A llama found dead and partially eaten May 9 was killed by one or more wolves, according to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The attack occurred on private land in the Buford Creek drainage of Wallowa County in northeast Oregon.

The stockowner found the llama with muscle tissue from the flank and abdominal area consumed, and most of its internal organs were on the ground next to the carcass.

An ODFW report indicated the attack probably occurred several hours before the carcass was discovered.

The location and size of bite marks indicated wolves were responsible, according to ODFW. Investigators also found fresh wolf tracks 200 yards and 10 yards away.

Tracking collar data showed OR-23 was 1.5 miles from the carcass site six days earlier.

The attack was attributed to the Shamrock Pack.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — One of the defendants involved in the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge has been allowed to represent himself in the case.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports U.S. District Judge Anna Brown allowed Jason Patrick to be his own lawyer Wednesday, but not without questioning his ability to act appropriately without legal counsel to guide him. She appointed Andrew Kohlmetz to be his standby attorney.

In previous court appearances, Patrick has been scolded for making outbursts and speaking out of turn.

The 44-year-old roofer from Georgia is now the third co-defendant in the case to represent himself. A request from a fourth defendant, Duane Ehmer, is pending.

Patrick has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and weapons charges related to the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year.

SOUTH COAST -- The South Coast Regional Early Learning Hub has allocated $180,238 to regional schools and programs through Kindergarten Partnership and Innovation grants. The grants will fund various projects that will support children in the community as they prepare…

LANGLOIS -- Due to the increased cases of Lyme disease and the disabling autoimmune disease associated with Lyme, Oregon Lyme Disease Network of Bend is coming to the South Coast to promote Lyme awareness in the general community and among…

THURSDAY, MAY 12

CHARLESTON — Alseny Yansane will be returning to the Southern Oregon coast to offer fabulous drum and dance workshops excellent for all levels on May 21-22. Yansane's workshops haven't been offered locally for several years. So take advantage of one…

Thursday, May 12

On a quick tour of Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon this past week, Farm Service Agency Administrator Val Dolcini said there was tough competition for federal Conservation Reserve Program funding this year, praised the impact of loans to new and beginning farmers, and said producers and regulatory agencies are finding ways to collaborate.

Dolcini, appointed FSA administrator by President Obama in 2014, also said he hopes to accomplish more in the final six months of his appointment, saying he’ll “run through the tape” at the finish line of the president’s term.

Dolcini, the former state executive director of the California Farm Service Agency, didn’t rule out staying on if asked by the next president. Dolcini said he wants to remain engaged in agricultural issues at the national level.

The administrator toured county FSA offices, viewed CRP sites and talked with farmers and ranchers in Eastern Oregon and Washington. On May 11 he planned to present the agency’s Harvest Award to FSA Harney County, Ore., Executive Director Kellie Frank for dispersing her staff and continuing work during the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters earlier this year.

Dolcini’s visit coincided with the FSA’s anouncement that it enrolled more than 800,000 acres in the Conservation Reserve Program in the most recent signup period.

The program takes environmentally sensitive land out of production for 10 to 15 years, paying farmers a rental fee and sharing the cost of planting trees or grasses that can stabilize stream banks, improve water quality, stop erosion and provide wildlife habitat.

An Oregon State University research paper estimated 11 percent of U.S. crop land accounts for 53 percent of the soil lost to erosion on non-irrigated ag land. The finding bolstered the argument that taking erosion-prone land out of production and replanting it with native trees, shrubs and grasses could have a major impact.

The 2014 Farm Bill capped CRP acreage at 24 million for 2017 and 2018, and Dolcini said competition was tight for designation and funding this year. As of March 2016, 23.8 million acres were enrolled in CRP nationally, with contracts on 1.64 million acres set to expire Sept. 30.

The program is attractive to some producers because it can provide a buffer and revenue stream when commodity prices are low. The USDA said it makes $2 billion in CRP payments annually.

Oregon landowners received $556 million in CRP rental and cost share payments from 1995 to 2014, according to the Environmental Working Group.

The USDA calculates that in 30 years the program has removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere equivalent to taking 9 million cars off the road. The program has prevented 600 million dump trucks of soil from eroding over the past three decades, according to a USDA news release.

Dolcini said CRP appears to have broad support. On other agency work, he expressed pride in the micro-loan program, which he said has been a “great tool” for new and beginning farmers, returning veterans, farmers of color and others seeking opportunity in agriculture.

“We’ve made 20,000 loans of $50,000 or less since 2013 and it has been a game-changer,” Dolcini said. The USDA has made a conscious effort to support the next generation of farmers, including urban farmers and alternative operations in addition to large Midwest commodity growers, he said.

Although grumbling about federal “overreach” is common, Dolcini said he sees examples of producers and regulatory agencies working jointly to solve problems.

“I think government agencies at every level understand it’s easier to collaborate with effected stakeholders than to issue dictates from on high,” he said.

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Federal agencies have started filling an open, grassy area near Dillon Falls like a bathtub.

“If all goes well, this will all be underwater,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Field Supervisor Bridget Moran.

About 65 acres of flood plain on the Deschutes River, Ryan Ranch was privately owned until the 1940s when the U.S. Forest Service got it in a land exchange and leased it as a cattle ranch until 1989. Since about the 1920s, it has been disconnected from the river by a berm.

“They took it from wetland to a dry-farming meadow, and now we’re trying to bring it back,” Moran said.

Forest Service officials say that under its natural conditions, the river would feed the area with water when it rises and take water from it when levels fall. But management of the river’s flow for irrigation has helped make the river’s levels very low in the winter and very high in the summer. Those flows, along with the berm blocking the water from the land, have helped erode the river’s banks.

The goal of the project is to reconnect the river to the flood plain, restoring the natural connection between the wetland and the river — the way they feed one another — and restoring about a third of a mile of badly eroded river banks, said Jason Gritzner, a hydrologist with the Deschutes National Forest.

“We’re not, obviously, fixing the flows with this project,” Gritzner said.

The project involves piping water from the river to the wetlands for stretches of time and will later entail removing the berm and re-establishing vegetation. If part of the site drains water quickly, that section can be isolated and restoration work can continue in the other parts.

“This is still filling up,” Gritzner said, as water bubbled from the Deschutes River through the pipes that run under a berm and into the site.

The Forest Service plans to keep the pipes open for about another month as the river continues rising, then close the pipes to see what happens without input from the river. That process of opening and closing the pipes will repeat later in the summer to see what happens — if the water level drops quickly or not.

“The trend’s been good,” said Deschutes National Forest soil scientist Peter Sussman. The surface water has spread from 15 acres to 35 acres since mid-April, and Sussman wants to see the full 65 acres fill with water, with depths of about 3.5 feet.

“We know that this landscape can hold water,” Gritzner said, noting the soil and monitoring wells that have checked water levels. “We know it has the capability to hold water.”

Monitoring will continue through the winter, and after determining the level of restoration that will occur, the agencies will take out the pipes, remove the berm and lower the river banks.

“We expect to see water year-round here,” Gritzner said.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jennifer O’Reilly noted that when the land fills with water, a whole food base forms for animals like cranes.

“You’re gonna have a whole smorgasbord,” O’Reilly said. And the chances are good for the Oregon spotted frog to use the site; it needs to spend its whole life in water, and a population of the frog — listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — is known to be at a site nearby.

“I can’t wait to see what pops up here,” O’Reilly said. “Maybe toads, salamanders.”

Cranes and ducks already visit the site. Gritzner expects various animals to forage for food and rear their young there. Birds could stop by while migrating, followed by their human observers.

“The bird-watchers are gonna love this place,” Moran said.

Gritzner is also interested to see the types of vegetation that arise — possibly willows and tules, a tall marsh plant.

“We haven’t seen that here in decades,” he said. And he expects the site to benefit the river’s water quality as it returns water to the river.

“Wetlands are kind of a natural filter for water on the landscape,” Gritzner said.

The project aims to see whether the site, long cut off from the river, can still hold water like a sponge and function as a wetland.

“That’s sort of what the test is all about, to prove that,” O’Reilly said.

The project uses a limited license held by irrigators to account for and measure the water used. That permits the Forest Service to use the water on a limited basis, from some of the water that irrigation districts use, Gritzner said.

Craig Horrell, district manager of Central Oregon Irrigation District, noted the project marks the first such restoration effort in the Upper Deschutes and could serve as a model.

“This will give us the road map for other projects,” Horrell said, noting that it offers a chance for the different agencies, irrigation districts and other groups to work through such issues as water rights. “We’re gonna learn what everyone’s hot buttons are.”

Eric Beck, a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Rimrock Expeditionary Alternative Learning Middle School, has brought his seventh-grade students out to monitor the site for five years. They check soil types and moisture levels, the density of different tree species and other conditions. They also write about the site, do artwork on it, graph their collected data in math class and learn how to display it — then try to make sense of patterns they see.

“(We’re) trying to think holistically about that whole ecosystem,” Beck said, noting students’ excitement about the wetlands restoration work that has begun.

Scientists expect others to also enjoy it.

“Sixty-five acres of wetlands as a freshwater marsh habitat are invaluable to a lot of species,” Sussman said, pointing to aquatic, avian and mammalian species that use wetlands. “And here we are, finally seeing it like we would 100 years ago.”

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Humans aren't the only victims of the water crisis in Flint, as pets also may have been exposed to the toxic lead. An effort coordinated by Michigan State University is now helping dogs get tested.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Ammon Bundy intended the takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge to lead to a civil court taking up the constitutionality of federal land-management policy, according to court documents filed Monday.

The 40-year-old leader of the occupation didn’t expect arrests and indictments, documents said. Instead, Bundy thought the government would issue a refuge eviction claim, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Bundy is now asking in documents for the indictments to be dismissed, arguing the federal government lacks jurisdiction over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

His lawyers in the 33-page motion say Bundy isn’t an extremist or a member of any militia and doesn’t hold anti-government views.

“Defendant Ammon Bundy organized his fellow citizens in protest of the expansive and unsupported interpretation of the Constitution that purports to allow the federal government to own and control more territory, and exercise jurisdiction over more land in the Western States, than the States themselves,” lawyers Lissa Casey and Mike Arnold wrote in the motion.

Bundy is one of more than two dozen people facing federal indictment after a 41-day armed protest at the sanctuary in eastern Oregon. During the occupation that started Jan. 2, they demanded the government turn over the land to locals and release two ranchers imprisoned for setting fires.

A Jan. 26 traffic stop led to Bundy’s arrest and the shooting death of occupier Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.

Bundy has entered a not guilty plea to charges of conspiring to impede federal officers from doing work at the refuge through intimidation, threats or force, possession of a firearm or dangerous weapon at a federal facility and using and carrying a firearm in the course of a violent crime.

The new court documents also claim Bundy and others decided to take over the refuge at an impromptu Jan. 2 meeting after a rally in the town of Burns.

Prosecutors disagree and have said Bundy and co-defendant Ryan Payne visited the local sheriff last fall, warning of “extreme civil unrest” if the ranchers were returned to prison on federal arson charges.

The Bundy motion is among legal motions in the pending federal conspiracy case that are set be argued in court starting May 23.

Corvallis, Ore. — The Oregon State University Dairy Club hosted its second bi-annual Beaver Dairy Youth Day at the OSU Dairy Center on April 16.

The event was organized by co-chairs Emma Miller and Alicia Torppa for youths in grades 4-12, according to a club press release.

The morning clinics included a session on reading pedigrees, led by Allan Hanselman, and the session on dairy judging and oral reasons was led by Hayden Bush.

A group of 29 students from across the state participated in the day’s events.

In the afternoon, the OSU Dairy Club members, along with Bush, who was the official judge, conducted a judging competition.

Katie Sherer was the overall high individual. Following are the other award winners:

• Novice: 1st, Taysha Veeman; 2nd, Maggie Wheaton; and 3rd, Natalie Berry.

• Beginning: 1st, Austin VanHouten; 2nd, Ryan Porter; and 3rd, Scott Christiansen.

• Senior placings: 1st, Katie Sherer; 2nd, Jocelyn Sutton; and 3rd, J.D. Brownell.

“We were very pleased with the interest in our Youth Day and having 29 students participate,” Kalli Sherer, president of the OSU Dairy Club, said. “The Dairy Club works hard to promote the dairy industry through events that educate youth and the general public. It was a privilege to provide this opportunity to so many students throughout Oregon and Washington.”

The club provided T-shirts to all participants and served grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, compliments of the Tillamook County Creamery Association, which donated the dairy products.

ROCK ISLAND, Wash. — One night in June of 1981, Victor Hugo Vega approached two men in Tijuana, Mexico, and asked them if they’d ever been to the United States.

They said they hadn’t.

“Vamonos (Let’s go),” he said to them and a short while later they crossed into San Ysidro, Calif., at a spot where the border fence was down.

To their knowledge, no one saw them. They felt no danger.

“We started walking along the railroad tracks toward San Clemente,” says Hugo, who was then 23. “We were not afraid. We were young.”

Hugo and his two companions walked more than 60 miles to San Clemente during the next few days, sleeping in the hills.

In San Clemente, a friend a gave them a ride to Los Angeles. There they went their separate ways. Hugo found a cousin who pointed him to her brother-in-law’s place in Orosi, Calif., between Visalia and Fresno.

“There’s work there,” Hugo recalls her saying.

Soon he was picking nectarines and oranges, earning $350 a week. It was a lot of money compared with 3,000 pesos ($250) a week he’d made at a gasoline refinery in Vera Cruz.

He planned to stay just a short while. But the pay was good and so was the life, so he decided to stay five years.

Five years became a lifetime.

Hugo is one of millions of people who have illegally entered the United States from Mexico over the past several decades. Most say they did it for better-paying jobs.

Government and private sources say there are now 1 million to 3 million migrant farmworkers in the U.S. planting, cultivating, harvesting and packing fruits, vegetables and nuts. Besides California, Texas, Washington, Florida, Oregon and North Carolina have the highest populations of farmworkers, according to Student Action with Farmworkers.

Hugo was born in Apatzingan, near Zamora, in the state of Michoacan to Purepecha Indian parents in 1957. They didn’t speak Spanish but he learned it as a boy.

When he was 18 he became a featherweight boxing champion in Morelia, having trained in Mexico City.

After his trek across the border, he spent several years working the fruit crops in the San Joaquin Valley and began migrating seasonally to pick fruit in Orondo, Wash.

In 1987, he decided to move permanently to Orondo.

About that same time, he took advantage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, often called the Reagan amnesty, and got his green card. In 1997 he became a U.S. citizen.

On a trip home to see family in 1991, he met Guadalupe Campos. They married two years later in Mexico. She came to Orondo with him illegally but was able to become legal through their marriage and became a citizen in 2002.

They’ve spent their lives picking and packing fruit in the greater Wenatchee, Wash., area, eventually settling in Rock Island, where they’ve raised three daughters. The oldest is now 21 and studying political science at Washington State University. Her goal is to become a lawyer.

Hugo enjoyed picking apples more than any other orchard job. His best money on piece rate was $1,000 a week back in 1996.

He was a “fast picker and very good worker,” says Campos, 47, but he fell from a fruit tree while thinning branches in an Orondo orchard in 1996 and suffered a stroke the next year. They think the fall and stroke are related. The stroke left him without full use of his left hand and with an impediment to his speech.

Since then he’s done janitorial work at local packing sheds and, for a while, at the Wenatchee Post Office.

On May 2, 2016, at 58, Hugo turned in an application for cherry season janitorial work at Stemilt Growers’ 12th annual job fair in Wenatchee. He says he needs to keep working as long as he can.

For the first time in 86 years, Eastern Oregon farmers won’t have Pendleton Grain Growers to market their wheat from this summer’s harvest.

Members of PGG voted to dissolve the co-op May 2, which means they’ll turn to other outlets for bids — which could include neighboring cooperatives.

Umatilla County leads the state in winter wheat production, with more than 11 million bushels harvested in 2015. PGG served 1,850 farmers in northeast Oregon and southeast Washington, operating 19 upcountry elevators and barge terminal along the Columbia River at McNary.

Those facilities appear likely to sell to United Grain Corporation, one of the Northwest’s top grain exporters with an operations base in Vancouver, Washington. Tony Flagg, the company’s vice president of business development, said he expects a deal with PGG by June. Harvest for dryland winter wheat typically begins in early July.

United Grain was formed in 1969 and is owned by the Mitsui Group of Japan. Flagg said the company has traditionally focused on exports, but has started shifting philosophies to work more directly with growers. That has included building shuttle train stations in Montana and North Dakota to haul larger amounts of grain from those fields to a Vancouver terminal that can store more than 7 million bushels.

John W. Adams, a former PGG member who farms roughly 3,500 acres north of Pendleton, said he will listen to offers from United Grain while continuing to do business with Northwest Grain Growers, based in Walla Walla, and Pendleton Flour Mills.

“We’re going to be just fine,” Adams said.

Northwest Grain Growers serves 1,600 members in the region and General Manager Chris Peha said they are growing. The co-op added two grain piles in Athena in 2014, which Adams said have become an attractive option. Peha did not say whether the co-op intends to invest more heavily in Oregon following the dissolution of PGG.

“We focus on our own business, not what other people are doing,” he said.

Adams said it’s always good for farmers to have more than one place to market their grain, though where they go depends heavily on their location. Gavilon Grain, another Japanese-owned firm, has also added piles in Athena in recent years, providing another choice on the north end of the county. Gavilon distributes more than 45 million tons of grain every year, making it the second-largest merchandiser in the country.

Elsewhere, Pendleton Flour Mills has also purchased wheat directly from farmers since the early 1900s. Its main flour mill is located in town, with a satellite elevator in nearby Mission. Then there’s Morrow County Grain Growers, headquartered in Lexington, which operates eight grain elevators with a licensed capacity for more than 3.9 million bushels.

Like PGG, Morrow County Grain Growers was established in 1930 and has grown to incorporate multiple divisions including energy, agronomy and its own farm equipment dealership. Grain comes to MCGG from as far away as Idaho, stored at the Hogue-Warner Elevator on Paterson Ferry Road.

More than 65,000 acres have been designated “critical habitat” for the Oregon spotted frog, a threatened species at the center of a lawsuit over irrigation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the critical habitat designation in Oregon and Washington, which includes 20 miles of river, provides a “road map” to guide conservation efforts for the frog.

While the federal government claims the designation won’t have regulatory impacts on private property, attorneys for natural resource industries say critical habitat does pose a concern for landowners.

Actions that adversely affect or slow the recovery of critical habitat are considered unlawful “take” that’s prohibited by the Endangered Species Act, said Karen Budd-Falen, a natural resource attorney in Wyoming.

“If I’m a private landowner, I’m going to be a little nervous,” she said.

Several environmental groups are already suing the federal government over the impact that irrigation reservoirs in Oregon’s Deschutes Basin allegedly have on the frog.

A federal judge recently rejected the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction that would greatly impact how the reservoirs are managed and reduce water availability for irrigators.

The three reservoirs — Wickiup, Crane Prairie and Crescent Lake — are included in the critical habitat designation, as is much of the Deschutes River between the dams and Bend, Ore., said Bridget Moran, field supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service office in Bend.

Portions of the river directly below the reservoirs were excluded from the critical habitat because large volumes of flowing water have degraded wetlands where the frogs live, she said.

“We have certainly identified water management as one of the threats” to the frog, but irrigators are cooperating with the agency to mitigate those effects, Moran said.

Nearly 3,500 acres originally proposed for the frog’s critical habitat were excluded from the final designation because landowners agreed to voluntary conservation measures, such as holding water in ditches for longer periods of time, she said.

“It needs water for all stages of its life,” Moran said.

Budd-Falen, the natural resource attorney, said the government’s assurances that critical habitat doesn’t affect landowners are “completely hollow.”

“Take applies across the board, whether you’re talking about federal lands or private lands,” she said.

If a private property is included in “critical habitat,” that makes it easier for environmental groups to argue that actions by a landowner are unlawfully harming the protected species, said Scott Horngren, an attorney with the Western Resources Legal Center, which represents natural resource industries.

Critical habitat creates a “bull’s-eye” for reintroduction efforts, so if private property is eventually occupied by the species, that raises the possibility of the landowner facing “take” accusations, Horngren said.

“If I’m a private landowner, I don’t want to get swept up in these efforts to reintroduce the species on my land,” he said.

The presence of critical habitat also creates new obligations for landowners involved with the federal government, such as those receiving a conservation grant from the USDA, Budd-Falen said.

In such instances, activities on private property would require a time-consuming “consultation” to determine the effect a project has on the habitat, she said.

For example, one landowner had to undergo a consultation to haul logs across property owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Horngren said.

YAKIMA, Wash. — A 20.7 million, 20-pound-box Pacific Northwest cherry crop is forecast to start harvest the last full week of May while California’s harvest has been devastated by rain.

The California crop has probably been cut in half by rain damage, said Roger Pepperl, marketing director of Wenatchee, Wash.-based Stemilt Growers, which is affiliated with Chinchiolo Stemilt California in Stockton.

A normal 8 million, 15-pound-box crop was forecast in California, but rains in April and heavy rain May 6 and 7 will leave a 4 million- to 5-million-box harvest, said Chris Zanobini, executive director of the California Cherry Advisory Board in Sacramento.

“We just can’t seem to get a good one,” he said referencing damage the last two years.

About 50 percent of the Bing crop was wiped out by the May 6 and 7 rain, Zanobini said. There was a lot of poor quality accompanied by spurs and doubles before the rain, he said.

Growers are assessing what they can salvage, and the bulk of harvest will be done by May 20, he said.

Lack of labor is a bigger story, Zanobini said. Packers have wanted to run 12 hours but workers won’t go more than 10, he said.

“There just is not enough to do the work that needs to be done. It’s very, very concerning. I don’t know had we had an 8 million-box crop if we could have gotten them all picked and packed,” Zanobini said.

“We were running 45 percent packout and quit picking Wednesday because it was costing more to pick than we could get at the warehouse,” said Kyle Mathison of his 500-acre cherry orchard at Arvin near Bakersfield. He’s turning his focus to the upcoming harvest of his 1,000 acres on Wenatchee’s Stemilt Hill.

In Arvin, Mathison said he had 15 to 20 percent cherry split from 3 inches of rain April 8-10 and an additional 15 to 20 percent damage from an April 24 rain. He gave up May 4 right before two more days of rain.

“We had over 4 inches of rain in less than a month, so we had to give it up. We harvested 400 tons and left 2,100 tons in the field,” Mathison said.

He said he was two days behind on picking because he only had 500 pickers and needed 700. “It’s a blessing I didn’t get more because I would have lost more money,” he said.

Harvest compression from Bakersfield to Stockton contributed to the labor shortage, he said. He’s optimistic the Washington harvest will be better.

The PNW estimate is likely to change, but right now it’s 7 percent greater than the 2015 final of 19.3 million boxes and would place third behind the record 2014 crop of 23.2 million boxes and the 2012 crop of 22.9 million.

Northwest Cherry Growers, the industry promotional organization in Yakima, is predicting another early start, tying last year’s record of May 24. The historic norm is about June 1. Orchards near Pasco and Mattawa are always the first to start harvest that finishes in August with high-elevation cherries in Stemilt Basin south of Wenatchee and on the lower slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon.

It looks like the crop will be very similar to last year in size and timing but hopefully without the June heat waves that pushed the crop last year, said James Michael, vice president of marketing at Northwest Cherry Growers.

A record 12.6 million boxes of cherries harvested last June and a record 14 million shipped before the Fourth of July enjoyed strong demand and prices, B.J. Thurlby, the Northwest Cherry Growers president, has said.

But a second heat wave in late June caused a market glut after the Fourth that lasted 10 days and depressed prices.

This year’s first forecast calls for shipments of 200,000 boxes by June 1 compared to 500,000 last year, 11 million-plus boxes this June, and a strong and early Rainier crop similar to last year’s 1.7 million 15-pound boxes.

Mid-June through mid-July appears to be the key window for promotions and programs to maintain sales momentum, Michael said.

In Manson on the north shore of Lake Chelan, Dan Baker hopes to get a crop this year. Last year, his five acres, mostly Bing cherries, were wiped out by hail. His Bing set light every year but this year lighter than normal despite good bloom and good pollination weather.

Skeena and Sweetheart typically yield 10 to 12 tons per acre in the region, but 5 tons is good for Bing, he said.

“When the trumpet lilies bloom, it’s time to pick,” Baker said. “This year it will be about one week early if I can get pickers. It’s getting harder and harder to find them.”

He needs 12 to 15 pickers. His harvest usually takes 10 days and usually starts the fourth week of June.

NYSSA, Ore. — Farmers in the nation’s largest onion-growing region will have a normal water supply for the first time in three years, and acres are expected to increase as a result.

Farmers in Southwestern Idaho and Malheur County, Ore., plant more than 20,000 acres of Spanish bulb onions in a typical year.

According to USDA statistics, total onion acres in this region decreased significantly in 2014 and 2015, when many farmers had their annual irrigation allotment slashed to one-third of normal due to a drought.

Growers and shippers agree that onion acres in this region will increase in 2016 but they differ on how much.

“There is a fairly significant increase in onion acres this year,” said Oregon farmer Bruce Corn. “I think (that) is a direct result of having adequate water this year.”

“It sounds like onion acres are going to be up a little,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Malheur County. “Water doesn’t seem to be an issue this year and I think we’ll get some more acres because of that.”

Malheur County Onion Growers Association President Paul Skeen said everyone assume acres will increase but nobody knows for sure how much at this point.

“Are they up? We think so but nobody knows how much,” he said. “I have two seed salesmen. One says they will be up a tiny bit. The other says they could be up 5 to 8 percent.”

John Wong, president of Champion Produce in Parma, Idaho, agrees.

There is a lot of speculation about how much onion acres will increase this year but no one knows for sure right now, he said.

“I just don’t think anyone knows whether they will be up 1 or 2 percent or 10 percent,” he said.

Onions are the backbone of the economy in this region. There are more than 30 packing sheds in the valley and farmers here produce about 25 percent of the nation’s total storage onion supply.

According to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, onion acres in this region totaled 20,100 in 2013. That number dropped to 16,400 in 2014 as the area’s water supply was greatly reduced by the drought. They totaled 17,400 in 2015.

Whether production increases this year depends on more than just acres, Wong said. Yield is also a big factor.

Though onion acres increased by 1,000 in 2015 compared with 2014, total production actually dipped slightly because average yields were down considerably.

“If acres are up 5 percent and yields are down 5 percent, then production would be the same,” Wong said.

Irrigators who rely on the Columbia and Snake rivers claim there’s a serious error in a recent court ruling that rebukes Northwest hydropower operations.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon recently held the federal government’s plan for operating 14 Northwest hydroelectric dams unlawfully jeopardizes threatened and endangered fish.

The ruling criticized several federal agencies for disobeying earlier orders to make “more aggressive changes” to the hydropower system and for spending billions of dollars on habitat restoration with little effect on imperiled species.

Federal agencies have repeatedly been urged to consider breaching or removing four hydropower dams along the Snake River to ease fish passage, but they have “ignored these admonishments” and “done their utmost to avoid considering” this action “for decades,” the judge said.

These findings were key in Simon’s conclusion that federal plans to mitigate negative fish impacts were “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

However, the Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association argues the judge is wrong because the government has studied in detail the possibility of breaching the dams.

“It’s a major procedural error. Frankly, it shows the level of bias in the decision,” said Darryll Olsen, board representative of the CSRIA.

The group has filed a motion asking Simon to correct his opinion because multiple studies have examined breaching the dams, including a seven-year analysis that rejected dam removal because it would increase water temperatures to the detriment of fish.

The CSRIA hopes the motion will persuade Simon to reconsider his ruling or convince federal agencies to challenge the decision before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Olsen said.

“To suggest it has not been reviewed is dead wrong,” he said. “I don’t think he can just blow it off.”

Removing the dams wouldn’t improve the survival of protected fish or end litigation, so that option wouldn’t help irrigators affected by the lawsuit, Olsen said.

Irrigators are concerned about the hydropower litigation — which has lasted for 15 years — for multiple reasons, he said. “It makes anything we do in water management more difficult.”

Requiring more water to be left in-stream for fish would reduce supplies for irrigators if state regulators refuse to issue new water rights or require irrigators to give up water when transferring or changing water rights, he said.

Environmentalists want to reduce the amount of water stored in reservoirs, claiming this would improve flow rates, which would further reduce availability.

The enormous cost of changing the hydropower system to aid fish recovery also drives up the cost of electricity, on which irrigators spend a lot of money for pumping water.

“We are definitely worried because you never know how state and federal agencies will react,” Olsen said.

The CSRIA hopes that judge’s most recent rejection of federal plans for the hydropower system — the fourth such ruling — may spur the formation of a special “Endangered Species Act Committee,” also known as a “God Squad,” which could exempt the dams from ESA requirements as long as mitigation measures are implemented.

Otherwise, it’s unlikely the litigation by environmental groups will cease, Olsen said. “They can simply challenge this thing ad nauseum.”

Once again, a federal district court judge is telling government agencies to reconsider how they operate hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River Basin to better protect endangered salmon runs.

The ruling last week drew cheers from conservation, sport fishing and tribal representatives, who pushed for new solutions to buck the status quo — up to and including removing all four dams on the Lower Snake River.

Todd True, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, spoke during a teleconference Thursday and said the system needs to operate more like a natural flowing river, and less like slack-water pools.

“Those dams bubble to the top of things that need to be addressed,” True said.

On Wednesday, Judge Michael Simon rejected the feds’ 2014 biological opinion for salmon in the Columbia Basin, saying it violates both the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act. It’s the fifth time a judge has ruled against the biological opinion, or BiOp, since the lawsuit was initially filed in 2001.

True said the judge’s ruling represents a real turning point in the issue, and the clearest indication yet that what the agencies have done to date isn’t working.

“I think the time for government stonewalling is over,” True said. “I think starting over is exactly what the judge is asking us to do.”

Conservationists, along with the state of Oregon and Nez Perce Tribe, sued over the 2014 BiOp, which is prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The nuts and bolts of the plan are handled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams, and Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the electricity to utilities such as the Umatilla Electric Cooperative.

A spokesman for BPA said the agencies are disappointed and will take some time to fully digest the ruling.

Terry Flores, with Northwest RiverPartners, said the ruling discounts billions of dollars worth of work on fish passage and habitat improvements that have helped some salmon runs eclipse records in recent years.

Northwest RiverPartners represents the interests of utilities, farmers, ports and businesses on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Flores, the coalition’s director, said continued litigation will only lead to more process, which does nothing positive for fish. She also said dam removal on the Lower Snake is a frustrating proposition that would eliminate up to 3,000 megawatts of clean, renewable power.

“Obviously, fish would probably be better off without any dams,” Flores said. “But you have to look at the whole picture.”

True said those options — including increased spill over dams and potentially drawing down water behind the John Day Dam — are all part of the equation. He was joined at Thursday’s conference by Glen Spain, with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association; Liz Hamilton with the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association; Anthony Johnson, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee; Marc Krasnowsky, spokesman for the Northwest Energy Coalition; and Dustin Aherin, owner of Idaho River Adventures in Lewiston.

Spain, whose organization represents commercial fishing families along the West Coast, said the 2014 BiOp represented “institutional insanity,” and the judge’s ruling gives them an opportunity to really think about a new way forward. He also said the Lower Snake River dams are, in many ways, no longer necessary.

“It has cost us an enormous amount of money in the region to do the same failed things over and over,” Spain said.

BPA and the Army Corps of Engineers argue they have made improvements at Columbia and Snake river dams to support fish passage. At McNary Dam, the Corps said it installed two weirs at spillway gates and re-routed its juvenile fish passage channel to boost survival rates. About 40 percent of the river is also spilled over the dam to ensure juveniles can pass, without over-saturating the water with gas bubbles that can actually harm fish.

Salmon advocates say it hasn’t been enough. Warm water in the basin was especially devastating to endangered sockeye last year, when 96 percent of the run died before ever making it to Lower Granite Dam in southeast Washington.

The Nez Perce Tribe has stood alone among those challenging the BiOp. Johnson said the ruling was a powerful statement supporting their effort.

“We know there is a long road ahead,” he said. “We’ll do everything necessary to ensure there are salmon for our children and grandchildren to come.”