statewide ban in November.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Soda taxes may stop popping up in California and elsewhere, thanks to a new push by the beverage industry to fight such measures.

California lawmakers passed a bill to ban local taxes on soda for the next 12 years Thursday and sent it to Gov. Jerry Brown, who hasn’t explicitly said if he’ll sign it. It follows similar bans recently passed in Arizona and Michigan. The American Beverage Association, which represents Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and others, has backed the statewide bans after several cities passed taxes on sugary drinks in recent years. 

Voters in Oregon will decide on a similar statewide ban in November.

The California bill would not affect four local soda taxes that were passed in the state in recent years.

It’s part of a last-minute deal to block a beverage industry-backed ballot measure that would make it much harder for cities and counties to raise taxes of any kind. The ABA said in a statement the legislation is about keeping groceries, including drinks, affordable.

Both legislative chambers approved the proposal despite deep reluctance among lawmakers.

“This industry is aiming a nuclear weapon at government in California and saying, ‘If you don’t do what we want we are going to pull the trigger and you are not going to be able to fund basic government services,”’ said Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, which has a soda tax.

The Legislature’s action drew a strong rebuke from public health advocates who view soda taxes as a crucial front in their efforts to contain diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

But local government officials, terrified by the prospect of having their hands tied on all future tax increases, reluctantly backed the legislation.

“I’ve been in politics a long time, and sometimes you have to do what’s necessary to avoid catastrophe,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is pushing a local sales tax increase that would be at risk if the ballot measure passed.

The California measure would ban any new taxes on groceries including beverages through 2030, but would allow four cities in the San Francisco Bay Area to keep soda levies already on the books.

The American Beverage Association has used aggressive campaigning to beat back soda tax and other measures intended to get people to cut back on sugary drinks. More recently, the industry group has come up against soda tax efforts with better funding. Former New York City Michael Bloomberg, who unsuccessfully tried to limit the size of sugary drinks sold in the city to 16 ounces, has funded some local efforts.

Philadelphia, Seattle and Boulder, Colorado also have taxes on sugary drinks.

In California, the industry successfully funded a ballot measure that would raise the threshold for any tax increases by local government. Instead of the simple majority now required, tax hikes would need support from two-thirds of voters, a city council or a county board of supervisors. They’ve agreed to pull it from the ballot if the soda tax ban passes.

“We are tracking these discussions closely and remain committed to working on solutions to our high tax and high cost of living issues that impact our future job growth,” said Rob Lapsley, head of the California Business Roundtable and the formal sponsor of the initiative.

Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association, asked for a meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown after The Sacramento Bee reported beverage industry lobbyists dined with Brown and his wife Anne Gust Brown at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento this month.

A spokesman for Brown, Evan Westrup, said the governor did not negotiate the deal and the dinner was unrelated. Brown hasn’t taken a position on the bill, Westrup said, but his finance department told lawmakers the administration supports the deal if it will halt the ballot measure.

Public health officials said taxes are the most effective tool they have to discourage people from drinking soda, sports drinks, sweetened coffee and tea, and other sugary beverages.

Beverage companies spend billions promoting their products that public health professional can’t match, said Kristine Madsen, a physician and associate professor of public health at University of California, Berkeley.

She led a study that found a 20 percent reduction in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in low-income neighborhoods in the year after the city’s tax took effect. Sales in grocery stores dropped 8 percent — a figure that was not fully offset by higher sales in neighboring towns.

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The bill is AB1838 .

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Associated Press food industry writer Candice Choi contributed to this story.

LANGLOIS - An evening with Grammy Award-winning guitarist Ed Gerhard will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 24, at the Langlois Cheese Factory, 94179 Allen Boice Drive.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture and Department of Environmental Quality have revoked the waste management permit for Lost Valley Farm.

Oregon regulators announced Wednesday they are revoking the waste management permit for Lost Valley Farm, a controversial and oft-troubled dairy producer that once sought to have 30,000 cows near Boardman.

The revocation comes just 15 months after the facility first received its permit from the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Department of Environmental Quality, which jointly manage the state’s confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO, program. Lost Valley now has 60 days to shut down, move all its animals and clean all waste systems.

Among the issues with Lost Valley and its owner, Greg te Velde, the agencies claim the dairy repeatedly violated terms of its wastewater discharge permit, putting the environment and human health at risk. The facility also lacks the infrastructure to handle the amount of manure it generates, and has failed to keep accurate records, according to ODA and DEQ.

“Over the last year we have used every regulatory tool available including civil penalties to gain compliance,” said ODA Director Alexis Taylor in a statement. “We believe the owner is not willing or unable to meet the conditions of his permit that helps protect human health and the environment.”

Te Velde did not immediately return calls for comment. He may appeal the revocation within 60 days and request a contested case hearing before an administrative judge.

Lost Valley was poised to become the second-largest dairy in Oregon, behind neighboring Threemile Canyon Farms. In 2002, te Velde established Willow Creek Dairy on land leased from Threemile Canyon, selling milk to Columbia River Processing, a subsidiary of Tillamook County Creamery Association at the Port of Morrow.

By 2015, te Velde was ready to strike out on his own, purchasing 7,288 acres of the former Boardman Tree Farm to start his new business. After a lengthy and contentious hearing process that garnered more than 4,200 public comments, ODA and DEQ granted Lost Valley a permit to handle roughly 187 million gallons of liquid manure each year.

Almost immediately, the dairy began racking up permit violations related to discharging liquid and solid waste. Lost Valley is within the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, established in 1990 by DEQ due to elevated groundwater nitrates.

ODA sued to shut down Lost Valley in March, and while that case was ultimately settled, the state claims the dairy continued to defy its permit. The notice of revocation notes that the facility violated specific conditions related to waste storage at least 32 times from June 28, 2017, to May 9, 2018, along with a laundry list of other infractions related to maintenance and record-keeping.

“(Lost Valley’s) numerous, repeated and serious permit violations have allowed wastewater and manure to be placed directly on the soil and land surfaces where they are likely to leach into groundwater,” the document states. “The ODA has information that leads it to conclude that violation of the permit’s terms, even absent an indication that nitrate levels in the groundwater have increased, pose a threat to human health or welfare.”

Wym Matthews, who manages the Oregon CAFO program, said revocation is an extremely rare step for the agency to take. Of 509 facilities and 880 inspections in 2017, less than 1 percent resulted in violations that led to civil penalties or injunctive relief.

“It’s an extremely low percentage of activities for us to get to this point,” Matthews said.

Lauren Goldberg, staff attorney with the environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper, said the decision was a common-sense move to protect Oregonians’ right to clean water.

“This facility never should have had the green light to operate in Oregon,” Goldberg said. “Now is the time to step back and learn lessons to make sure this public health and environmental disaster never happens again.”

Losing its state permit is just the latest in a string of trouble for Lost Valley and te Velde.

Earlier this year, Rabobank, an agricultural lender, moved to auction the entire dairy herd as collateral, claiming te Velde owes $67 million in loans and $162 million in total debt. The sale was forestalled in April after te Velde declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, allowing him to try to reorganize the dairy’s finances.

Matthews said he cannot comment on how the revocation will affect the bankruptcy proceedings.

In a previous court filing, Rabobank claimed te Velde’s “erratic” behavior was due to “habitual” use of methamphetamine. Te Velde was arrested and charged with possession of methamphetamine in Richland, Wash. in August 2017, though he has stated in court documents that he has since enrolled in a treatment program.

Te Velde is now trying to sell the dairy and his cattle, though Columbia River Processing is suing to terminate its milk buying contract, which Rabobank cited as a reason to lift bankruptcy protections and allow the cattle auction to move forward.

A decision favorable to ranchers in a 15-year-old lawsuit over grazing effects on bull trout is being challenged before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Environmentalists hope to resurrect a 15-year-old lawsuit over grazing impacts on bull trout in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest by appealing a ruling that favored ranchers.

In April, U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman dismissed a complaint initially filed in 2003 by the Oregon Natural Desert Association and the Center for Biological Diversity, which claimed cattle harm the threatened fish species by trampling egg nests and raising water temperatures.

The two environmental groups are now challenging that decision before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which takes about 15 months to resolve such cases on average.

At this point, the plaintiffs have simply filed a notice of appeal, which doesn’t lay out the arguments for why they believe the judge’s opinion was wrong, said Elizabeth Howard, an attorney for ranchers who intervened in the case.

“It’s hard to know what ONDA’s plans are right now,” Howard said, noting that substantive arguments will be made in the plaintiffs’ opening brief.

Capital Press was unable to reach Mac Lacy, the attorney for the environmental groups, for comment.

“We seek to ensure that the Forest Service collects and appropriately responds to habitat data and makes every possible effort to protect bull trout habitat so this fish isn’t wiped out from these two rivers,” said Dan Morse, ONDA’s conservation director, in an email.

The environmental plaintiffs had argued that only 100 bull trout remain in the Malheur and North Fork Malheur rivers, which should each support 2,000 of the fish.

The U.S. Forest Service authorized grazing on seven allotments spanning thousands of acres even though its own data showed that “riparian management objectives” along the two rivers weren’t being attained, the plaintiffs argued.

By ignoring information showing continued degradation of bull trout habitat, such as bank stability and water temperature, the agency violated the National Forest Management Act, according to plaintiffs.

The Forest Service countered that the groups were “cherry-picking” problematic “hot spots” even as broader conditions across the landscape were improving.

Mosman and U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Papak, who oversaw aspects of the case, agreed with the government that bull trout habit could be monitored on the “watershed,” rather than “stream by stream,” and that the plaintiffs hadn’t proven grazing had caused the species’ decline.

Washington Grain Commission member Dana Herron said he’s primarily seeing damage in dark northern spring wheat, the highest-priced wheat class.

Fusarium head blight is causing problems in irrigated wheat fields across parts of the Columbia Basin.

Field infections range from 1-2 percent up to 25 percent, said Dana Herron, a member of the Washington Grain Commission and co-owner of Tri-State Seed Co. in Connell, Wash.

“Some of those fields that were 150 bushels are only going to yield half of that,” he said.

The infection is prevalent throughout the Columbia Basin, he said.

“Without preventative measures, most people will potentially lose significant yield,” Herron said. “By the time you know you have it, it’s too late to do anything about it. The only recourse is prevention.”

Herron said he’s seeing the most damage in dark northern spring wheat planted last fall. That wheat class is currently the highest-priced on the market.

“It’s probably too late to do anything this year,” said Tim Murray, Washington State University Extension plant pathologist. “Going forward, it’s important that field consultants and farmers recognize what the problem is in the field.”

Growers can plant a resistant variety, irrigate the field before flowering and then shut water off for several weeks as the plant flowers, or spray a fungicide around flagleaf expansion and heading.

WSU spring wheat breeder Mike Pumphrey says the amount of resistance to fusarium head blight in existing germplasm is currently an unknown. He’s screening released varieties, particularly those grown in irrigated fields, with the awareness of including resistance in future varieties.

“For an irrigated grower, it’s kept me up at night for a long time,” he said. “It’s a major, primary concern.”

The disease is mainly a problem for wheat in center-pivot irrigated fields, in areas that stay wet longer. It seems to be increasing in frequency and severity, Murray said.

Spores of the fungus infect flowers of the wheat plant. Damage can range from just a few flowers to the entire head. If it infects early, it can prevent seed production. If it occurs later, the seed produced may be shriveled and unsellable.

The fungus also produces a toxin, commonly referred to as vomitoxin because infected grain fed to animals can cause vomiting.

Infected grain is likely to be cleaned out during combining and eliminated, so Murray says the primary concern is spores produced on residue from previous crops.

If a farmers plan to sell or use seed cleanings from a field that was impacted for cattle or pig food, they may want to test it for vomitoxin, he said.

An epidemic of the disease in the Midwest in the 1990s caused the malting barley industry to shift production to the West, Murray said.

Murray says fusarium head blight is becoming more prevalent because of increased corn acreage in the Columbia Basin.

The same fungi can infect corn, survive on corn residue and produce spores that can travel long distances by air.

Murray intends to include fusarium head blight in discussions with farmers during winter meetings and continue to spread the word about the disease, he said.

Herron hopes to reach out to chemical company field men about the problem.

“They don’t know how to prevent it,” he said. “As soon as they do, we’ll have a lot less of it.”

EU slaps tariff on U.S. cranberries, but it could have been worse

Tariffs imposed by the European Union on Friday will apply to less than one-third of the U.S. cranberry products sold to the 28-country trading bloc, but will still hurt, according to The Cranberry Institute, an industry group,

The EU put a 25 percent tariff on cranberry concentrate. The EU did not, however, extend the tariff to sweet dried cranberries, a product that has enjoyed duty-free entry to Europe since 2011.

The U.S. cranberry industry sells $127 million worth of products annually to the EU, its largest foreign market. Cranberry concentrate, a by-product of making dried cranberries, makes up $41 million of that, according to the institute.

“Tariffs on U.S. cranberries will be very detrimental to our industry,” the institute’s executive director, Terry Humfeld, said in a statement.

The cranberry industry has become caught up in emerging trade wars between the U.S. and trading partners. U.S. cranberry products face retaliatory tariffs from China and Mexico, as well as the EU.

The U.S. is the world’s top cranberry producer, but annual domestic consumption has been stuck at just under 2 pounds per person for many years. About one-third of the U.S. crop is exported, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Humfeld, who was unavailable for an interview Tuesday, said in the statement that the U.S. cranberry industry has spent decades cultivating the European market. He said the tariff may hurt Europeans.

“Since there is no domestic cranberry industry in the EU, costs could increase for manufacturers, leading to higher prices for consumers or reduced access to cranberries,” Humfeld said.

Canada, the second-largest cranberry producer, appears poised to fill the demand. Canadian cranberry production doubled between 2006 and 2017, according to the USDA. Canada and the EU signed a trade agreement last fall that removed tariffs on Canadian cranberries. The deal eliminated an advantage the U.S. had enjoyed. The EU suspended duties on American sweet dried cranberries imported to use as ingredients in 2011. Exports to Europe then surged, according to the USDA.

Chile, the third-largest cranberry producer, has had a duty-free agreement with the EU since 2012.

Mexico, which like the EU was reacting to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, applied a 20 percent tariff on sweet dried cranberries in early June. Next up, China is scheduled to increase tariffs on sweet dried cranberries to 40 percent from 15 percent on July 6.

The U.S. sells about $45 million worth of cranberries to China annually, according to Humfeld.

“China is an important expanding market for U.S. cranberries,” he said. “There is great potential for continued growth, so we hope that the parties involved can reach an agreement that will allow the cranberry industry to continue providing cranberry products to consumers in China.”

The EU imposed tariffs on dozens of goods to retaliate for the Trump administration’s 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum. U.S. goods slapped with retaliatory tariffs include clothes, makeup, industrial supplies, and other agricultural products such as sweet corn, kidney beans, peanut butter and orange juice.

The U.S. Forest Service is ready to unveil its final environmental impact statement for the much-anticipated Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision, covering 5.5 million acres of public forests in Eastern Oregon.

At long last, the U.S. Forest Service is ready to unveil its final draft of the much-anticipated Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision.

The plans, which were last updated in 1990, will guide land management activities — including timber harvest, recreation and livestock grazing — over 5.5 million acres in the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur national forests in Eastern Oregon for the next 10-15 years.

A draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, for the plans was released in 2014, but after a significant public backlash the Forest Service embarked on three more years of outreach to build consensus.

The result is a final EIS and draft record of decision that will be published Friday, June 29, kicking off a 60-day period for individuals or groups with legal standing to file objections. The process then segues into a 90-day objection resolution period, before the Pacific Northwest regional forester, Jim Peña, makes his final decision.

Tom Montoya, supervisor for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Baker City, Ore., said that if all goes according to schedule, the revised forest plans could be adopted and in place by the beginning of 2019 — more than a decade overdue.

“We’ve learned that you can’t rush these processes,” Montoya said. “They take time to allow for adequate input, adequate dialogue and opportunities to for our public to engage.”

The Forest Service published its draft EIS in February 2014, and received more than 1,100 comments in response, most of which were negative in their feedback. That is when the agency decided to regroup and re-engage with partners representing local communities, cattlemen, loggers, public access and the environment.

Meanwhile, the forests continued to change. The massive Canyon Creek wildfire complex torched more than 110,000 acres on the Malheur National Forest south of John Day, Ore., prompting calls for more vigorous and active tree thinning and management.

The revision team itself also experienced turnover. The current team leader, Victoria Anne, took over in December 2016. The Umatilla National Forest also changed supervisors twice, from Kevin Martin to Genevieve Masters, most recently from Masters to Eric Watrud.

Ultimately, the Forest Service developed two new alternatives for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision, based on the agency’s original preferred “Alternative E.” One of those, dubbed “Alternative E Modified,” will be the preferred plan in the final EIS.

Montoya said the latest update sought to address concerns about overall forest health, timber harvest, grazing and access.

“It really tries to strike at what we heard from our public,” he said.

The Forest Plan does not make any site-specific decisions — such as closing roads — though it does identify goals and desired conditions for future projects. Goals identified in the latest plan revision include healthier forests that are more resilient to fire and disease, provide clean water and long-term economic value, Montoya said.

Details remain sparse until the documents are officially published Friday, but the Forest Service is already touting a number of potential benefits, including:

• Thinning up to 33 percent of dry upland forests over the life of the plan to improve health and resiliency.

• Up to 1,173 new jobs in forest products, livestock and recreation, and $59.5 million in added income.

• Doubling timber harvest across the three forests, from a recent average of 101 million board feet to 205 million board feet.

• Approximately 242,800 animal unit months, or AUMs, of livestock grazing, consistent with the current output in the Blue Mountains forests. AUMs are defined as the amount of forage animals need to graze for one month.

The plans will also recommend Congress authorize an additional 70,500 acres of new wilderness, or about 1.3 percent of the total area.

In a statement, Peña, the regional forester, said the Blue Mountains Forest Revision honors the many years of input provided by local governments, states, tribes, federal agencies and other groups.

“We have been listening to diverse perspectives,” Peña said. “Together, we are working to make our forests more resilient to change while also supporting rural prosperity.”

The final EIS for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision can be accessed online at www.fs.usda.gov/goto/BlueMountainsPlanRevision. Hard copies are also available at local libraries.

A Central Oregon cattle rancher has lost his entire BLM range to wildfires in the area.

It has been a wild week for rancher Joe Pechanec.

Pechanec, of R2 Ranch, runs about 1,400 head of cattle on public and private rangeland in arid central Oregon, where a pair of massive, wind-whipped wildfires have torched more than 100,000 acres and passed mere yards away from his front door.

“Last night, I finally got seven hours of sleep,” Pechanec said Monday. “It’s been a really brutal battle, but I think we’re getting headway.”

The ordeal began early Thursday, June 21, when lightning touched off the Boxcar fire one mile southeast of Maupin along the Deschutes River corridor. Lightning also sparked the Jack Knife fire just 30 miles away near Grass Valley, and together the blazes have combined to burn 114,272 acres of heavy grass, sage and juniper.

Local ranchers, including Pechanec, quickly banded together to protect their homes and livestock, using their own bulldozers and equipment to dig fire breaks and evacuating cattle to safety south of the inferno.

“All the ranches, we took pretty much everything we had,” Pechanec said. “It’s the greatest thing you’ve ever seen.”

Pechanec recalls how the flames approached just 150 yards or so from his home in Willowdale, about 12 miles north of Madras in rural Jefferson County. With help from his neighbors, they dug dozer lines and performed a back burn to hold the fire at bay.

Since the fires started, Pechanec estimated 40-50 volunteers have come from as far as Shaniko and Antelope to lend a hand — most of them local ranchers, friends and families — along with professional firefighters from the Bureau of Land Management.

As of June 26, the Boxcar fire was 60 percent contained and the Jack Knife fire was 80 percent contained. Firefighters expect to have both fires fully contained by July 6.

“We’re looking really good,” Pechanec said. “I think we’re going to be OK.”

The rangeland, however, could take some time recover. Pechanec said the fires have scorched all 12,000 acres of his BLM range, along with 2,500 to 3,000 acres of private ground.

Without that land available to graze, Pechanec said he will likely have to turn to the hay pile while doubling the rotation rate for his unburned pastures to avoid overgrazing. Pechanec estimated he may lose up to $30,000 this year on his hay costs, and pastures where he would normally leave cattle for three weeks he will instead rotate after a week and a half.

“Everybody has to be out in the cattle, checking the rangeland and checking the grass,” he said. “You’re just going to have to make sure that stubble doesn’t get down below 2 to 3 inches so we can have regrowth for next year.”

Justin Rodgers, a rangeland management specialist for the BLM in Prineville, said that, in general terms, the agency allows for two years of rest on burned land to allow time for rehabilitation. Staff will work with individual ranchers to accommodate grazing needs and discuss appropriate land management moving forward.

“That’s the big thing there, just getting the land back to pre-fire conditions as best we can,” Rodgers said. “It’s definitely a case-by-case situation. Every range is in different condition before the fire. Each landowner or permittee has different flexibility or livestock grazing operations going on.”

Meanwhile, Pechanec said it has been two months since the last considerable rainfall at the ranch, and conditions remain bone dry.

“We are running tremendously low on water and feed,” he said. “We have no green left.”

Most of central Oregon is listed in moderate to severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Central and southern Oregon can expect above-normal potential for additional wildfires heading into July and August, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Aerial herbicide spraying was discussed during a recent workshop attended by elected officials and other participants.

NEWBERG, Ore. — Last year, Western Helicopter Services could only spray herbicides about a third of the time that was scheduled.

The rest of the time, they were waiting for weather conditions to improve and become suitable for spraying.

“We don’t go out and spray willy-nilly,” said Rick Krohn, president of Western Helicopter Services of Newberg, Ore.

Due to the speed and efficiency of spraying by air, though, the company was able to make the best use of the time windows that became available, Krohn said. “If we were trying to get that done by ground, (we’d) never get it done.”

The realities of aerial herbicide spraying in forestry were discussed during a June 22 workshop organized by the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, an educational organization that examines controversial issues in timber management.

“You don’t get much tougher than herbicides right now,” Mike Cloughesy, OFRI’s director of forestry, said of the issues facing the industry.

In recent years, two Oregon aerial applicators have faced regulatory penalties for spray violations and one of them was sued over alleged trespass damages by rural residents. Several bills have also been proposed in the Legislature to restrict aerial spraying and voters in Lincoln County banned the practice under an ordinance that’s now being challenged in court.

Speakers at the workshop explained why aerial spraying is a commonly used tool in the timber industry.

Aerial spraying plays a role in the “vegetation management” phase of forestry, preventing weeds from dominating young trees, said Jay Walters, field coordinator at the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Under the Oregon Forest Practices Act, timber clear cuts must be replanted within two years and trees must be “free to grow” unencumbered by vegetation or other serious problems within six years.

The chemicals must be mixed and loaded more than 100 feet from streams that bear fish or that are used for domestic water, and aerial applicators must spray at least 60 feet from waterways and standing water with a surface area larger than a quarter-acre, said Walters. Under a law passed in 2015, aerial applicators must also maintain a 60-foot buffer around inhabited dwellings and school campuses.

A year ago, digital subscriptions to the ODF’s “Forest Activity Electronic Reporting and Notification System,” or FERNS, were made available to members of the public who wanted to learn about upcoming timber operations.

The number of subscriptions has grown to nearly 600, up from about 400 under the agency’s earlier paper notification system, Walters said.

Even so, the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Oregon Department of Forestry haven’t noticed an increase in complaints about herbicides since the digital subscriptions went live.

“People who had concerns were getting through to Forestry and us,” said Mike Odenthal, ODA’s lead pesticide investigator.

Notifications must usually be submitted to ODF at least 15 days before a spray operation but they remain valid for a year.

Because there have been examples of malfeasance among applicators, people should be notified of spray operations to make arrangements, such as keeping animals and children indoors, said Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland. Dembrow, chairman of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, was among several elected officials at the workshop.

“I think there’s a need for us to build on the FERNS system to be a more real-time notification system,” Dembrow said.

Dembrow said he expects legislation dealing with notification and reporting to be introduced next year.

With the difficulty of anticipating weather changes, the timber industry will likely continue to oppose such proposals as “logistically difficult, if not impossible,” said Scott Dahlman, policy director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, an agribusiness group.

“I think it’s going to run into the same problem we had before,” he said.

SOUTH COAST - The Summer edition of SpotLines, the local area poetry and art zine, is available at book stores, art galleries and libraries from North Bend to Brookings and east to Coquille. Also available at those locations is a…

Authorities say a wildfire that threatened homes in north-central Oregon is mostly contained