UMPQUA, Ore. — Twenty years ago when the blueberry bushes began to bear fruit, Paul and Sandy Norris gave their daughters and their friends some summer work.

One of the reasons the Norrises established the blueberry farm was to expose their daughters — Amy, Carrie and Ellie — to agriculture and the different aspects of farming. The teenage girls and their friends helped with harvesting, packing and shipping the crop.

The farm has since grown to 550 acres of mature blueberry bushes, and hundreds of young people of high school and college age from the area have worked in Norris Blueberry Farms’ fields and the packing and shipping facility. This year the business employed 180 seasonal workers during the busiest of weeks from mid-June through July. Their work helped the farm package and ship blueberries bound for the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and West Coast distribution centers for different U.S. companies.

“We enjoy working with the youth,” Paul Norris said. “It is what we want to do. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Some day we may have to change it, but it’s working very well right now.”

Norris and state agricultural representatives said they believe the farm and its packing facility are the only berry operations in Oregon that hire the majority of their summer packing and shipping help from the high school and college ranks of nearby communities. Other berry facilities in the state that need a large number of workers during harvest hire workers of various ages.

The Norris farm had previously also hired young people and other community members to pick blueberries during harvest, but the management and paperwork required for those workers and their inconsistent presence and quantity picked led to the farm going with contract pickers only. The farm also uses mechanical pickers to harvest fruit for the frozen market.

Norris, who is now 71, said compared to when he was a youth, there aren’t many opportunities for today’s youth to experience agriculture and to learn how to work hard. He is pleased his farm can continue to offer such an opportunity and he is pleased with the response of the young workers and their commitment.

“The youth who work here are absolutely amazing and resourceful,” Norris said. “They stay with the job until it is done. They learn responsibility. We have orders and we have to get them out. They have to stay with the job until it is done. The young adults know that and they respond very well.”

During the busiest time of harvest — two to three weeks from mid-June to early July — the workers put in 10- to 16-hour days.

The young people can be found out in the hot sun weighing, recording and stacking blueberries as pickers bring in the fruit. The packing and shipping barn is full of youth working on the inspection lines where blueberries are sorted, packaged, labeled and stacked on pallets for shipping. On the other side of a wall, workers feed flat cardboard into machines that turn out finished boxes.

Members of the pallet jack crew use manual and electric jacks to bring stacks of empty boxes to the inspection lines and to move pallets of boxed berries into nearby coolers.

Outside the barn, there are young people at the machine that washes the empty fruit trays, stacking them on pallets. Others hand wash the yellow buckets that pickers will use the next day in the field.

A handful of the young workers are certified in forklift use, operating those machines at one end of the barn to unload pallets of fruit coming from the field and using them at the other end of the barn to load orders into the refrigerated trailers of semi-trucks.

The workers begin by earning minimum wage — $10.50 an hour — in their first summer at the farm, but can earn a raise that is retroactive to their first day on the job if they show energy and enthusiasm in getting their jobs done. The pay range for most of these workers can go up to $16 an hour, based on their specific job duties, performance and number of summers working at the farm.

Paul Norris and two of his daughters, Carrie and Ellie, who are now in their late 30s, work in the field and in the barn, providing guidance for the young workforce.

Beth Patt, 22, and Zack Moffitt, 23, are in their seventh seasons working in the farm’s barn. Kristen Beebe, 22, is in her fifth year. Anna Lake, 19, is in her second year and her sister, Sarah Lake, 17, is in her first year. Patt and Beebe are recent college graduates, Moffitt is a fifth-year college senior, Anna Lake is a college sophomore and Sarah Lake is a high school senior.

“It’s really been a good place to work,” said Patt, who worked her way up to being a barn manager. “You can make so much money in a short amount of time because of the hours. If you have a willingness to work, if you work hard for them (the Norrises), they compensate you for that.

“It’s such an opportunity,” added Patt, who will be a first-grade teacher at Dayton, Ore., this fall. “Very few places hire this many high school and college kids and pay above minimum wage. Working here helped me buy a reliable car, paid for rent and some (college) tuition.”

Moffitt said other than “bucking hay for one day,” he had held no paying job until starting at the Norris farm seven summers ago. He kept returning and this summer was the shipping/receiving manager, having the responsibilities of working with the fruit broker, truck carriers and drivers, and loading many pallets of berries into semi-trailers from the seat of a forklift.

“This job will help me with my future,” said Moffitt, who is a student at Oregon State University. “It will show potential future employers that I’m not against hard work and long hours. When it comes down to getting the job done, I will see it through to the end and not quit or pass on the responsibilities so it is easier for me. I’ve learned a hard work ethic and to get what needs to be done, done.

“It says a lot about the Norrises, who could hire a crew of adults, but instead they are teaching young kids the value of hard work and what hard work brings them,” Moffitt adds.

Beebe is a pallet jack crew leader and manages 15 young workers in the barn.

“The Norrises are very gracious in hiring young people,” she said. “You learn how to work hard here, you get an idea of what it takes to work in any company. You have to get along with people, to be able to talk with both superiors and people below you in efficient ways.

“I now have an appreciation for the work that goes into food, from a plant to a store,” she said. “There’s so much work that goes into each package, the small details along the way, the people to move it from the field to the house, along the pack lines. It’s a bigger operation than I would have ever thought if I hadn’t had the experience here.”

Sisters Anna and Sarah Lake worked in the field at a weigh-in station. Anna said it is satisfying work even if it is hard. She described herself as a “blueberry snob,” explaining that she now knows what a good blueberry should taste like.

“It’s interesting to think of the back story of where food comes from,” she said. “It was a shock to experience that but now it is cool to know the process.”

Sarah Lake added that the work has been gratifying because she knows she has been part of the process, lifting and stacking hundreds of trays of blueberries onto trailers before they leave the field.

“It’s hard for teenagers to get a job,” Sarah said. “It’s good to be able to put this job on your resume.”

The Norrises admit they have had to fire some young workers over the years, but that has been rare. They said those teenagers who can’t manage the work usually weed themselves out, quitting because the work is too hot, too hard or too long.

A tradition

Ellie Norris, now a co-owner and the farm manager of the business, said she wants the farm to continue to hire a young local workforce during harvest.

“It started small with us as kids, but has become a tradition,” she said. “I wouldn’t want it any other way, to see kids in their first adult jobs, to help them with their skills, to watch them evolve into adults.

“Working with the young people does require so much more attention and assistance, more coaching, how to show up to work on time, how to communicate, how to be a reliable worker,” Ellie Norris explained. “We definitely want to continue this tradition with young people, to help shape the lives of kids in the county. We want to see these kids succeed and to go on to great things.”

Paul Norris said 40 to 50 percent of the young workforce return and work at the farm during several harvests.

“I’m just absolutely proud of these kids,” he said. “They do a great job. They know their jobs and they’re doing them.”

The sunrise over the Portland metro area Tuesday morning revealed an orange orb behind a haze of smoke from wildfires burning across British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, prompting the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to issue air quality advisories for swaths of western Oregon.

It’s the latest consequence of yet another year of devastating wildfires.

Several agencies in Puget Sound say air quality was at unhealthy levels for children, the elderly and other sensitive groups Tuesday. In Spokane, officials say air quality could reach the unhealthy range Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Oregon, fires in the southern part of the state and in Washington are also causing smoky, hazy conditions. 

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on Tuesday issued several advisories. It says air quality was unhealthy in the Portland region, as well as in Pendleton, Grants Pass and Medford. 

The bad air was just the latest in a long summer of poor air quality for southwest Oregon. DEQ extended an existing advisory in Jackson and Josephine counties and portions of Klamath County where bad air quality is expected through the weekend.

Conditions are expected to improve in the Portland metro area by Wednesday afternoon, though smoke will hover and haze will linger through the week, according to DEQ.

The agency is advising people to avoid outdoor activity — especially young children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems. 

Portland Parks and Recreation has moved all scheduled outdoor activities indoors and is gearing up to cancel or postpone activities if air quality reaches “very unhealthy” levels.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Oregon State University hired Stuart Reitz as director of its Malheur Experiment Station.

He starts his new position Nov. 1. He succeeds Clint Shock, who is retiring after 34 years as director.

Reitz is a professor in OSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, providing cropping systems research and extension in Malheur County. He joined OSU’s Extension Service faculty in Ontario in 2012 after 13 years as a research entomologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Florida.

Reitz is well-known and respected by producers in Malheur County and brings a wealth of expertise to the station on cropping systems of the region, OSU said in a news release. His new position enables him to apply his expertise in crop production and integrated pest management directly to solving problems facing growers across the Treasure Valley of southwest Idaho and southeast Oregon.

“Because agriculture is the backbone of Malheur County’s economy, the research conducted at the Malheur County Experiment Station is critically important not just to farmers but to the overall economic success of the county,” Reitz said.

He earned a Ph.D. in entomology from Clemson University and was a postdoctoral researcher in entomology at the University of California-Riverside.

Scientists at the 117-acre station, between Ontario and Vale, study production and sustainability of various row crops, small grains, alfalfa and native plants. The station partners with growers, growers’ organizations, agricultural businesses and public agencies to carry out groundbreaking, innovative research that aims to advance agriculture locally and beyond, OSU said.

Oregon’s Douglas County has withdrawn its plan to allow more rural housing on 22,500 acres of farm and forest land, though it’s likely to be revived.

Earlier this year, the county decided to allow 20-acre home sites on properties deemed of marginal value for agriculture or forestry within two miles of certain cities and rural communities.

The change was challenged before Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals by two state agencies — the Department of Land Conservation and Development and the Department of Fish and Wildlife — as well as the 1,000 Friends of Oregon conservation group.

Douglas County has now notified LUBA that it’s withdrawing the amendment to its comprehensive land use plan for reconsideration.

Joshua Shaklee, the county’s planning manager, said there were some “potential procedural defects” in adopting the change that may have convinced LUBA to remand the decision.

The county expects to “take another crack at it” after resolving any possible issues, which are now being reviewed by a law firm, but it’s unclear how long the process will take, he said.

“I’d describe it as a setback but not anything definitive,” Shaklee said.

Meriel Darzen, staff attorney for 1,000 Friends of Oregon, said the organization is hopeful the county will accept more citizen involvement in formulating a plan.

The final version of the plan was adopted after the opportunity for public comments had ended, which caused concerns about residents being able to weigh in on the change, she said.

“We’re hoping the withdrawal recognizes there needs to be more public process with this decision,” Darzen said.

The county has 90 days to resubmit the decision or otherwise report to LUBA, she said. If it decides to restart the decision-making process altogether, the eventual plan can still be appealed to LUBA at a later time.

According to the county, only about 25 percent of the acreage available for new homes sites under the plan would have actually been developed, resulting in about 375 housing parcels.

The final acreage was scaled down from 35,000 acres in the original proposal, which represented about 1 percent of the county’s farm and forest land.

However, critics said the county set too high a standard for commercially productive land, effectively opening the way for development of property that could profitably be used for grazing and logging.

The plan was also criticized for potentially complicating the expansion of “urban grown boundaries” around communities, since the 20-acre parcels would be harder to consolidate and develop than larger tracts.

A new processing facility built by the Hazelnut Growers of Oregon cooperative is ready for the next crop of hazelnuts when harvest begins next month.

Work on the new plant in Donald, Ore., broke ground in 2016, shortly after HGO merged with the Wilco farm supply cooperative, which will also operate out of the new location.

A grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at the facility were scheduled for Aug. 15.

While the building and property are leased from a developer, the cooperative has invested about $20 million in equipment and other upgrades, such as food-grade walls.

The new facility has more than twice the capacity to process and store hazelnuts than the company’s old headquarters in Cornelius, Ore., and was designed with an eye for growth in the hazelnut industry.

Initially, the plant will operate at about 30-40 percent capacity but will likely reach full capacity in three to four years as more newly planted orchards mature, said Tim Ramsey, who was hired as Wilco-HGO’s new CEO last year. About 70,000 acres of hazelnuts are grown by roughly 800 Oregon farmers, with their crop’s value averaging about $100 million in recent years.

“How do we provide the best economic value to hazelnut growers and expand beyond commodity marketing?” he said.

To that end, the cooperative plans to begin rolling out four product categories made from hazelnuts under the “Oregon Orchards” brand in 2019.

Ramsey said it’s too early to disclose specifics about the product lines, other than they’re intended to fill “opportunity gaps” in the food retail sector uncovered during market research.

“The grocery industry is always looking for innovative products,” he said.

The products will be sold in Wilco’s consumer-oriented farm stores as well as other outlets, “from Whole Foods to Winco,” Ramsey said.

Though the focus of the new facility is on producing value-added hazelnut products, the cooperative will still process in-shell nuts and isn’t “picky” as to the varieties delivered by farmers, he said.

Hazelnuts will be sorted according to size and other qualities, which will determine their ultimate purpose.

In-shell varieties will continue to find a home at the cooperative but the growth will come from kernel varieties used in value-added goods, Ramsey said.

The cooperative is less dependent than its competitors on exports to China, which are currently facing a headwind due to trade tensions, he said.

While the company exports half as many hazelnuts as some other processors, it’s not impervious to the trade dispute since tariffs can affect the entire market for Oregon’s crop, Ramsey said. “It will impact everyone.”

Oregon’s hazelnut industry is facing trade anxiety on two fronts: Restricted access to a major customer and low prices offered by a major competitor.

With the annual harvest quickly approaching, there’s not much time left for the looming problems to be resolved.

Hazelnuts are caught in the broader trade dispute with China, which has raised tariffs on the crop while limiting opportunities to avoid duties by trans-shipping through neighboring countries.

Meanwhile, political and economic issues have severely devalued the national currency of Turkey, the predominant global hazelnut producer, potentially reducing the global price of hazelnut kernels.

“This year, both markets are under geopolitical pressure,” said Larry George, president of the hazelnut processor George Packing.

Before 2014, one U.S. dollar was worth about two Turkish lire — today, it’s worth more than six. Though the lire’s value had already been dropping steadily, newly announced U.S. tariffs on Turkish metal have caused a particularly steep plunge in August.

“It’s moving in the wrong direction rapidly,” said Terry Ross, executive director of the Hazelnut Industry Bargaining Association. “We assumed it would slow down, but it hasn’t yet.”

Demand for hazelnuts is “huge” but the industry has encountered two “hugely unlikely scenarios” that create uncertainty for this year’s crop, said George.

The tumbling value of the Turkish lire could have the same effect as “65-70 percent of the world’s hazelnuts going on super-sale,” he said.

Normally, difficulties in selling hazelnuts to China would simply prompt the hazelnut industry to direct more crop to the kernel market, which generally isn’t as lucrative but still offers a decent price, he said.

With the Turkish lire in free-fall, though, “you pivot from China to a not-good situation,” George said.

Even so, there’s still a chance for the situation to improve before the Oregon hazelnut harvest hits full swing in early autumn, he said.

While Turkish farmers continue to receive the same number of lire for their hazelnuts, they’re still affected by the currency drop due to the rising price of fertilizer and other imported inputs.

It’s possible that growers in Turkey will demand to be paid in dollars for their crop to compensate for their unstable currency, which would strengthen prices for the crop, George said. “Whether the Turkish farmer has enough power to demand that, we don’t know.”

There’s also a chance of a breakthrough on the China front that would cut tariffs on U.S. hazelnuts headed to that country, since the Oregon industry now has direct communication with the Chinese Consulate General’s office in San Francisco, said Ross.

“It could open up a whole new frontier for us,” he said.

Oregon’s Congressional delegation has kept the issue alive in Washington, D.C., most recently with a letter to trade and agriculture officials coordinated by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, R-Ore.

For her efforts, Bonamici was recognized as the “2018 Legislative Champion” by the Associated Oregon Hazelnut Industries in Newberg, Ore., on Aug. 8.

For her part, Bonamici said it was tough to make predictions on trade in light of “inconsistent messages” from the Trump administration.

Unexpected trade actions, such as a possible withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement, can quickly roil markets, she said. “That kind of uncertainty sends shock waves through the business community.”

A new dean is coming to the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences.

The university on Tuesday named Alan Sams to lead the college, succeeding Dan Arp, who will retire at the end of August.

Sams has spent the last nine years as executive associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University, managing academic programs, personnel and budgeting for one of the largest agricultural colleges in the country, with 350 faculty, 7,800 students and a budget of more than $69 million.

At Oregon State, Sams will oversee 250 faculty, 2,600 students and a $90 million research budget. The OSU College of Agricultural Sciences offers 13 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, and works closely with state and federal partners including the USDA, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service and National Institutes of Health.

In a statement released Tuesday by the university, Sams said he is excited to join OSU, crediting a “student-centered environment combined with an excellent faculty at the forefront of their fields.”

“The breadth and economic importance of agriculture in Oregon, and the interest in environmental sustainability are factors which drew me to Oregon State University,” Sams said. “There is a tremendous innovative spirit here, whether it is in production agriculture or food entrepreneurship. Agriculture’s role in health, energy and national security is expanding and we need to lead that growth.”

Sams will also serve as director of the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station on campus in Corvallis. He begins his new duties Oct. 31. Bill Boggess, executive associate dean of the college, will serve as interim dean from Sept. 1 through Oct. 30 following Arp’s retirement.

During his nine years as executive associate dean at Texas A&M, Sams helped the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences increase enrollment by 25 percent, increase its budget by 30 percent and expand both research and international programs.

Sams was also previously dean of the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences at Clemson University from 2007 to 2009.

Sams holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in poultry science and a doctorate in food science and human nutrition, all from the University of Florida, where he started his academic career as a graduate assistant. He joined the Texas A&M faculty in the Department of Poultry Science and Food Science in 1984, where he stayed until he was named dean at Clemson. He then returned to Texas A&M in 2009.

Sams also has experience in the private sector, having worked as a quality assurance analyst with Gold Kist Poultry in Florida.

Ed Feser, OSU provost and vice president, described Sams as a seasoned and savvy administrator with a strong vision for the college.

“There’s the strong experience factor with Alan,” Feser told the Capital Press. “Also, I think he’s very comfortable and skilled working with the different constituencies you need to work with at an agricultural college.”

A hiring committee of 15 people selected Sams from among a field of 12 candidates, Feser said, which was whittled down to four finalists who each visited campus earlier this year.

Feser said Sams has a strong sense of the college’s ability to serve agriculture in Oregon, as well as nationally and internationally.

“He has a great interest in working with stakeholders,” Feser said.

Dave Dillon, executive vice president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, said that bodes well for members who depend on the university for data, outreach and educating the next generation of farmers and ranchers.

“For us, OSU is our land grant institution,” Dillon said. “It has the closest connection to family farms and ranches. The things that they do have an ongoing relevance to producers well beyond their college years.”

Dillon said he had the chance to meet with Sams in person on campus, and is pleased with the hire.

“I feel very optimistic that he is going to do great things for the College of Agricultural Sciences and the university,” Dillon said.

Balancing water for farms and fish is a constant challenge in the Upper Deschutes River, though a new agreement between irrigation districts and river advocates seeks to turn decades of competition into collaboration.

The Deschutes Basin Board of Control — comprising eight irrigation districts in Central Oregon — and nonprofit Coalition for the Deschutes have jointly developed and signed a memorandum that outlines a shared vision for the river, and calls upon irrigators to implement conservation practices such as piping otherwise leaky canals.

Five other groups have also signed on to the memo, including the Deschutes River Conservancy, Trout Unlimited Deschutes Redbands, Sunriver Anglers, Oregon Environmental Council and Wild River Owners Association.

Gail Snyder, founder and executive director of the Bend-based Coalition for the Deschutes, said the memo marks a beginning of real dialogue to help restore the river, while ensuring farmers get the water they need to keep irrigating crops.

“The Deschutes River is essential to all facets of our culture and economy,” Snyder said. “Farmers, recreationists, hunters and anglers, businesses, fish and wildlife, and the Central Oregon community all benefit from a healthy river and sustainable agriculture.”

A series of dams on the Upper Deschutes has dramatically impacted the river’s natural ecology, Snyder said, damaging fish and wildlife habitat. That has led to disputes between irrigation districts and environmental groups, including a contentious lawsuit over the Oregon spotted frog, which resulted in a settlement in 2016.

By having a shared vision for the river, Snyder said the two sides can become allies, rather than adversaries.

“The Shared Vision grew out of our work together, and it recognizes that the fastest way to restore flows to the Upper Deschutes River is for us to work together,” she said.

The Deschutes Basin Board of Control represents the Central Oregon, North Unit, Arnold, Lone Pine, Ochoco, Swalley, Tumalo and Three Sisters irrigation districts, collectively distributing water to more than 150,000 acres of farmland.

Mike Britton, board of control chairman and manager of the North Unit Irrigation District, said the districts are working toward modern, efficient irrigation systems that leave more water in streams and rivers for fish and habitat.

“Irrigation districts have been doing conservation projects for many years and we are committed to helping improve conditions for the Upper Deschutes,” Britton said in a statement.

Part of the effort includes piping open irrigation canals, which Snyder said lose up to 50 percent of water through seepage. The water savings would then be kept in-stream for fish.

So long as it is managed wisely, the groups say there is enough water to meet the needs of fish, farms and families.

“This is an exciting time in the Deschutes Basin,” said Craig Horrell, manager of the Central Oregon Irrigation District. “We look forward to more organizations, businesses and individuals being part of this initiative to conserve water and restore the Deschutes River.”

Tuesdays

DENVER (AP) — Some governors in the U.S. West say a new Trump administration directive threatens to undermine a hard-won compromise aimed at saving a beleaguered bird scattered across their region.

The directive, issued in late July, severely limits a type of land swap involving federal property. Critics say that eliminates an important technique for saving habitat for the shrinking population of greater sage grouse.

“It took one of our tools out of the toolbox,” said John Swartout, an adviser to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper told federal officials in an Aug. 2 letter that he opposes the change. Nevada, Oregon and Utah also expressed opposition or concern.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which issued the directive, said the agency would work with the governors on “adjusted” plans.

Greater sage grouse are spiky-tailed, ground-dwelling birds about the size of chickens. They are best known for the males’ showy displays in springtime mating dances.

They once numbered in the millions, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now estimates the population at 200,000 to 500,000. Experts blame energy development that broke up the bird’s habitat, along with disease, livestock grazing and other causes.

Their range covers about 270,000 square miles in parts of 11 Western U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The largest concentrations are in Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and Idaho.

In 2010, the Obama administration said the bird would need protection under the Endangered Species Act, which would have brought restrictions on drilling, mining, ranching and other development.

But in 2015, the administration reversed course, announcing an intricate agreement called the Sage Grouse Initiative that relied on federal agencies, states, ranchers and others to save the bird without invoking potentially stricter limits under the endangered species law.

One tool states planned to use was requiring developers — such as energy companies drilling for oil — to replace destroyed or damaged habitat with similar land elsewhere. The practice is called “off-site compensatory mitigation” and is envisioned as a last resort, if the damage cannot be avoided or minimized.

But the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 388,000 square miles of public land, announced on July 24 that it would no longer use mandatory off-site compensatory mitigation on most federal land.

The bureau said it did not have the legal authority to enforce the requirement. It was one of numerous Obama-era environmental regulations and practices rolled back by the Trump administration.

Some state officials and environmental groups worry that the government’s decision to back away from the mitigation tool could weaken the Sage Grouse Initiative and make it harder to save the bird.

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, wrote a letter to the Bureau of Land Management saying the move “jeopardizes BLM’s ability to implement or enforce critical components” of the federal plan for the greater sage grouse in his state. He withdrew his support for the most recent version of the plan.

Jason Miner, an adviser to Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, told federal officials that the state was “concerned and unsupportive.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, both Republicans, also expressed concern and asked for more information.

“Compensatory mitigation is an important part of Utah’s conservation plan for sage grouse, which is why the state is requesting a meeting with the BLM to discuss this potential conflict,” Herbert spokesman Paul Edwards said in a written statement.

But Wyoming officials said they believe the new directive still allows them to require off-site mitigation plans, with Bureau of Land Management agreement.

Bureau spokeswoman Heather Feeney said the agency would still consider mandatory mitigation plans if they are required by states or other third parties, but she left open the possibility they would be rejected.

Federal officials could not provide details on how often the mitigation plans have been used.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is often consulted by other agencies on such plans and every year provides tens of thousands of comments and recommendations on them, said Gary Frazer, the agency’s assistant director for ecological services.

Frazer said mitigation plans have been used for species ranging from condors to the desert tortoise, but a comprehensive list wasn’t available.

“I don’t think we know what the implications will be,” Frazier said of the Bureau of Land Management directive.

Colorado officials said they were optimistic the states and the bureau could come up with a workable solution. Utah officials said they were happy with most of the rest of the bureau’s sage grouse plans.

Environmental groups were worried.

“Right now, the compensatory mitigation requirements are a key tool,” said Nada Culver of The Wilderness Society. “Without them, there is no way to ensure we don’t keep losing sage grouse habitat.”

———

Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

Seven ships loaded with soft white wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest are bound for Yemen in the Middle East to feed millions of people on the brink of famine in the war-torn country.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, purchased roughly 200,000 tons of wheat — enough to feed 7 million people in Yemen for two months — and is working with the United Nations World Food Program to distribute the shipments.

Officials gathered for a press conference Friday outside the historic Albers Mill in Portland to announce the humanitarian mission. Stephen Anderson, Yemen country leader for the World Food Program, said the wheat will provide much-needed relief to the country, where nearly 18 million people require emergency food assistance, according to the UN.

“We’re doing our best to get food assistance to those people who need it most,” Anderson said. “The situation in Yemen unfortunately does not show signs of improvement right now.”

Yemen has been mired in conflict since 2015 between the country’s government, backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, and Houthi separatists. The republic, which imports 90 percent of its food, is now suffering the world’s largest food security emergency.

USAID has spent more than $550 million on emergency food assistance in Yemen since the beginning of fiscal year 2017, sending U.S. wheat, peas, vegetable oil and food vouchers to UN agencies and non-governmental organizations fighting hunger overseas.

Anderson, with the World Food Program, said the situation on the ground in Yemen is complex, but with support from U.S. farmers, they are getting aid to between 6-7 million people every month.

“I think today we’re forming a partnership to help fight hunger together,” Anderson said.

Darren Padget, a wheat farmer in Grass Valley, Ore., and a member of the Oregon Wheat Commission, was on hand for Friday’s event. He said growers take pride in knowing they are helping to feed the world, especially in areas where food is scarce.

“It’s what we do, is feed people” Padget said. “To see it going to people who are truly in need, it makes you feel good, and gives you another reason to get up in the morning and go to work.”

Oregon farmers grow up to 75 million bushels of mostly soft white wheat per year. About 85-90 percent of the crop is shipped overseas.

Rep. Mike McLane, Oregon House Republican Leader and a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, grew up in surrounded by wheat fields in Condon. He said he is proud of U.S. humanitarian efforts and pleased that Oregon wheat is doing its part.

“If you are blessed with bounty, you should share it,” McLane said. “And we here in Oregon are blessed with bounty.”

Finally, Mohamed Alyajouri, a first-generation immigrant from Yemen, spoke about the need for emergency relief back in his home country, where many of his family members still remain.

Alyajouri, who works as a health care administrator for Oregon Health and Science University, came to the U.S. when he was 10 years old. He is the first Yemeni-American elected to public office in Oregon, serving on the Portland Community College Board of Trustees.

Though Oregon is now home, Alyajouri said Yemen will forever be in his heart. He said he was “overjoyed” to hear local wheat was on its way to assist the Yemeni people.

“I’m excited for the future and opportunities to build many more bridges between Oregon and Yemen,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Prosecutors say a former Seattle man wanted in connection with an eco-terrorism conspiracy dating back two decades has been arrested in Cuba.

Cuban authorities detained 50-year-old Joseph Mahmoud Dibee before he boarded a flight for Russia. He pleaded not guilty Friday to federal arson and conspiracy charges in Portland, Oregon.

Prosecutors say that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dibee joined about a dozen animal rights and environmental activists in setting fires around the West. The group targeted a horticulture center at the University of Washington; a federally owned wild horse corral in Susanville, California; and a horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Oregon, among other properties.

Investigators said Dibee participated in the Susanville and Redmond fires, as well as one at a U.S. Department of Agriculture facility in Olympia, Washington.

Dibee fled the U.S. in December 2005, a month before he was indicted. One defendant, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, remains at large after fleeing to Europe in 2001.

Although an emergency roundup of wild horses in Eastern Oregon violated environmental law, a federal judge has allowed the government’s permanent removal decision to stand.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ruled that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management didn’t thoroughly review an “emergency gather” of about 150 horses after a 2016 wildfire, violating the National Environmental Policy Act.

However, the judge has now found that BLM’s mistake wasn’t grave enough to warrant overturning the decision to permanently remove the horses from the 62,500-acre Three Fingers Horse Management Area in Malheur County.

Friends of Animals, a nonprofit that sued BLM over the roundup, had asked Simon to vacate the permanent removal decision, which would have opened the way for horses to eventually be returned to the area.

Instead, the agency will be able to conduct an environmental review of the decision while it remains in place.

“Although the current state of the HMA is somewhat in dispute, that there is sufficient evidence to find a risk of harm to the HMA if the removed horses were to be returned at this time,” Simon said. “The evidence suggests that this could negatively affect the range’s future ability to provide a viable habitat for wild horses, and would be inconsistent with applicable Land Use Plans and other land management plans currently in place.”

Wild horses are a concern for ranchers in Eastern Oregon, where cattle often depend on grazing resources on public lands.

The judge issues his ruling on Aug. 9, a day after holding oral arguments in Portland over possible legal remedies for the BLM’s violation of NEPA.

Michael Harris, attorney for Friends of Animals, argued the BLM’s error was serious because the agency ignored the environmental impact of removing most horses from the northern pasture of the horse management area.

“That’s a real change in the dynamics of the landscape,” Harris said.

Wild horses have a great deal of “site fidelity,” so those in the HMA’s southern pasture are likely to stay there rather than migrate across rugged terrain to the north, he said.

“De facto, it’s like a border change of the HMA,” Harris said. “This is just a completely unanalyzed consequence that was made under an emergency decision.”

Lucinda Bach, attorney for the government, disputed the argument that horses don’t move between the pastures, noting that 11 were sighted in the northern pasture during a recent aerial survey, up from seven a year ago.

“The record doesn’t show horses can’t move back and forth,” she said. “In fact, it shows they can move back and forth.”

By the time the northern pasture is expected to recover from the fire in the spring of 2019, the horse population will likely have naturally grown closer to the maximum “appropriate management level” for the area, Bach said.

“It makes no sense to return horses to the HMA and then accelerate the need for another gather,” she said.

Harris countered that horses will primarily multiply in the southern pasture, concentrating the population to that segment.

“We think it will exacerbate the need for roundups,” he said.

FRIDAY, AUG. 10

Logging trucks growl over the Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon, hauling freshly cut timber to one of Boise Cascade’s three manufacturing facilities scattered around the region, including a plywood mill in the rural town of Elgin.

About 250 people work full-time at the Elgin complex, making plywood panels for building construction. Elsewhere on site, a stud mill sits empty after Boise Cascade announced an indefinite curtailment, ceasing operations in mid-July.

Mill closures are nothing new in Eastern Oregon. Since 1990, the industry has lost 18 mills and more than 1,200 jobs locally, said Lindsay Warness, forest policy analyst for Boise Cascade. On a percentage basis, that’s equivalent to 106,000 jobs in the Portland metro area.

To keep the remaining mills open, Boise Cascade buys roughly 33 percent of its timber from as far as Mount Hood and southwest Idaho, trucking in logs from 250 miles away. A smaller percentage comes from the three national forests within the Blue Mountains — the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur — where Warness said the company has seen a “significant decline” in available timber supply.

That could change soon, as the U.S. Forest Service has proposed doubling the timber harvest in its latest recommendations for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision, encompassing 5.5 million acres of public lands — an area about the size of New Jersey.

After 15 years, the Forest Service released its final draft of the management plans and environmental study for all three forests in June, focusing on a wide range of environmental, social and economic factors.

The public now has until Aug. 28 to file objections, kicking off another 90-day resolution period. Only groups and individuals who have previously established legal standing can file objections. Once that is complete, the Northwest regional forester in Portland will sign off on a record of decision.

Jim Pena, the previous regional forester in Portland, retired July 3. The Forest Service has not yet named his replacement.

In general, forest supervisors for the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur said the plans strive for more active management to improve forest health and reduce the risk of the large and dangerous wildfires plaguing the West.

Part of that is doubling the annual timber harvest across all three forests from a recent average of 101 million board-feet to 205 million board-feet. Between forest products, livestock and recreation, the Forest Service estimates the revised Blue Mountains Forest Plan will create up to 1,173 new jobs and $59.5 million in added income in the region.

Warness said that all sounds good, but she — and others — question how the Forest Service will achieve such ambitious numbers.

“The plan itself is fairly vague in their desired future conditions as to what they’re trying to achieve on the landscape,” Warness said. “I think that is causing a lot of frustration for a lot of people who have been highly involved.”

Forest plans are generally updated every 10 to 15 years, though the current Blue Mountains Forest Plan was adopted in 1990. The revision process, which started in 2003, has lasted as long as the plan it will produce.

A draft of the plan was released in 2014, though it was universally panned by the Eastern Oregon counties and environmental and industry groups. The Forest Service received more than 4,300 comments, nearly all of them negative.

In 2015, the agency decided to re-engage the public, holding a series of meetings to hear concerns and ideas. Officials developed two new plan alternatives, including the latest preferred alternative, dubbed “E-Modified.”

Steve Beverlin, the Malheur National Forest supervisor based in John Day, said E-Modified should lead to an overall increase in the pace and scale of restoration across the forests, working with local partners and collaborative groups.

“I think those opportunities are really interwoven across all three forests,” Beverlin said.

The Forest Plan itself does not make any decisions on specific projects, but it does establish the sideboards for future work, setting goals and desired conditions on the landscape. The overarching goals are ecological integrity and economic and social well-being, leading into guidelines on timber, grazing, access, wilderness, recreation and other uses.

To fully implement Alternative E-Modified, the Forest Service estimates it would need an annual budget of $78.5 million, which is $6 million more than recent allocations. Beverlin said he does not expect funding to increase, but he pointed to several other agency-wide initiatives that will help do work quickly and more efficiently.

For starters, Beverlin said the Forest Service is looking to tweak how it reviews projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, putting crews to work faster while avoiding costly lawsuits.

Congress also recently passed legislation ending the practice of “fire borrowing,” in which the Forest Service took money from its fire prevention programs to pay for fighting wildfires. Wildfires will now be covered under a $2 billion federal disaster fund.

“The fire funding fix is coming on board next year, so that is going to provide some additional funding across the Forest Service to address some of these critical issues,” Beverlin said. “So we’re excited about that.”

One oft-cited issue is the sheer amount of timber and undergrowth building up in the forests, feeding ever-larger wildfires such as the 110,000-acre Canyon Creek Complex near John Day in 2015.

Warness, with Boise Cascade, said the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman and Malheur forests grow about 800 million board-feet of timber every year, of which approximately 400 million board-feet — enough for 30,000 houses — is left to deteriorate.

As a result, Warness said the situation has compounded over the last 20 years and left the woods severely overstocked and prone to massive wildfires, as well as insect and disease outbreaks.

“We believe that logging is an important tool that can be used on this landscape,” Warness said.

Doubling timber harvest would provide some certainty for the industry, Warness said, but the plan does not offer any guarantees the Forest Service will be able to meet those targets each year.

Lawson Fite, an attorney with the American Forest Resource Council in Portland, agreed the plan does not provide a clear enough direction for timber harvests that would maintain the mill infrastructure in Eastern Oregon.

“It’s not a directional document, like a forest plan should be,” Fite said. “There’s no getting from A to B in there.”

Fite said the organization is still reviewing all 5,000 pages of documents, but is “seriously considering” filing an objection.

“So many mills have closed, and the level of timber that’s being processed in Eastern Oregon is just a fraction of what it used to be,” Fite said. “What we have now is a level of infrastructure that is really a minimum for what the Forest Service will need to manage the landscape for forest health and fire resilience.”

The national forests are likewise critical for Eastern Oregon ranchers, who are a vital cog in the region’s economy.

John Williams, a recently retired livestock agent for Oregon State University Extension in Wallowa County, said local agriculture is a $60 million a year business, and the vast majority comes from raising cattle.

“It’s the economic base for our county,” Williams said. “We want to produce as much as we can.”

Alternative E-Modified does call for potentially adding 51,600 animal unit months, or AUMs, associated with vacant allotments for livestock across the three forests. An AUM describes the amount of forage one cow and her calf, one horse or five sheep or goats would eat during a month.

Todd Nash, a longtime rancher and a Wallowa County commissioner, remains skeptical whether that will come to fruition. He said the plan lends itself to more stagnation, and appears to favor vacant grazing allotments as “grass banks,” rather than issuing new grazing permits.

At the same time, grazing restrictions continue to get tighter for riparian protections and threatened plant species, Nash said. He specifically mentioned a lawsuit filed in January to block grazing around Spalding’s catchfly, a summer-blooming member of the carnation family, on 44,000 acres within the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.

“Cattle are always pointed at as the villain,” Nash said. “We think that they have a role here in Wallowa County, one of which is reducing fine fuels availability. ... All the fire managers will tell you that fine fuels, a.k.a. grasses, are what carry the flames.”

Matt McElligott, owner of LM Ranch in North Powder and public lands chairman of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, said ranchers made significant progress on easing some restrictions in the plan last year. Watershed health is now linked to trends in individual allotments, he said, which in turn dictate grazing standards such as stubble height and stream bank alterations.

“What they had placed in there earlier, it wasn’t going to work,” McElligott said. “It was just too restrictive for grazing.”

McElligott said he does still worry that biological opinions for endangered fish issued by federal agencies will supersede the Forest Plan. One such opinion on the Malheur National Forest, he said, is “more anti-grazing than anything else I’ve read.”

“I’d like for the Blue Mountains plan to be the plan that everybody runs under,” McElligott said.

On the other hand, some environmental groups say the plan places too much emphasis on resource extraction, and does not do enough to protect old-growth trees and wildlife.

Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for the Portland-based Oregon Wild, said untouched wilderness areas have become increasingly fragmented over the years, and the Forest Plan now overemphasizes logging and grazing at the expense of habitat.

“We’re really afraid the Forest Service is going to lose sight of the entire reason we had protections for these large trees,” Heiken said. “That’s especially important in light of climate change. Those trees are big reservoirs for carbon.”

Species such as wolves, goshawks, pileated woodpeckers and Endangered Species Act-listed fish would all do better in greater unmanaged wilderness, he said. He agreed there is a need for more active forest management, but argued that should take the form of thinning, using fire as a management tool when the weather is favorable, and perhaps most controversially, closing roads.

“Nobody needs all of those roads,” Heiken said. “We do need reasonable access to our forests, obviously. ... We can have reasonable access to lands and still conserve our water quality, conserve our salmon and save our big game from disturbances.”

Road closures remain a major source of contention in the plan. The three forests have a combined 23,421 miles of roads, while the projected annual maintenance of roads is just 2,007 miles, creating a backlog of maintenance needs.

The Forest Service has repeatedly said the plan does not close any roads, and those decisions will be made at a project-specific level. However, Bruce Dunn, a forester for RY Timber in Joseph and a Wallowa County commissioner-elect, said the plan does set the stage for roads to be closed, cutting off a vital link to residents’ way of life — from wildlife viewing to accessing firewood and picking mushrooms and berries.

“You add all that together, and that’s why we have this opposition to it,” he said. “I think this is going to be a big thing when we get back into travel management.”

The Forest Service said it received its first two objections to the plan last week. Beverlin said the agency looks forward to working with the public to bring the plan across the finish line and start accelerating restoration in the forests.

“We’re optimistic we’re going to be able to do that across the Blues,” Beverlin said.

LANGLOIS - The following events are offered at the Langlois Public Library, 48234 Highway 101.

BEND, Ore. — Oregon fresh produce growers got some reassuring words from U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb during a stop Tuesday near Bend, Ore.

Implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act has loomed over the fresh produce industry since the law was signed by former President Barack Obama more than seven years ago.

The possibility of increased water testing and treatment, new federal on-farm inspections and the uncertain oversight of foreign competitors are just a few of the concerns raised by farmers.

During a visit at the Barley Beef feedlot outside Bend, Gottlieb acknowledged the agency is now venturing into some of the statute’s thornier regulatory territory.

“The easy parts of the implementation of FSMA are done,” he said. “The issues we’re grappling with now are hard.”

The law represents a critical rethinking of how the U.S. deals with food safety, but the government doesn’t want to saddle the food industry with outsized unintended consequences, Gottlieb said.

As the FDA increasingly scrutinizes U.S. farmers, there’s a danger that foreign produce suppliers will sidestep regulations due to lax enforcement by overseas authorities, said Kay Riley, general manager of the Snake River Produce Co. in Nyssa, Ore.

That’s particularly true since FSMA’s “foreign supplier verification” requirements fall heavily on importers who can close their doors and face little accountability, Riley said.

“We’re relying on them to be the police,” he said. “We want to make sure the playing field is level.”

Gottlieb said he was sensitive to such criticism but would “challenge that notion” that foreign suppliers will skirt regulations.

The FDA works cooperatively with foreign regulators and can conduct foreign inspections, among other tools available to the agency, he said.

As state regulators take over more FSMA inspections, the agency will devote more resources to ensuring that foreign suppliers comply with rules — particularly those companies who are flagged as unreliable, Gottlieb said.

“We’ll target our inspection to those,” he said.

Farmers are also concerned that regulations will disproportionately impact smaller operations.

Gabrielle Rossi, a farmer in Portland, said she expects to proportionately spend more money on regulatory compliance than a bigger company with dedicated food safety staff.

“Those dollars might be better spent on other avenues of our business,” said Rossi, who is on the Multnomah County Farm Bureau’s board of directors.

Rossi Farms is already accountable for food safety, since the operation sells directly to the public, she said.

Concerns about downstream contamination convinced Rossi to discontinue wholesale operations, since the farm could be blamed for others’ missteps.

“It may not have started with us but it ends with us,” she said.

Adam McCarthy, a tree fruit grower in Parkdale, said water testing requirements would have a more severe impact on operations with multiple smaller sites, such as those in the Columbia Gorge.

Conducting multiple tests per site would cost McCarthy up to $20,000 per year — several times the amount paid by larger operations with fewer sites in Central Washington.

For farmers to continue succeeding, they face the unpleasant prospect of having to “grow and swallow up neighbors,” McCarthy said.

Without going into specifics, Gottlieb said the agency is trying to achieve good testing standards that work for a variety of farm sizes.

“This is one of those residual issues we haven’t implemented yet,” he said. “We don’t want a one-size-fits-all standard.”

One aspect of FSMA that provides growers with optimism is the possibility that federal standards will replace the multitude of competing “good agricultural practice” audits required by retailers.

Riley, of Snake River Produce, said that auditors try to impress retailers with their stringent requirements, which the fresh produce industry should collectively “push back” against.

“A lot of it, frankly, is about making money on the audit side, not food safety,” he said.

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Environmental organizations and irrigation districts hope a new agreement could help discussions about managing flows on the Deschutes River focus more on collaboration than litigation in the future.

The Deschutes Basin Board of Control, which oversees eight irrigation districts that manage water within the Deschutes Basin, and six conservation groups have each signed a memo titled “A Shared Vision for the Deschutes: Working Together so Families, Farms, and Fish can Thrive.”

The memo asks all signatories to work together as partners and commits them to a shared vision for the Deschutes River of the future, one with a healthier ecology and enough water to support sustainable agriculture and growing communities.

The agreement has no legal backing, and many of the ideas stem from the 1996 Upper Deschutes Wild and Scenic River Comprehensive Management Plan. However, Gail Snyder, executive director for the Bend-based environmental group Coalition for the Deschutes and one of the leaders of the shared visioning process, said it represents an effort to get the various entities with a vested interest in water in the Deschutes River, many of whom have very different priorities and motivations, rowing in the same direction.

“There’s a lot of baggage, a lot of history,” Snyder said. “But all of us are here, to some extent, because irrigation occurred in Central Oregon.”

For the irrigation districts, following the memo means finding ways to conserve water wherever possible, including piping canals to reduce evaporation, creating a framework to share water between districts and encouraging farmers to conserve water.

“We really all do have a shared vision, we’re just looking at it from different perspectives,” said Shon Rae, deputy managing director for the Central Oregon Irrigation District.

While a series of interagency studies and planning on the Deschutes basin have fostered more collaboration between environmental groups and irrigation districts in recent years, that hasn’t always been the case. A series of dams and irrigation needs on the Upper Deschutes have caused water to flow at radically different levels during different seasons.

The fluctuation contributes to ecological challenges on the river, including erosion, habitat loss and channel widening, according to Shaun Pigott, president of Deschutes Redbands, a chapter of Trout Unlimited. Snyder and Pigott agreed that there was once a tendency for environmental groups to see irrigation districts as an obstacle rather than an ally.

In perhaps the most infamous battle between irrigation districts and environmental groups, a series of lawsuits on behalf of the Oregon spotted frog led to a 2016 settlement mandating that water levels in parts of the Upper Deschutes can’t drop below certain thresholds.

Both Pigott and Snyder said their views on irrigation districts have evolved over time. As Snyder has worked more with the irrigation districts, she said, she has come to understand the role that irrigation plays in the basin, and how best to work to return the river to a more natural state.

“We can’t lawsuit our way into the type of change we want to see,” Snyder said.

Rae added that the irrigation districts stand to benefit from a more collaborative approach as well. She said environmental groups can help educate farmers and irrigation districts on ways to conserve water and work within Oregon’s complex water laws. Furthermore, she added that the partnership will allow them to present a more united front when advocating in Salem for changes to how water in the basin can be allocated.

“We need the environmental groups, and they need us,” Rae said.

Some of the work to conserve water is already underway. Mike Britton, general manager of North Unit Irrigation District, said the Madras-based irrigation district is working on an agreement with COID, where North Unit would assist on water-saving capital projects in exchange for receiving some of the water that’s saved. North Unit, which relies heavily on stored water, would then release additional water back into the Deschutes River.

“There are always contentious issues, and if we can continue to talk and meet, it’s better than running off into corners and pursuing litigation,” Britton said.

Information from: The Bulletin, http://www.bendbulletin.com

Wednesdays

“To let fires burn in July and August is ridiculous.” — Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus in the New York Times, Sept. 22, 1988

Rich Fairbanks walks a forest trail through a stretch where two wildfires have burned in the last six years.

The ground is mostly bare, and the tree trunks are striped with black, scorched bark.

Fairbanks has worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a wildland firefighter and as a wilderness advocate. He is thrilled by all this. He points up at the green crowns of the trees with delight.

“Some beautiful hardwoods in here!” He exclaims. “Look at those canyon live oaks – really nice! They all made it.”

Last summer, the woods were on fire to the right of this trail in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, which straddles southwestern Oregon and northern California. But the flames died out soon after crossing the path – when they reached a part of the forest that had already burned in 2012. The old fire had taken out all the plants and brush that would have served as fuel.

“What they had was a very gentle kind of fire,” Fairbanks said. “It just all around was a good fire in many ways.”

This may sound like an odd way to talk at a time when catastrophic wildfires are burning throughout the arid West, literally causing death, widespread destruction and choking smoke that hangs like a funeral shroud over many communities.

But a variety of forest experts say that one of the best ways to reduce the threat of these mega-blazes is to use fire itself. They say we need to increase the pace of prescribed fire and let some wildfires continue to burn when it’s safe to do so.

Of course, there’s not nearly as much political support for letting fires burn as there is for putting fires out.

“Our knowledge of fire proceeds forward, and there’s always a lag between what we know and what the general public understands,” Fairbanks said. “And even lagging behind that is what the politicians are willing to act on.”

John Bailey, a forestry professor and fire expert at Oregon State University, said contrary to what Smokey Bear and the U.S. Forest Service once told us, “there is no smoke-free future” in western U.S. forests. We either use fire as a tool to help clear out the dense undergrowth, he said, or we wait for it to be done by explosive wildfires driven by the worst weather conditions.

“If you make me king and I’m able to control the future,” Bailey said, “I’ll burn thousands of acres at a time. Just burning hundreds of acres isn’t going to get us ahead of this program. It’s still going to leave wildfire doing most of the work.” 

In practice, that’s harder to carry out, in part because politicians who represent fire-prone regions are reluctant to tell their smoke-weary constituents that there sometimes needs to be more fire in the forest.

“Our members of Congress know that overall the public doesn’t like to breathe smoke,” said Andy Stahl, who heads the Eugene-based Forest Service Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “The public doesn’t like to feel threatened. The public thinks firefighters are heroes, and they want the fires put out.”

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, represents eastern and southern Oregon. He is well-versed on wildfire issues. 

He said  fire can indeed be “a management tool when appropriately applied.” But in an interview with OPB, the Republican lawmaker was quick to raise several caution flags.

“We’re a long way from being ready to just say, ‘Oh, we can do prescribed burns throughout the forest. Let ‘er burn,’” Walden said.  “I don’t think that makes a lot of sense.”  

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington is the top Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, and she’s introduced legislation that includes a bigger role for prescribed fire. However, she was quick to raise concerns about the practice as well. 

“To me, one of the key issues in thinking about prescribed burn is that in hotter, drier conditions you have to be very careful,” Cantwell said. “There probably are some examples where people thought they could do prescribed burn … and what they found is it got out of hand really quickly because of those weather conditions.”

Some key members of Congress would simply like to avoid the subject. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been one of the most visible legislators on wildfire issues. He’s urged the Forest Service to beef up its fleet of aerial tankers, and he worked hard to revamp the agency’s budget to provide more money for fire prevention.

But the normally loquacious senator turned down a request for an interview on the subject of using fire as a management tool.  

Contrary to Northwest politicians’ concerns about prescribed fires, they are typically set during spring and fall, when conditions are less hazardous.

Bailey, the OSU professor, said thinning the forest first and applying fire afterward can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in forests that are overstocked with trees from a century of wildfire suppression. Northwest politicians are eager to support the thinning part of that equation, but they’re less enthusiastic about the burning.

Several legislators said that fire is hard to use as a tool when the forests are so much more densely stocked than they were 100 years ago.

“We’ve got to manage back to a point where you can regularly allow fire,” said Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, whose southwestern Oregon district regularly grapples with wildfire. “I mean, a lot of these forests are in a condition where you can’t go in with fire because it’s just way too dense.”

Political barriers might explain why some forest restoration projects complete the thinning but not the burning part of the plan. 

Bailey said the effectiveness of the dual treatment regime of thinning and burning was demonstrated during the 2017 Milli Fire that threatened the town of Sisters in the Deschutes National Forest. The fire roared through an area that had been thinned and burned by prescribed fire just a few years ago – and Bailey said that the treated area helped knock the Milli Fire down. Without that, he said, Sisters “would have been at the mercy of what the weather was doing.”

That experience has helped change local attitudes. Sisters Mayor Chuck Ryan wrote a letter to the state supporting the greater use of prescribed burns.

“While we may be reducing near-term exposure to smoke by limiting prescribed fire now,” he wrote, “it comes at the expense of future Oregonians who will face increasingly severe wildfires and wildfire smoke.”

Prescribed burning is only part of the equation. Bailey and other experts say the Forest Service should be more determined to let some fires burn. It’s the only way, they say, to make big reductions in that catastrophic fuel buildup. 

“Most ignitions happen during much more modest fire weather conditions,” said Bailey, when it’s cooler, wetter and safer to let the fire do some of the work of reducing fuel loads.

Ironically, he said, those are the easiest fires to extinguish, but putting those fires out “just kicks the can down the road to when the wildfires only happen under the worst conditions.” 

The notion of letting some fires burn is something not too many lawmakers want to endorse.

“Maybe if you’re in the middle of a wilderness area that has no abutting private property, that’s just fine,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. “But the real world is, in most cases, there are businesses and homes in some proximity.”

Even if legislators are hesitant to push forward on using fire as a tool, there are signs of change.

This year’s congressional budget deal included provisions aimed at allowing the Forest Service to keep its budget from being cannibalized by rapidly rising fire-fighting costs. As a result, there’s broad hope the agency can start working its way through a huge backlog of forest restoration projects. 

In Oregon alone, there is planned work on about 1.6 million acres that has passed environmental reviews but has gone unfunded. Prescribed fire has been recommended for about half of that acreage.

Vicki Christiansen, interim Forest Service chief, told Congress that “we have to use every tool in the toolbox for treating those hazardous fuels … That is also using fire when we are in control of fire because fire will reduce fuel loads in many of these ecosystems.”

Back in Oregon, the state departments of Forestry and Environmental Quality are working to ease the state’s stringent smoke management rules, making it easier to issue the permits needed to conduct prescribed burns.

State Forester Peter Daugherty said current rules prohibit any visible smoke in communities. The revamped rules, which are still under study, would allow some exceptions for a short duration if there are measures in place to protect people particularly vulnerable to smoke.

“There could be a significant increase in the use of fire if we had the resources and can effectively protect populations,” said Daugherty, adding that it “would help protect [us] from fire as well as from wildfire smoke in the long run.”

Richard Whitman, DEQ’s executive director, said climate-change projections show the coast range becoming more susceptible to wildfire. And thanks to winds blowing eastward across those mountains and into the Willamette Valley, that’s something that could threaten air quality in the state’s major population centers if more isn’t done to reduce fuel loads.

“The frequency and scale of wildfire on the West is going up,” Whitman said. “So this is an issue whether we like it or not … we’re going to have to deal this one way or another.”

Oregonians will have their own chance to weigh in on whether to open the door to more prescribed fire. The agencies will hold public hearings this month in LaGrande, Bend, Klamath Falls, Eugene and Medford. If history is any guide, several of these cities could be under a smoky haze at the time.