A dairy farm associated with a well-known Oregon cheese company is being sold off following repeated failures to follow wastewater regulations.

Volbeda Farms near Salem, Ore., violated the terms of its “confined animal feeding operation” permit numerous times over several years, prompting the Oregon Department of Agriculture to revoke the permit.

Violations included discharging waste into nearby waterways and not complying with the dairy’s animal waste plan, said Wym Matthews, manager of the agency’s CAFO program.

“This was an operational failure. It was not a facility failure, it was the failure of the operator to manage it correctly,” Matthews said.

Apart from the permit revocation, Volbeda Farms was issued a $90,000 civil penalty. ODA also obtained a temporary restraining order requiring the farm to remove its animals and clean the facility.

The agency permits about 260 dairy CAFOs in Oregon, and most of them comply with wastewater regulations, said Matthews. “This was an anomaly for our program. This is not something we see all the time.”

Capital Press was unable to reach Rod Volbeda, the farm’s owner, for comment.

The dairy farm is being bought by Brian Turley, whose family operates a grass seed and custom farming business, with the closing expected to take place in January.

Turley said he’s familiar with the dairy industry as his family raised replacement heifers in the 1990s and currently provides seed drilling and hauling services for dairy farms.

Once the dairy farm receives a new CAFO permit, Turley expects to initially keep 180 to 225 Jersey cows at the facility, roughly one-third the number it once housed at its peak.

Turley became aware of the opportunity to buy the facility after hauling away manure from the farm.

The Willamette Valley Cheese Co. will continue operating next to the site and Turley is negotiating about supplying the company with milk.

“We’d like to work out a deal with them,” he said.

Manure management problems aren’t a concern for the new owners, as they already apply dairy manure to multiple fields in the region, said Brianna Turley, Brian’s wife.

“We have a lot more acreage than they had to apply it,” she said, noting that the Turleys will also collect and dispose of wastewater from the cheese facility.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Ten strike teams from all over the state are on their way to help California firefighters battle several massive blazes north of Los Angeles.

The Oregon Fire Marshal said Wednesday it is also sending heavy equipment to help.

The largest and most destructive of the fires, an 85-square-mile wildfire in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles, had nearly reached the Pacific on Tuesday night after starting 30 miles inland a day earlier.

Strikes teams from Oregon will come from Lane, Multnomah, Washington, Linn, Marion, Clackamas, Klamath and Yamhill counties.

A combined team from Polk, Linn, and Benton counties and a team from the Rogue Valley area are also en route.

State fire officials say five more strike teams will be dispatched later Wednesday.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to conduct an unprecedented review of 27 monuments established by former presidents over more than two decades on lands and waters revered for their natural beauty and historical significance.

Zinke said Tuesday he’s confident the president will follow his recommendations, which include calls to reduce two other monuments in the U.S. West and to modify rules at six others. He also has said he’s recommending the creation of three new monuments.

Zinke released his full report Tuesday, which was previously leaked. Here’s a breakdown of Zinke’s recommendations:

Trump will shrink Bears Ears National Monument by about 85 percent to 315 square miles, divided into two separate areas. He plans to downsize the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half to 1,569 square miles, divided into three areas.

Tribal and conservation groups are suing to block those cuts.

Zinke also advised trimming Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon, but the president hasn’t announced final decision on those monuments.

Zinke said Tuesday the cuts at Gold Butte would mainly come around a water district that shouldn’t have been included in the boundaries. He said he recommends making clear that hunting and fishing are allowed and asking Congress to approve a co-management plan to allows Native American tribes to help run the monument. Gold Butte protects nearly 300,000 acres of desert landscapes featuring rock art, sandstone towers and wildlife habitat for the threatened Mojave Desert tortoise and other species.

Zinke declined to specify how many acres he wants to remove from monument status, stressing that the administration is working with Nevada’s governor and congressional delegation to find a solution.

Similarly, Zinke declined specifics on Cascade-Siskiyou, which protects about 113,000 acres in an area where three mountain ranges converge. Changes will center on recent expansion of the site, which was first created by Clinton in 2000. Much of the additional land is on private property, while some is on land previously designated for timber production, Zinke said.

Zinke proposed more access for people and industry and other changes at six monuments:

• Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande Del Norte, New Mexico: Modifications will be made to protect the long-standing culture of grazing and ensure hunters and fishers don’t lose access, Zinke said. At Organ Mountains, the U.S. Border Patrol will do a border-safety assessment to give Zinke a list of possible improvements to ensure they can do their job. He will also request congressional authority to give tribes co-management.

• Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine: Zinke said he wants to allow more trees to be cut in some parts by a National Park Service company, and not commercial logging, to make the forest healthy by thinning and landscape improvement. He also wants to ensure that “traditional uses” like snowmobiling and hunting are taken into account in a management plan.

• Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Maine: Allow commercial fishing in the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

• Pacific Remote Islands, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing within the marine monument that covers nearly 87,000 square miles near Hawaii.

• Rose Atoll, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing in the 13,500-square-mile marine monument around the Rose Atoll in American Samoa, a U.S territory.

During his travels to visit some of the monuments under review, Zinke said these six monuments would remain untouched: Upper Missouri River Breaks in Montana; Sand to Snow in California; Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona; Craters of the Moon in Idaho; Hanford Reach in Washington; and Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado.

Zinke has been silent on the other 11 monuments under review, from Giant Sequoia in California to the Marianas Trench southwest of Guam, but they are presumed to remain intact.

Zinke also recommended Trump create three monuments, including one in his home state of Montana:

• Badger-Two Medicine in an area within the Lewis and Clark National Forest in northwest Montana. Zinke said he sees a great opportunity to help generate some income for the locals and foster more cultural understanding by creating a monument in a sacred place for the Blackfeet Nation. He said he would request congressional authority to give the tribe co-management.

• Medgar Evers’ home in Jackson, Mississippi, where the first field secretary for the NAACP was assassinated on June 12, 1963. Evers organized boycotts over segregation during the civil rights movement.

• Camp Nelson near Nicholasville, Kentucky, which was established in 1863 as a 700-bed Union Army hospital, supply depot and recruiting center for African-American troops in the state.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Great wine starts with great grapes, the kind that can’t survive an 8-month-long winter.

Jackson Hole Winery co-owner and winemaker Anthony Schroth knows that struggle all too well.

“We attempted to grow them here,” he said. “It was terrible.”

In 2010, when the small local winery was getting off the ground, Schroth planted a variety of grapes known to withstand cold temperatures — bred and cultivated by the University of Minnesota — on the winery property in South Park.

The 20 vines of Marquette grapes had a shorter ripening period and had their own rootstock, meaning they didn’t need to be grafted to grow back the same grapes again.

“Every spring we would get new growth, about 6 to 8 inches,” he said. “And then we would get a hard freeze or frost and it would kill them.

They would always come back, but after five years of minimal growth and yield Schroth gave up on growing his own grapes.

“The vines made it through the wintertime, no problem,” he said. “The summertime, ironically, was too cold.”

A nice temperate climate is ideal for growing grapes and wine is usually made close by.

Schroth decided to mix up that model, using the altitude and cold temperatures of Wyoming’s mountainous climate to his advantage.

He uses grapes grown in the perfect climate of Sonoma and Napa counties in California and makes the wine in Wyoming.

“I started noticing there were a lot of benefits to fermenting at altitude,” he said.

At first he didn’t know what was going on, just that something was different than when he produced wine in California.

Then it hit him, the 6,237-foot elevation of Jackson was affecting the fermentation, just like it does with baking, boiling water and even a sea-level tourist’s lungs.

“Ideally this is one of the best places to make wine: high altitude,” he said. “Not necessarily Jackson Hole, but an area that has conditions where it’s freezing six months of the year and over 6,000 feet.”

The grapes are introduced to a low oxygen environment that’s known for low temperatures. From where the grapes are picked in Sonoma to the winery in Jackson, there is a 6,000-foot elevation difference and could be a 50-degree temperature swing. The United States Department of Agriculture says that above 2,500 feet, the atmosphere becomes much drier and the air has less oxygen and atmospheric pressure.

Schroth said the primary fermentation of wine peaks around 85 degrees and slows down below 50 degrees, which happens naturally at the Jackson winery.

“In some environments your fermentations may hit 100 degrees naturally,” he said, referencing California wineries. “In those environments you’re trying to keep the fermentations cooler so you don’t burn off aromatics.”

Schroth has the opposite problem; he said they hope it gets up to 85 degrees. The winemaking room has heating components and the barrel aging room has a heated floor.

“During the fermentation the fruit never really gets hot, the yeast never really take off,” he said. “We get these nice slow fermentations.”

Once the wine is put into barrels for aging the cold climate works its magic. Below 50 degrees, there is no activity in the barrels, which is what the winery wants, Schroth said. You want it to age, not ferment.

“We can keep that barrel room at 40 degrees and if we want to cold stabilize that barrel room down to 35 degrees we do that just by opening the door,” he said. “We’re just utilizing Mother Nature.”

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Schroth grew up in Jackson, but moved to northern California to study at Sonoma State University. He loved learning about wine and decided he wanted to open his own winery.

“I thought, ‘I could do this in Wyoming,’” he said.

He put together a business plan for Jackson Hole Winery, but people had their doubts. Most Californians thought it was a bad idea and that he couldn’t make it work. Even his father thought it was a bad idea (at first).

“They just kind of chuckled and said ‘yeah, I don’t think so,’” he said of when he told his parents.

So Schroth played it safe and started a label in California, Premonition. He started managing a vineyard in California and produced his first commercial vintage in 2009.

His parents were impressed and gave into his idea of a Jackson Hole winery. The business came to life in 2010 and the first two wines, a chardonnay and the Rendezvous Red Cabernet Frac and Syrah blend.

“We started out really small and it was really experimental,” he said.

Seven years later the winery has a lineup of six wines including the first two wines and Summit, a dry Riesling; Catch and Release, a Zinfandel; Outlaw, a Dry Creek Cabernet Sauvignon; and a Pinot Noir. There have also been a group of other specialty wines produced including a Rose, a Vioghiert and a newly made Port.

Schroth said he was always waiting for a shoe to drop and something to ruin it all. The weather would be too harsh, the environment unfriendly or the wines not cooperate

“And it never came,” he said.

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A large amount of breweries and distilleries have made small Wyoming towns their home. Jackson Hole Winery is one of two winemakers in the state, although Schroth said he heard something about an operation starting in the middle of the state.

“Before prohibition, this is how it was,” he said. “Every town had its own winery, brewery or distillery. Then prohibition came in and wiped a lot of them out.”

Schroth said it wasn’t easy for those small businesses to start back up after the alcohol ban. Even now, it’s a hard business to break in to. It’s capital and time intensive, especially when it comes to wine.

The very first year of production is made up of buying (or growing) grapes and all the equipment involved in fermentation and aging. The second year you need to buy more grapes, more equipment and more barrels. It isn’t until the third year that you see if your work paid off. And you need to buy a lot of bottles.

“You get that one shot at a first impression,” he said.

Luckily, for the local winery, their work paid off.

“It’s a tough business to get started, but you’re seeing a lot of these communities get behind their local brewer, winemaker or distiller,” he said.

THURSDAY, DEC. 7

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has formally recommended revising the boundaries of Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument without specifying which areas may be excluded.

The monument’s expansion in early 2017 was opposed by timber companies and ranchers who rely on the public land and fear the designation will restrict logging and grazing.

The Trump administration is reconsidering numerous national monument designations made over the past twenty years, including the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which faces several lawsuits against the expansion.

In his formal recommendation, made public on Dec. 5, Zinke said the monument should be modified to “address impacts on private lands and to address issues concerning the designation and reservation of O&C Lands as part of the monument and the impacts on commercial timber production.”

O&C Lands were set aside by Congress for sustained timber production, which is a key point in the litigation over the expansion.

Although he didn’t say how much the monument would be scaled back, the announcement was cheered by the American Forest Resource Council, one of the organizations suing the federal government.

“We thank Secretary Zinke and Interior staff for taking a closer look at this expansion and we urge President Trump to take action to follow the law,” said Travis Joseph, the group’s president, in a press release.

The organization has struck a deal with the Interior Department to postpone litigation until Jan. 15, giving the Trump administration more than a month to take action on the recommendation.

Zinke’s announcement was denounced by the Sierra Club, which claimed in a press release that the Trump administration is “effectively robbing American people of our country’s natural and cherished wonders.”

BANDON — City of Bandon electric utility customers will soon see a slight increase in their bills.

BANDON - City of Bandon electric utility customers will soon see a slight increase in their bills.

SALEM, Ore. — Grass seed farmers are heading into 2018 on a strong footing, as world supply is largely balanced with demand, according to a global seed marketing executive.

“We don’t have to worry about prices dropping dramatically this year or next year,” said Claus Ikjaer, president and CEO of DLF Pickseed.

The market outlook is positive despite the strong U.S. dollar, which generally hinders exports of U.S. products, Ikjaer said. For the same amount of money, foreign buyers can now purchase about 80 pounds of U.S. seed compared to 100 pounds in 2011.

Traditionally, strong grass seed prices would spur more production, but that largely didn’t happen when other commodity prices were healthy and those crops were competing for acreage, he said.

“Production is really not going up as it used to do,” Ikjaer said Dec. 5 during the Oregon Seed Growers League annual conference.

Now that commodity crop prices are weak, grass seed growers can be expected to respond by expanding acreage, he said. However, in Oregon, farmers have increasingly dedicated land to hazelnuts.

It’s estimated that Oregon’s grass seed acreage dropped from 525,000 acres in 2006 to about 375,000 acres in 2010, when prices were suffering due to the housing downturn and financial crisis, he said.

Grass seed production has since recovered to about 400,000 acres in 2017 and will likely remain flat next year, Ikjaer said.

In the U.S., three years of lower grass seed yields have depleted stocks of certain species, leaving dealers struggling to meet demand, he said. “That’s starting to create some issues for us.”

High prices are increasingly driving companies to use seed coatings, Ikjaer said.

Such coatings add weight to seed but they can also improve germination by retaining water and making nutrients readily available.

Annual ryegrass is the most commonly exported species, representing nearly 46 percent of the export market, and China is the top destination for grass seed.

“China is by far the most important market for us at the moment,” Ikjaer said.

While Europe is the second major destination for grass seed, the continent is largely self-sufficient and it’s been importing less seed in recent years, he said.

For example, exports of U.S. annual ryegrass to Europe have dropped more than a third since the 2013-2014 marketing year.

Poland’s production of the species has compensated for the decline, since U.S. prices are too high to fill the demand, Ikjaer said.

Ikjaer urged the U.S. industry to more accurately monitor its grass seed acreage, which would help better project available supplies.

In Denmark and Poland, for example, farmers are required to report acreage to the government, but in the U.S., surveys are voluntary and therefore not as dependable, he said.

“We don’t have reliable data,” Ikjaer said.

LANGLOIS - The Langlois Public Library offers the following events:

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A medical marijuana card used to be the key to buying and possessing pot in Oregon.

But the rise of recreational marijuana is making the cards primarily valuable only as a discount card, and not a necessity to buy, said Sam Elkington, owner of Track Town Collective in Glenwood. The card exempts the buyer from Oregon’s state and local pot taxes, which are levied on recreational pot.

Daily sales at medical pot dispensaries — once cutting-edge hubs for the marijuana industry — have plummeted as a result.

“Medical only is smaller than small,” Elkington said of the dispensary niche. On Monday at Track Town, customers had bought just $58 worth of pot products by midafternoon, reinforcing why Elkington so far has been able to employ only himself at the store.

Elkington’s little green pot shop draws about three medical marijuana customers a day. Another 15 to 20 potential customers come in asking for recreational pot, but he can’t sell to them — yet.

The rapid growth and evolution of the marijuana marketplace in Oregon is prompting Elkington to apply with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to become a recreational pot shop. He plans to let his status as a medical pot dispensary with the Oregon Health Authority lapse in March.

“It’s a financial decision,” Elkington said.

He’s not alone in going recreational.

Medical marijuana cardholders these days can get their pot either at a medical pot store or at a recreational one. That has put medical marijuana stores in an increasingly untenable financial position.

Nearly a quarter of the dispensary license holders with the state — five out of 21 — had notified the state as of Monday that they plan to apply with the OLCC to sell recreational pot rather than medical marijuana, according to Oregon Health Authority spokesman Jonathan Modie. Only four indicated plans to remain a medical marijuana shop.

Dispensary owners faced a deadline to decide on Friday.

The deadline caused medical pot stores to submit a flurry of forms to the OHA and OLCC. Officials at both agencies still were sorting through them on Monday, and they expected more to come in throughout the week.

Lane County had 31 medical pot dispensaries as of April 2015, a couple of months before the sale of recreational pot became legal. As of this year, the medical-pot dispensary count had dropped to just two stores. And the county may have none next year.

“While, obviously, we’ve seen a significant drop over the last year or two in dispensaries, patients still have the option to purchase medical (marijuana) at recreational shops,” Modie said.

And, more shopping options seemingly open each day when it comes to recreational marijuana. The OLCC has licensed 74 recreational marijuana shops in Lane County, with another 22 proposed, according to agency data from late last week.

Senate Bill 1057, which lawmakers in Salem passed in May, established the deadline for dispensaries to choose whether to remain medical or change to recreational pot stores.

If the businesses stay as dispensaries, they must take part in a new state medical marijuana tracking system.

Recreational marijuana shops, under state rules, may sell medical-grade pot to customers with medical marijuana program cards. Medical flowers and products, such as pot-laced foods, can be stronger than their recreational counterparts.

The cards allow customers to avoid paying state and local sales taxes for marijuana, which can be as high as a combined 20 percent.

Still, the number of medical marijuana cardholders statewide has dropped since recreational pot became legal two and a half years ago. The Oregon Health Authority’s latest figures, from mid-October, show 59,137 medical cardholders statewide and 6,369 in Lane County.

The state had 78,045 medical cardholders as of October 2015 — when recreational marijuana sales became legal in Oregon — and 8,382 patients in Lane County.

Cardholders must renew each year and pay $200 annually to maintain their card. The state offers fee discounts for a variety of reasons, such as $60 off for low-income residents who receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program assistance, $50 off for Oregon Health Plan eligibility and $20 off for having served in the U.S. military.

Even before Friday’s Oregon Health Authority deadline, Lane County was down to just two medical marijuana dispensaries. One dispensary is Track Town Collective. The other dispensary is Inhale Cannabis Co. at 86784 Franklin Blvd.

No one picked up the phone at Inhale on Friday, and the shop was closed Monday. A sign on Inhale’s door said it is open Tuesday through Saturday.

If Inhale remains a medical dispensary, it would be the last in Lane County.

Elkington, owner of Track Town, said he in effect had “made a bet” that the federal government might outlaw state-licensed recreational marijuana sales this year, so he opted to stick with medical pot.

“I lost,” he said. “(The Trump administration hasn’t gone after recreational sales), so the (dispensary) market has dwindled down to near nothingness.”

Oregonians are still waiting to hear the fate Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument after President Trump announced Monday that he will shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.

Southern Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou is on the short-list of national monuments being targeted by the Trump administration. The list also includes Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke toured Cascade-Siskiyou this summer as part of a far-reaching review of recently designated monuments across the country.

The White House announcement Monday to shrink the two Utah preserves gives a possible preview of what’s to come for Oregon.

“It’s just unprecedented,” said Dave Willis with the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council. “We’re talking about two million acres that this president is unprotecting.”

Any changes to Cascade-Siskiyou would involve far less land. President Barack Obama nearly doubled its size earlier this year to about 113,000 acres. Obama said the move would better protect the rich biodiversity of the region.

Willis said the Wilderness Council is prepared to take legal action to protect Cascade-Siskiyou “if and when” the White House acts. Environmental groups have already filed a lawsuit challenging the monument reductions in Utah.

Trump characterized the changes to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as “restoring the rights of this land” to citizens. He said past presidents have abused powers granted under the Antiquities Act to establish national monuments that are much larger than necessary.

“These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of the people who actually live here, work here, and make this place their home,” he said.

Grand Staircase-Escalante and Cascade-Siskiyou national monuments were both established by President Bill Clinton. Gold Butte and Bears Ears were designated by Obama.

In Oregon, timber, ranching and off-road vehicle advocates have been encouraged by the current administration’s criticism of national monuments.

The Association of O&C Counties — a group representing Oregon counties that receive logging income from BLM timberlands formerly owned by the Oregon and California Railroad — has a lawsuit pending that challenges the Obama Administration’s expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

A judge had put that case on hold until Dec. 1 to give time for the Trump administration to act.

AOCC executive director Rocky McVay said that stay has now been extended through mid-January. McVay is waiting to hear word from the White House on the fate of Cascade-Siskiyou.

“At least if it was addressed – we’d know what direction we were going to go,” he said, “if we were going to continue the complaint or it would be settled.”

PORTLAND — Oregon State University is taking over Portland.

That’s an exaggeration, of course. But OSU leased 39,509 square feet in downtown Portland, immediately upping its presence in the state’s largest city.

The university will take up the entire second floor of what old-time Portlanders still call the Meier & Frank Building. Visitors will recall: It’s that beautiful old building kitty-corner from Pioneer Courthouse Square. It opened in 1909, rises 15 stories and takes up an entire block. It was the Meier & Frank department store for decades, and a Macy’s after that. Both closed as the retail trade undergoes a sea change. Now a luxury hotel, The Nines, takes up the sixth through 15th floors.

And the state’s land grant university, still best known for its roots in agriculture, forestry and engineering, sets up highly visible shop in the city of hipsters, homeless, foodies, politicians, lawyers, activists, money and international business types.

The UO also has a considerable presence in Portland. Is OSU ratcheting up the competition between the universities?

OSU President Ed Ray doesn’t describe it that way.

“Serving the Portland region is part of OSU’s 149-year mission as Oregon’s statewide university,” Ray said in a prepared statement. “Our work in Portland complements Oregon State’s teaching, research and outreach and engagement mission and the work we do at our campuses in Corvallis and Bend — and major initiatives, such as the Marine Studies Initiative along Oregon’s coast and globally.”

Several existing Portland-based operations of the university will take up residence in August 2018. They include arms of the Extension Service, the OSU Foundation, the OSU Alumni Association and some athletic department representation. The OSU campus in Corvallis remains the center of each program, however.

The space also will house classrooms, meeting spaces and OSU Advantage, its partnership with private industries and other businesses.

OSU Vice President Steve Clark said the university signed a 10-year lease and will pay about $115,000 per month, or $1.38 million annually. The property owner is KBS and Sterling Bay; the real estate firm CBRE brokered the deal, according to OSU.

Clark, who oversees university oversees relations and marketing, downplayed any competition with UO or with Portland State University.

Instead, he said OSU recognizes the importance of having a “prominent central presence” in Portland. The university also has identified “thousands of adult learners” who are not served by any college or university, Clark said.

The space will better allow OSU to collaborate with local governments, other institutions, school districts, businesses and community groups, he said. About 1,000 students who take on-line courses from OSU live in the Portland area, many of them computer science students, Clark said. The central location gives on-line learners a a touchstone.

OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences is perhaps best represented in Portland, with the well-regarded and busy Food Innovation Center at the edge of the Pearl District.

It’s essential that the state’s land-grant university collaborate with the food and drink industries that have blossomed in the Portland area, Clark said.

In addition, the College of Pharmacy does teaching and research in the Collaborative Life Sciences Building in the booming South Waterfront District, where the medical school, OHSU, has expanded. Extension programs operate in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, including the North Willamette Research and Extension Center near Aurora. OSU’s College of Business offers hybrid MBA programs in Portland, and the College of Veterinary Medicine collaborates with the Oregon Humane Society, which provides care and finds homes for hundreds of cats and dogs annually.

Idaho and Oregon ranchers have just recently started to resume grazing their cattle on some of the 279,000 acres of prime range land scorched two years ago by the Soda Fire.

The fire burned 84 pastures on 40 U.S. Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments. Most of the damage was done in Owyhee County southwest of Boise, with some of it occurring near Jordan Valley, Ore.

As part of BLM’s post-fire restoration plan, ranchers were not allowed to graze their animals on those allotments for at least two growing seasons following the blaze.

Grazing has resumed this fall on 48 affected pastures and BLM officials expect to make decisions on the remaining 36 pastures by the end of December, said Peter Torma, BLM’s Soda Fire project manager.

Ted Blackstock is one of many ranchers who lost large swaths of their traditional grazing land to the fire.

“It wiped out all of our feed for that year and the next year,” he said. “It’s been very expensive for our ranch, having to find all that feed.”

Blackstock was able to get back on one of his allotments this fall and will also be able to use some range this winter that was damaged by the fire.

“It’s good to be back home again,” he said. “The grass is coming back really well.”

The lightning-caused fire burned rapidly and it burned hot, Torma said.

“There really weren’t these unburned islands or pastures that were not burned,” he said. “Whatever it went across, it burned 100 percent of it.”

The fire also killed hundreds of cattle.

“It was a pretty devastating fire,” said BLM spokesman Michael Williamson. “A lot of ranchers had to drastically adjust what they were doing” because of it.”

BLM officials have undertaken a myriad of treatment efforts aimed at restoring the land and the agency’s restoration plan includes making the landscape more resilient to fire in the future.

That plan includes 30 miles of targeted grazing fuel breaks, which will begin this spring and will be accomplished using producers who graze cattle in those areas.

The idea is to create a 200-foot buffer on each side of roads, with the grass grazed down to a 2-inch stubble height, said Lance Okeson, a BLM fuels program coordinator.

With the fuel breaks, “The rate of a fires’ spread is going to be drastically reduced,” he said.

The targeted grazing fuel breaks are designed to prevent another big fire, said Lara Douglas, manager of the BLM’s Boise district office.

BLM has used this tactic before but never on this scale or without extensive fencing, Okeson said.

“We’re trying to develop these techniques with the operators on the landscape, without a bunch of extensive fencing,” he said. “We’ve done some small-scale stuff like this but we’re trying to take it a little farther than that.”

The grazing fuel breaks are part of the BLM’s plan to protect the millions of dollars of restoration work that has already been done, Okeson said.

“From day one of the plan, it was, we’re going to do all these restoration efforts and we’re also going to have a strategy to protect them,” he said.

The Trump administration has agreed to resume litigation over the expansion of Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument on Jan. 15 unless the dispute is resolved beforehand.

The monument’s size was increased from about 66,000 acres to 114,000 acres by the Obama administration in early 2017, spurring several lawsuits against the proclamation.

When the Trump administration decided to reconsider the expansion, those lawsuits were stayed by a federal judge pending the potential reduction of the monument’s boundaries.

Roughly six months later, two plaintiffs — the Association of O&C Counties and the American Forest Resource Council — have grown impatient with the delay.

The groups recently attempted to revive the active litigation of their lawsuits but have now agreed to the Jan. 15 deadline as long as the Trump administration seeks no further postponements.

The American Forest Resource Council hopes the president takes executive action scaling back the monument before that date, said Travis Joseph, the group’s executive director.

However, AFRC won’t be easily satisfied: Unless the monument’s boundaries are revised to entirely exclude so-called O&C Lands, which are dedicated to timber production, the group won’t drop its lawsuit, he said.

Congress enacted the O&C Act to make those federal lands permanently available to logging, so the president’s authority to create national monuments under the Antiquities Act doesn’t override that statute, Joseph said.

“The O&C Act applies to all of the acres by the plain meaning of the law,” he said. “It’s not about the specifics of the designation. It’s about the law.”

If a president were allowed to wipe out such decisions made by Congress, it would have “extraordinary implications for land management in the Western U.S.,” Joseph said.

The prolonged interruption of the litigation has been frustrating because the plaintiffs want to delve into the merits of the case as soon as possible, said Rocky McVay, executive director of the Association of O&C Counties.

“Timber sales that were in the works in the expanded area have been canceled,” McVay said.

While commercial logging within the national monument is banned, the expanded designation is also troublesome for ranchers who fear grazing curtailments within its boundaries.

It’s unclear what the Trump administration’s drastic reduction of two Utah national monuments — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — may foreshadow for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, McVay said.

Environmental groups are already lining up to file lawsuits against over that action, he said. “There will be a lot of fallout from this decision.”

The circumstances surrounding each national monument under review by the Trump administration are unique, said Joseph.

That’s particularly true for the Cascade-Siskiyou, which is the only monument containing lands devoted to timber harvest by statute, he said. “That legal conflict doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country.”

PORTLAND — Gov. Kate Brown plans to propose tax overhaul and cost-containment measures in the coming months to address the state’s ongoing revenue deficit, she told the annual Oregon Leadership Summit Monday.

Without revealing details of the proposals, Brown said her office is developing policy options that could be presented in time for the Oregon legislative session in February.

Her office is examining “a handful of options to solve the structural deficit issues Oregon faces, not just for the short-term but for the long-term,” Brown said. “It is time that we quit kicking this can down the road.”

But the Legislature’s ability to consider such proposals could hinge on potential policy changes at the federal level, Brown said.

The federal tax reform bill being worked out by Republican lawmakers has Oregon revenue experts and state economists scrambling to come up with an analysis showing how the proposals could impact Oregonians’ finances and the state’s budget and services.

“Certainly, what is happening at the federal level makes it really hard for us to have a detailed conversation about (state) tax policy right now,” she said.

Also distracting from negotiations toward a state tax overhaul is a statewide referendum Jan. 23 to repeal a health care funding bill passed by state legislators earlier this year. The bill was intended to maintain health insurance for more than 350,000 low-income Oregonians. Its repeal would compel state leaders to come up with a way to offset the loss in revenue, including the possibility of reducing subsidies for health coverage.

Any state tax overhaul conversation likely would spark calls for the state to curtail employee benefit costs and up employee contributions to the Public Employees Retirement System to help offset a $21 billion unfunded liability in the system.

“I think the role of the state is to make sure that we are incenting local employers … on paying down their (unfunded actuarial liability) so the entire number comes down,” Brown said. “That will eventually reduce employer rates and enable us to put more money into classrooms … and services that vulnerable Oregonians need.”

She said she also could ask employees to “have some skin in the game.”

“We are looking at cost sharing/risk sharing,” she said.

Her staffers also are examining recommendations by a PERS task force to come up with policy proposals for February.

“I have asked my team to put together a handful of options and I look forward to working with the business community on what those look like,” Brown said.

The 15th annual summit — founded by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden — drew more than 1,200 businesspeople, policy wonks, politicians and others to the Oregon Convention Center.

The event also serves as the vehicle for unveiling the annual Oregon Business Plan, a policy roadmap for stimulating the economy and supporting business in the state.

Wolves may very well be responsible for killing a 250-pound adult llama on a private forested pasture in Union County, though the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife stopped short of confirming the incident as a wolf attack.

Investigators instead ruled it a “probable” wolf attack, taking place just 10 miles away from where wolves with the Meacham pack preyed on cattle at Cunningham Sheep Company earlier this summer.

The landowner found the dead llama Friday, Nov. 24 about 200 yards from the residence. The carcass was mostly intact, except most of the hide and muscle tissue along the right rear leg above the hock and around the anus had been consumed.

ODFW arrived the next day, and according to the agency’s investigation report, the llama likely died sometime between late Wednesday, Nov. 22 and before dark Thursday, Nov. 23. At least two sets of wolf tracks were seen in the mud about 20 yards away, which were one to two days old. Investigators also documented trail camera photos taken about 300 yards from the carcass, showing a wolf moving toward the area on Nov. 23.

However, wounds to the llama were not consistent with extensive wolf-caused injuries, the report went on to state. Taking all evidence into consideration, the agency determined that “there was sufficient evidence to confirm predation on the llama by a large predator, but not enough evidence to confirm which predator.”

The same landowner also reported another dead llama earlier in the month, which had been largely consumed except for its neck, head and left shoulder. ODFW investigated Nov. 14, and determined there was no evidence of a predator attack at the scene. The cause of death is unknown.

Oregon’s work of managing wolves in balance with the varied interests of people takes another turn this month when the state wildlife commission meets Dec. 8 to review draft management plan.

Representatives of livestock, hunting and conservation groups get the first word when the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission meets in Salem. The public can attend, but testimony won’t be taken until the commission meets again Jan. 19. Comments also may be made by email to odfw.commission@state.or.us.

A “working copy” of the revised Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, which includes edits made by ODFW staff, is available at http://bit.ly/1OPoneb.

Wildlife issues in the West, especially those hinged to endangered species concerns, are a thicket of often-opposing points of view. In the case of Oregon’s wolves, the ODFW Commission’s complicated task is laid out in the plan’s straightforward language: “To ensure the conservation of gray wolves as required by Oregon law while protecting the social and economic interests of all Oregonians.”

Oregon adopted a wolf plan in 2005, updated it in 2010 and began the current revision in 2016 after taking wolves in Eastern Oregon off the endangered species list.

A few highlights from the current revision:

• The plan suggests 300 wolves as the “minimum population management threshold” through 2022. The figure is based on current data and computer modeling. Oregon had 112 documented wolves at the end of 2016, but wildlife officials believe Eastern Oregon could have 300 wolves as early as 2018, based on current population growth rates.

• Since being documented in Oregon in 2008, wolves have expanded in population and territory and now can be found within 6,674 square miles of the state.

• They primarily use forested habitat but follow prey to more open habitat in season, such as when elk move to lower elevation areas in winter. Tracking data from collared wolves showed they are on public land — primarily Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land — 60 percent of the time, on private land 38 percent of the time, and on tribal land 2 percent of the time.

• Much of the state’s potential wolf habitat is used seasonally to graze cattle and sheep. “...(I)t is expected that depredation on livestock will continue to occur in places where wolves and livestock are closely associated.”

• The plan recognizes ranching and farming as “important components of the Oregon economy” and says addressing conflict between wolves and livestock is an essential element of the management plan.

• Oregon has approximately 1.3 million cattle and 215,000 sheep. From 2009 through 2016, ODFW confirmed 89 depredation incidents and the loss of 45 cattle, 89 sheep, three goats, one llama and one herd protection dog.

• “Natural dispersal,” in which young adult wolves leave their birth packs to find new territory and mates of their own, is providing “continued expansion and ongoing genetic connectivity” to wolves in other states. Continued dispersal from Idaho into Oregon is likely; Idaho had 786 wolves in 108 packs at the end of 2015.

• Oregon’s two-zone management protects wolves in Western Oregon, where packs are just getting started, while allowing the flexibility of “lethal control” of wolves in Eastern Oregon, where most of them live and livestock attacks are a major concern.

• “Variation in local conditions will likely cause some areas to be more prone to livestock depredations than others, and chronic conflict may preclude survival of some wolf packs in certain circumstances.” This past August, ODFW killed four wolves from the Harl Butte pack for repeated attacks on calves, and authorized a rancher to shoot a Meacham Pack wolf for the same reason.

• The draft document said classifying wolves as “special status game mammals” provides the most options for long-term management. Among other things, the status allows “responsive” hunting and trapping when required. Such action would require a permit, and hunters and trappers would have to be pre-certified by ODFW.