GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The Obama administration is telling governors in 41 states how much money they are losing after Congress ended subsidies paid the past 20 years to counties that contain national forest land.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday that the U.S. Forest Service is sending more than $50 million to 746 timber counties in February, with Oregon and other Western states the biggest recipients. That compares to about $300 million paid out last fiscal year under the Secure Rural Schools subsidy program.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell sent letters to governors detailing how their payments would be cut.

Since 1908, the Forest Service has paid a quarter of its logging revenues to counties to be used for roads and schools. That law was enacted to win support for the newly created national forest system.

When logging was cut by 90 percent on federal forests in the Northwest to protect the spotted owl and salmon, Congress started approving the subsidies.

As logging cutbacks spread around the country to protect fish, wildlife and clean water, Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., sponsored the Secure Rural Schools bill, which expanded the subsidies.

They include payments to counties in western Oregon with U.S. Bureau of Land Management timberlands, which are at a higher rate, and used largely for sheriff’s patrols and jails.

The president’s budget included a five-year renewal of the program, but it died in the last days of Congress.

Wyden could not get it attached to a must-pass appropriation in the Senate. The House attached a one-year extension to a bill ramping up logging on national forests, but that bill had no traction in the Senate and a veto threat from the White House.

The subsidy issue is expected to come up again this year.

Timber states in the West are seeing the biggest drop.

Forest Service payments to Oregon counties drop from $67.9 million to $5.9 million; California, from $35.6 million to $8.7 million; Idaho, from $28.3 million to $2 million; Washington, from $21.5 million to $2.1 million; and Montana, from $21.3 million to $2 million.

Expiration of Secure Rural Schools also dries up money for search and rescue operations and conservation projects on national forests. In Oregon, some cash-strapped counties got permission to use road funds for law enforcement.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., has said he has a commitment from House speaker John Boehner to try to renew Secure Rural Schools for one year sometime in the first quarter of this year. But Republicans also are expected to try again to boost logging on national forests.

Expiration of Secure Rural Schools also dries up money for search and rescue operations and conservation projects on national forests. In Oregon, some cash-strapped counties got permission to use road funds for law enforcement.

Russ Karow, former head of Oregon State University’s Crop and Soil Science Department, has accepted a position as the next executive director of the OSU Agricultural Research Foundation.

Karow is in line to replace Kelvin Koong, who is stepping down June 30 from the position he has held since September of 2011.

Phil Walker, president of the foundation, said the organization’s personnel committee identified Karow as its top candidate early in the hiring process.

“We had a couple of interviews with Russ and the more we talked to him, the better it looked,” Walker said.

“Russ is a veteran administrator with proven people skills and strong ties to the Oregon State University community,” Walker said. “We just thought he was the best choice for the job.”

Karow retired as head of the Crop and Soil Science Department last fall.

His hiring is pending formal approval by the foundation’s board of directors, which will meet in March. Walker said the board has been consulted throughout the hiring process and to date has been supportive of the personnel committee’s selection. Because of that, he expects the board to endorse the committee’s selection.

“We’ve had no objections from anyone at this point,” Walker said.

The part-time executive director post is one of three staff positions at the foundation. The other two, office manager and manager of finance and research, are full-time positions.

The foundation, which was established in 1934, provides custodial services for research funds by accepting targeted grants from nonprofit organizations, including commodity commissions, and distributing the funds to researchers. In addition, the foundation accepts gifts toward research. It also distributes about $400,000 annually to researchers in competitive grants — funds it accrues through investments.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A wild duck shot by a hunter in the Willamette Valley is the first wild bird in Oregon to test positive for avian flu since the disease showed up recently in Washington.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said Wednesday the female mallard was taken Dec. 20 at Fern Ridge Wildlife Area outside Eugene and was tested as part of a program initiated since avian flu appeared in Washington.

Department veterinarian Colin Gillin said avian flu poses no risk to people or wild waterfowl, but can kill domestic poultry.

Opponents of Oregon’s “right to farm” law can file a new complaint against the statute by Jan. 23 after a previous constitutional challenge was recently dismissed.

The dispute relates to a 2013 pesticide incident in Curry County in which several rural residents claimed they suffered from medical problems after an aerial applicator sprayed 2,4-D and triclopyr on their properties.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture issued a $10,000 civil penalty against the company, Pacific Air Research, but 17 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the applicator and related firms last year.

The plaintiffs asked Circuit Court Judge Jesse Margolis to declare that Oregon’s “right to farm” law, which prohibits nuisance and trespass lawsuits over common farming practices, is unconstitutional because it prevents people from seeking a legal remedy for an injury.

Such a ruling would have widespread consequences for Oregon’s farm and forest industries, which have faced previous legal attacks against the law that ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Margolis dismissed the Curry County lawsuit last month but will allow the plaintiffs to submit an amended complaint by Jan. 23.

The judge threw out their original complaint without prejudice — potentially keeping the fundamental legal question alive for the future — because the constitutional challenge is currently premature.

The plaintiffs want the “right to farm” law declared unconstitutional but they have not yet filed a lawsuit actually seeking damages for nuisance or trespass against Pacific Air Research or the other companies, Margolis said.

At this point, it’s merely hypothetical that the defendants would use the “right to farm” statute as a defense in such a case, the judge said.

Without a “justifiable controversy” underlying the constitutional challenge, the complaint must be dismissed, he said.

The plaintiffs are still deciding whether to file an amended complaint seeking to resolve these jurisdictional issues, said Chris Winter, their attorney.

Bradley Piscadlo, attorney for the defendants, said he could not comment on the case without permission from his clients.

In court documents, the plaintiffs argued that pursuing a nuisance or trespass claim against Pacific Air Research would be financially dangerous unless the court first declared Oregon’s “right to farm” law unconstitutional.

If the plaintiffs lost their nuisance or trespass lawsuit, the “right to farm” statute would require them to pay for the defendants’ attorney fees.

For this reason, the rural residents wanted the law declared unconstitutional so they would not face the “threat of incurring massive liability,” plaintiffs said in a court brief.

With hazelnut prices at a record high, farmers are trying to squeeze out as much profit from dying orchards as they can, experts say.

Older hazelnut trees across Oregon’s Willamette Valley are gradually succumbing to Eastern Filbert Blight, a fungal pathogen, while growers replace them with new disease-resistant varieties.

However, at a time when farmers are selling hazelnuts for $1.70 per pound — the highest price ever — they are reluctant to remove infected orchard blocks that still generate solid yields.

“We know it’s a matter of time before we lose the orchard but we’re going to keep fighting,” said Dwayne Bush, a farmer near Eugene, Ore., during the annual conference of the Nut Growers Society on Jan. 13.

Bush said he scouts for symptoms of blight and prunes away infected limbs throughout the winter, then sprays fungicides four times per year after bud break to suppress the disease.

Eastern filbert blight can be slowed by cutting away “cankers” that allow the fungus to release spores and infect new trees, said Jay Pscheidt, plant pathology professor at Oregon State University.

Cutting a branch directly below the canker, however, is not sufficient — more wood must be removed to effectively prevent the canker from growing, he said.

Pruning the limb three feet below the canker will offer the most protection but will also significantly dent production, so Pscheidt recommends cutting one foot below the canker.

Cankers can still release spores after a branch is cut, so growers should not allow pruned limbs to linger on the ground below trees, he said.

If piles cannot be burned immediately, they should be moved to an area where prevailing winds won’t send spores toward uninfected portions of the orchard, Pscheidt said.

Grinding the limbs has also been shown to nullify the threat from cankers, he said.

Fungicides help trees fight the fungus and stave off the decline in yields, but the cost of spraying must be weighed against the revenue from the orchard block, Pscheidt said.

“These fungicides are not 100 percent effective,” he said. “You will still find cankers on the trees, but significantly fewer of them.”

Growers with large trees must also contend with the issue of spray coverage.

Garry Rodakowski, a farmer near Vida, Ore., has trees that are 40-80 years old and have grown too big for cankers to be readily spotted.

Apart from pruning problems, the size of the trees impedes the penetration of fungicides, Rodakowski said.

“Your spray coverage has to get up there,” he said.

Rodakowski’s solution has been to remove the overstory between rows with a hedging machine, creating an opening for the fungicide mist to rise and filter into the trees.

“We’re knocking down about 20 feet from where the original canopy was,” he said.

Bruce Chapin, a farmer near Salem, Ore., hires aerial applicators to treat his trees, which allows him to exploit the few “weather windows” of ideal spraying weather in early spring.

“Timing is very important,” he said.

At this point, one of the orchards managed by Chapin’s family is so diseased that the blight has spread to the trees’ trunks, convincing them to stop pruning.

Even so, they hope to keep the block producing nuts for another 3-5 years with the spray regimen, he said. “Keep in mind, this orchard is still producing money.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A conservation group has bought a second large ranch along the John Day River in Central Oregon that could eventually provide public access to a remote, scenic part of the state.

The Western Rivers Conservancy bought the Murtha Ranch at Cottonwood Canyon in 2008, and then sold it to the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department for what’s now the second-largest state park, at 8,000 acres.

The organization recently bought a ranch 40 miles upstream, at Thirtymile Creek in Gilliam County, near Condon, The Oregonian reports.

The ranch has all-weather private road access to the John Day River at a point where it runs in a 1,000-foot-deep canyon, but access is now available only by paying a fee. It’s on a 70-mile stretch of the river with a federal designation as wild and scenic.

The Rattray Ranch had been owned for three generations by the family that homesteaded in the 1880s, passing it down to six sisters who sold it.

The purchase price was not disclosed, but an Eastern Oregon real estate company had listed it at $7 million.

The property comes with grazing rights to 10,530 adjacent acres owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Named for a fur trapper, the John Day at 281 miles is the second-longest undammed river in the continental United States.

It rises in the southern part of the Blue Mountains, runs westward and then turns to the northwest, cutting across the Columbia Plateau to empty into the Columbia River.

The two conservancy purchases are on the lower part of the river, popular with rafters and anglers.

The organization hopes to sell the land to the Bureau of Land Management.

President Sue Doroff said that may take three to five years, after which the agency could develop a public access plan. The conservancy plans to sell land used to grow wheat to a private owner.

It has no agreement with the federal agency, though, as it did with the state parks department before buying the Cottonwood Canyon property.

“Thirtymile Creek is a very important cold water tributary of the lower John Day River for salmon and steelhead,” Doroff said. “We want to protect and restore it in perpetuity.”

She said the section the river near the ranch has wilderness qualities, and eventual public access would allow boaters a 40-mile trip downstream to Cottonwood Canyon, avoiding challenging rapids. The uplands has one of Oregon’s largest herds of bighorn sheep, with 600 animals.

Intensive monitoring on the Middle Fork John Day River has revealed an invasive species new to Eastern Oregon.

A type of freshwater snail, commonly known as the European ear snail, was collected in September by the North Fork John Day Watershed Council based in Long Creek. It was tested and positively identified Dec. 31 by a laboratory in Missoula, Montana.

Native to Europe and Asia, the species was most likely introduced to North America by accident sometime in the late 1800s, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The theory goes that snails hitchhiked over on plants imported to North American greenhouses, and were later released into the environment.

Ear snails have been found at numerous locations across the West, with the nearest prior discoveries at Lake Billy Chinook in central Oregon and in the Snake River and Owyhee drainages of Idaho. Significant populations are also appearing in southwest Oregon.

Project coordinators with the North Fork John Day Watershed Council caught a single snail in their drift net during regular monitoring activities just downstream of Galena in Grant County. Staff member Justin Rowell said the council is now looking to partner with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife to determine the source and extent of the population.

“This is the first time it’s been found in Eastern Oregon,” Rowell said. “We’re hoping to do some more studies to see where it came from, and how intensive the infestation is.”

While the species is invasive, it is not considered noxious, Rowell said. That means it does not out-compete or have any other known detrimental effects to native species in the river.

“It’s not supposed to be here, but it’s not going to take over the river or anything like that,” he said.

The European ear snail gets its name for its distinctly ear-shaped shell. It prefers to live in freshwater lakes or slow-moving rivers, and feeds primarily on sand, algae and other organic debris.

Monitoring on the Middle Fork John Day River is done as part of the Middle Fork Intensely Monitored Watershed, supported by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board in collaboration with other state, university and nonprofit partners.

More information is available at www.middleforkimw.org.

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. — On the heels of last week’s official designation of an eighth wolf pack in Oregon, biologists believe yet another wandering wolf is prowling timberland just north of the California border.

Biologist Mark Vargas of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reported the probable wolf sighting near the community of Keno in Klamath County during a wolf update at the Jan. 10 annual meeting of the Jackson County Stockmen’s Association. Vargas said the sighting came while the known pack was in another location.

Evidence of at least one wolf was collected twice during December in the department’s Keno management area. The agency says it will formally designate the new area of wolf activity next week.

“Little is known of this new wolf … and efforts to gather additional data will be made by both ODFW and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Michelle Dennehy, a spokesperson for the state agency.

ODFW and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier designated as the “Rogue Pack” a group of wolves running with OR-7 and his mate.

The pack’s home turf, most of it national forest timberland, is southeastern Douglas County, eastern Jackson County, western Klamath County and perhaps portions of far northern Siskiyou County in California.

“There could be more wolves, we don’t know yet,” Vargas said. The Oregon wolf census is currently in progress.

Several members of the stockmen’s association run cattle on public lands in the Cascade Mountains where the Rogue Pack apparently spends much of its time. Vargas told the cattlemen they need to deal with the reality.

“We have wolves, folks. They are not going away. I realize this is a lifestyle change,” Vargas said.

He urged cattlemen to look into forming the county advisory committee, which allows them to tap into state funds should confirmed livestock losses occur.

The Oregon Legislature in 2013 established a wolf predation loss compensation program. Funds were distributed to producers in eight Eastern Oregon counties in 2014. Neither Vargas nor Jackson County Commissioner Doug Breidenthal had details on the Oregon Department of Agriculture compensation program or county advisory committee duties.

Breidenthal, who followed Vargas on the stockmen’s program, said the Jackson County Board of Commissioners won’t form a wolf predation loss advisory committee without a formal request. Stockmen indicated they will study the law and regulations with an eye toward making that request next month.

An informal show of hands indicated most folks at the meeting favor forming the committee. That’s the only legal way to tap the state compensation fund. Several stockmen had questions about how the county committee process might work.

The state law says confirmed losses will be paid at “fair market value,” with 90 percent coming from the newly established state trust fund and 10 percent from county funds. Jackson County has no item in the current budget for livestock loss compensation.

Mark Hopkins, who coordinates grazing allotments on the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest, said official designation of the wolf pack triggers a set of rules for livestock permittees. They include prompt removal of carcasses that would attract wolves and a ban on salt block placement in the vicinity of known wolf den sites.

Last week’s official designation of the Rogue Pack is a formal change to the Oregon Wolf Management Plan. The other seven packs are concentrated in Northeastern Oregon, where Idaho wolves initially swam the Snake River from Idaho.

OR-7, a radio-collared male from one of those packs, undertook a celebrated trek in 2011 and 2012 to Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, then spent time in Northern California before returning to Southern Oregon and setting up housekeeping. His mate apparently came south on her own from Northeast Oregon.

The Rogue Pack had three pups in 2014. Vargas says ODFW and federal biologists assume at least two survived into the new year. Pup survival is part of the state criteria for designating packs. ODFW is reviewing all wolf data this winter to make official determinations on known breeding pairs and pup survival rates. Dennehy, the ODFW spokesperson, said it will be several weeks before that data is analyzed and official 2014 wolf populations are announced.

With half season past, snowpack levels in Western Oregon are dangerously low.

The good news is the levels could rebound before the snowfall season ends, and in Eastern Oregon, where farmer fortunes are more closely tied to snowpack, the levels are fine.

Still, with the warm, wet conditions of an El Nino permeating Western Oregon at a time when the snowpack is typically building, concerns are mounting that Western Oregon farmers could face water shortages come irrigation season.

“We’ve seen years where snowpack levels rebounded,” said Scott Oviatt, snow program manager for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland. “We’ve also seen years where the tap just shut off.”

Last year, Oviatt said, snowpack levels were below even this year’s in the January survey. But heavy, late-season snowfall created near normal snowpack levels by May.

Oviatt said the NRCS attributes the low snowfall levels in Western Oregon this year to “climate variability” and not climate change.

“Climate variability is the key here, and that is the case every year,” he said.

The lowest levels in the first NRCS Oregon snow survey of the year are in the Klamath Basin, which is at 24 percent of normal; the Rogue Umpqua Basin, which is at 25 percent of normal; and the Willamette, which is at 29 percent of normal. Also dangerously low are the Hood, Sandy, Lower Deschutes Basin at 30 percent of normal; and the Upper Deschutes, Crooked Basin registers 38 percent of normal.

Snowpack conditions improve dramatically to the east, with Harney Basin at 108 percent of normal; Malheur at 92 percent of normal; and Owyhee at 86 percent of normal. The Umatilla, Walla Walla, Willow Basin is at 68 percent of normal; the Grande Ronde, Powder, Burnt, Imnaha Basin is at 78 percent of normal; while the Lake County, Goose Lake Basin is at 57 percent of normal.

Precipitation levels, conversely, are high throughout the state, with all 11 basins surveyed at or above 100 percent of normal for the water year, which began Oct. 1.

The NRCS issues snow surveys using data from its 80 Oregon Snotel sites once a month from January through June.

One last hope for Western Oregon farmers, if snowpack levels don’t rebound, is a flush of spring rain to build reservoir levels. Given that weather forecasters are showing warmer than normal conditions over the next 90 days, experts say heavy spring rainfall may end up being Western Oregon farmers’ last and best hope to generate a water supply adequate to get through the 2015 irrigation season.

SALEM — At an extension wheat and seed production meeting here Jan. 6, Oregon State University plant pathologist Chris Mundt issued an alert to Willamette Valley wheat producers to keep an eye out for stripe rust.

Mundt said mild winter weather is creating an ideal environment for the fungal disease to get a foothold early this year. And, he said, “The largest field losses occur when stripe rust starts early.

“You don’t want the rust to get ahead of you,” he said.

Stripe rust and Septoria are the two biggest disease threats to wheat production in the Willamette Valley, Mundt said.

Mild winter temperatures increase the likelihood the rust pathogen survives the winter and shortens the time it takes for the pathogen to complete a generation, which can increase the amount of inoculum in the environment at any one time, Mundt said.

With temperatures 5 degrees above normal in December, and with January starting out with abnormally high temperatures, Mundt said he believes growers could start seeing stripe rust two and three weeks earlier than normal.

“I think this could be a year where it might be possible for stripe rust to start to pop out on susceptible varieties even in mid-January,” he said.

“Let us know if you see something pop up early, because you really need to control disease on a valley-wide basis and we want to know when that first rust is popping up,” he said.

The good news for growers, Mundt said, is that because 2014 was a mild rust year, not a lot of rust inoculum was present in the valley going into the winter.

But, he said, “On the negative side, probably the biggest driver of whether you are going to have a severe stripe rust outbreak is whether or not you had a mild winter.”

Also on the plus side of the ledger, wheat varieties available today are more resistant to rust than varieties available in the past, Mundt said, including in 2011, a year in which rust played havoc with wheat production in the valley.

Mundt singled out the varieties Bobtail and Rosalyn as “very resistant” to stripe rust.

Even given their high level of resistance, however, Mundt advised growers to keep an eye on their fields.

“You really can’t predict how these varieties are going to hold up,” he said.

Mundt identified Kaseberg, SY Ovation and LCS Art Deco as moderately resistant varieties.

“In a low rust year, they are probably going to hold up well,” he said, “so if there is not a lot of rust around, you are probably home free in terms of rust spraying. On the other hand, if there is a lot of rust in the valley, you probably want to give them a treatment.”

Mundt identified the varieties Goetze, Tubbs 06 and Mary as highly susceptible to the disease.

“If you’ve even heard about rust anywhere in the valley, you probably want to give them a treatment,” he said.

Oregon’s work to improve rangeland habitat and jumpstart rural economies by removing western juniper could get a boost when the Legislature opens its 2015 session in February.

Legislation drafted by the Western Juniper Alliance would allocate $900,000 for a loan and grant program for juniper harvesting and manufacturing businesses. The money also would fund business planning help for small mills or logging outfits, provide worker training and map the location of high-quality juniper stands. The Western Juniper Alliance is a coalition of industry, government and environmental representatives convened by Sustainable Northwest, a Portland non-profit that works to resolve environmental and rural economic problems.

Dylan Kruse, Sustainable Northwest’s policy director and manager of the alliance, said District 27 Rep. Tobias Read, D-Beaverton, will sponsor the bill. Kruse said a broad coalition now supports the idea of speeding the pace and scale of juniper removal.

Junipers encroach on much of the arid West, crowding out sage and native grasses and sucking up prodigious amounts of water, according to experts. Cutting western junipers has a cascading benefit: It makes more water available and it improves grazing for cattle and habitat for greater sage grouse, which is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act this year. Multiple cattle ranchers in Eastern Oregon have signed on to voluntary habitat conservation plans that include provisions for juniper removal.

Meanwhile, at least three small mills in Eastern Oregon have found fledgling markets for juniper poles, posts, decking and landscape timbers. Sustainable Northwest Woods, an offshoot of the non-profit, buys from the mills and operates a specialty lumber yard in Portland.

Kruse said adding mill or logging jobs in Eastern Oregon, combined with the range and wildlife habitat benefits, make juniper projects a “no-brainer.”

“It’s holistic approach for land management,” he said. “This is one of the rare win-win-win situations that we have.”

In the second part of an interview carried on the Oregon Department of Agriculture website, Director Katy Coba said food safety and consumer protection remains the department’s most important program for 2015.

“We focus very hard on food safety issues,” Coba said in the interview with department spokesman Bruce Pokarney.

“Our whole goal is to minimize the potential for food illness outbreaks. So there is a lot of up front education and outreach, and we prioritize our limited resources to focus on those licensed facilities whose activities represent the greatest risk to food safety. These are facilities that handle food products before they even get to grocery stores. Even within the many retail stores we license and inspect, we prioritize by risk, focusing on those with a history of problems.”

Coba said the department has a “very good” track record of preventing food-borne illnesses and responding quickly when outbreaks occur.

“Also in the new year, there is more work to be done on the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act,” Coba said. “It’s coming at us, and even though it’s a federal effort, we hope to have a better idea in 2015 on what role ODA will play going forward.”

The full interview is carried on the department website. http://odanews.wpengine.com/oda-poised-to-meet-the-challenges-of-2015/

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s famous wandering wolf, OR-7, is now officially the leader of his own pack.

State and federal wildlife agencies said Wednesday they have designated OR-7, his mate and their pups the Rogue Pack, for their location in the Rogue River drainage in the Cascades east of Medford.

It’s the first pack in western Oregon and the ninth in the state since wolves from Idaho started swimming the Snake River in the 1990s.

As a youngster, OR-7 left his pack in northeastern Oregon in September 2011 in search of a mate. He traveled thousands of miles across Oregon and back and forth into Northern California before finding a mate last winter in the southern Cascades on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

The GPS collar that tracked his travels is still working, but biologists hope to replace it this spring.

Efforts to trap OR-7, his mate or one of the pups to put a tracking collar on them were not successful last fall, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist John Stephenson. They hope to have better luck this May, when the pack dens up for more pups.

Even if the GPS tracking collar fails, a separate unit on the collar that emits a radio signal that can be tracked by a directional antenna should continue working, Stephenson said.

Oregon could consider lifting state Endangered Species Act protections for wolves this year if biologists confirm that four or more packs produced pups that survived through the end of the year. The earliest a proposal could go before the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is April, said spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy. Delisting would not mean an end to protections for wolves, but would give ranchers more options for dealing with wolves that attack livestock.

OR-7 has continued to stay out of trouble as far as livestock are concerned.

Oregon’s management plan calls for protections to continue for the Rogue Pack until there are four packs in western Oregon producing pups for three years running. Federal Endangered Species Act protection also remains in force in western Oregon and California.

By MITCH LIES

For the Capital Press

Blueberry growers, marketers and packers will have a rare opportunity to learn from a consortium of industry experts at the Oregon State University Blueberry School, March 16 and 17.

The event, the first OSU Blueberry School since 2007, provides one-stop shopping for those interested in maximizing blueberry production and market opportunities, according to Oregon State University Extension Berry Crops Specialist Bernadine Strik.

It will include cutting-edge information for beginning and advanced growers, as well as those focused on conventional and organic production methods, she said.

“Further, blueberry industry consultants will address key issues of where the blueberry market is going and how you might be more successful in tight labor or volume markets,” she said.

Researchers from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Washington State University and OSU will provide information on blueberry plant physiology, water requirements of plants to help irrigation scheduling, pruning, nutrient management, site preparation and other topics.

An agenda and registration information can be accessed on line at http://osublueberryschool.org/.

Early registration and its accompanying reduced rates closes Feb. 5, Strik said.

Group discount rates for farms or businesses are available, she said.

The school will be held on the OSU campus at the LaSells Stewart Center and CH2M Hill Alumni Center.

SALEM — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will propose a legislative fix in mid-January aimed at fostering coexistence among biotech, conventional and organic crops.

Details of the proposal haven’t yet been disclosed and the legislative language will likely be amended before an actual bill is introduced, said Richard Whitman, the governor’s natural resources policy director.

“The anticipation is there will be more conversation among stakeholders before we finalize the bill,” Whitman said.

A task force on genetically modified organisms appears to have helped Kitzhaber decide on a course of action.

In 2013, the Oregon legislature pre-empted most local governments from restricting genetically modified crops at Kitzhaber’s urging.

The governor then appointed a task force to frame the controversy over genetically modified organisms and inform lawmakers’ decisions on possible statewide legislation.

The task force’s recently completed report does not make any policy recommendations but lays out the points of contention between critics and proponents of genetically engineered crops.

However, its members did agree that more clarity is needed about the state’s role in regulating GMOs and how it diverges from federal authority.

The main question now is what measures Kitzhaber or state lawmakers will put forward to prevent unwanted cross-pollination among these crops or if farmers can agree on a voluntary system to avoid such gene flow.

“All eyes are going to be on the legislature and what the governor is planning to do,” said Ivan Maluski, executive director of Friends of Family Farms, which wants stronger biotech regulation. “This task force marks the beginning of the process, not the end.”

One subject of debate will probably be the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s “control area” authority over biotech crops, said Maluski.

Currently, ODA can restrict where genetically engineered crops are planted as long as the USDA retains jurisdiction over them, but the state agency believes it loses that power once the crop is deregulated by federal officials.

State legislation could establish that ODA may still create or retain “control areas” even after USDA lifts its own restrictions on biotech crops, said Maluski.

For example, such state control areas could require biotech farmers to maintain “isolation distances” to mitigate the risk of cross-pollination with non-GMOs, he said.

“It’s going to be on a case-by-case basis, as it should be,” Maluski said.

Another concept involves compensating organic and conventional growers if their crops are contaminated by pollen from biotech plants, said Chris Schreiner, executive director of Oregon Tilth, an organic certification agency.

There should be a way to compensate non-GMO farmers for damages from cross-pollination that wouldn’t require them to buy insurance policies, he said.

Proponents of biotechnology say farmers who grow biotech, conventional and organic crops can work out their differences without interference from the government.

“Farmers have learned to coexist for years,” said Paulette Pyle, grass roots director for Oregonians for Food and Shelter, an agribusiness industry group.

Decades ago, a conflict between cherry growers and wheat farmers over drift from 2,4-D herbicides threatened to spur legislation or erupt into litigation, but neighbors were ultimately able to resolve the issue through communication, Pyle said.

The potential for biotech varieties to pollinate organic crops isn’t actually a problem under USDA organic rules, which regulate farm practices but don’t set up standards for genetic purity, she said.

“The organic folks have put themselves in that market box,” Pyle said. “They can advertise their product any way they want, but they’ve got to accept responsibility.”

Bills that would increase government oversight of biotech crops would actually impede co-existence by limiting crop choices for farmers, said Greg Loberg, manager of the West Coast Beet Seed Co.

“It sounds threatening,” he said. “There will be winners and losers in a situation where government intervention occurs through legislation.”

Voluntary coexistence measures for biotech, conventional and organic crops would be preferable to those mandated by regulators, he said.

For example, seed growers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley are already able to reduce the chances of cross-pollination among related crops through a voluntary mapping system, Loberg said.

“It’s not a broken system,” he said. “It’s quite functional.”

Schreiner of Oregon Tilth said a mapping system is one possibility for co-existence but he’s skeptical that it would be effective without regulatory oversight.

“The voluntary system we don’t see as having a high likelihood of success due to the lack of incentive for GE producers to participate,” he said.

BOARDMAN, Ore. — ß∑A proposed transmission line stretching 300 miles from Boardman, Ore., to southwest Idaho could cost local farmers millions of dollars in lost production, depending on the route ultimately selected by federal agencies.

It’s all part of the delicate balancing act as Idaho Power seeks greater flexibility to transfer electricity between the two regions, while considering impacts to agriculture, wildlife and other resources.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently unveiled its draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project, known as Boardman to Hemingway, after four years of scoping and tracing numerous alternatives where the line could be located.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Energy hosted the first of seven open houses Monday in Boardman to gather input on the proposal and environmental report. About 40 people attended within the first hour, including farmers concerned about how the 500-kilovolt transmission line might affect their ability to raise high-value crops.

In some cases, growers worried the line would take whole fields entirely out of production. Craig Reeder, vice president of Hale Farms, said that’s left a number of operations “fighting for our lives.”

“The land is not replaceable,” said Reeder, who also serves as a board member for the Northeast Oregon Water Association. “We’re frustrated, but we’re optimistic people will wake up.”

Reeder pointed specifically to one variation of the proposal that would build transmission towers along the east side of Bombing Range Road. Given the project easements, Hale Farms stands to lose up to seven irrigated circles, he said.

At 125 acres per circle and $15,000 per acre, that’s more than $13 million in lost value.

“The cumulative effects are crippling to us,” Reeder said.

As proposed, the Boardman to Hemingway transmission line would begin at Portland General Electric’s Grassland Substation, under construction as part of a new natural gas-fired power plant near the existing Boardman Coal Plant. From there, the line crosses five Eastern Oregon counties before ending at a substation southwest of Boise.

The draft environmental report splits the project into six segments, with a range of alternatives in each segment. Each alternative is meant to mitigate effects to farmland, forests, endangered species and cultural resources.

Scott Whitesides, environmental planner with the BLM, said the primary concern in northeast Oregon is farming, which makes up a significant part of the local economy.

“Primarily, it’s about loss of acreage because (Idaho Power will) have that right-of-way,” Whitesides said.

The draft EIS is not a decision-making document, Whitesides said, and residents now have 90 days to weigh in before the cooperating agencies — which include the Forest Service and Bureau of Reclamation — issue their final record of decision.

Earl Aylett, a farmer in both Morrow and Umatilla counties, said the project would interrupt agriculture immensely and questioned whether the line is actually needed.

“(The line) goes through a lot of land to get where it’s going, at very little benefit to the people where it goes through,” Aylett said. “It’s not something I want.”

Boardman to Hemingway was first identified in Idaho Power’s 2006 integrated resource plan as a means to alleviate constraints on existing transmission lines. The Columbia Basin and southern Idaho share power across the grid during times of peak demand, which alternate between winter and summer months, respectively.

The project is needed to ensure reliability of customers’ growing power demands, said manager Todd Adams, as well as keeping rates affordable. At the same time, he said the company sympathizes with farmers and will continue work to mitigate the burden placed on them.

“There’s been a lot of valid concern,” Adams said. “We know nobody appreciates a power line except the power company.”

The final EIS will included a preferred alternative that is the result of compromise between all agencies and affected landowners. Adams said they will push for a route that runs along the west side of Bombing Range Road, though that will take some negotiating with the U.S. Navy. The Grassland Substation alternative would also avoid any impacts to the Boardman Tree Farm.

Idaho Power hopes to have both state and federal permitting done as early as 2018, with the project up and running by 2020. Depending on the final route, it could cost between $880-$940 million.

Company spokeswoman Stephanie McCurdy said they are trying their best to make everyone happy, but in reality that’s a tall order to fill.

“People want the lights to come on when they flip the switch,” McCurdy said. “There have to be larger compromises in order to make that happen, and building a transmission line is one way to do it.”

The public has until March 19 to comment on the draft EIS. More information, including a schedule of project meetings and virtual open house, is available online at www.boardmantohemingway.com.

SALEM — Farm regulators in Oregon are on the verge of enacting regulations for growing hemp that some proponents of the crop claim are already outdated.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture has been developing rules for industrial hemp since state lawmakers legalized its production in 2009 and the regulations are set to become effective in early February.

Supporters of hemp production testified in favor of implementing the rules during a Jan. 6 hearing in Salem but they said new legislation will be necessary to amend the industrial hemp law in light of recent changes, such as Oregon’s legalization of recreational marijuana.

Hemp is the same species as marijuana but contains much less of the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. However, both remain illegal under federal law.

The main problem identified by hemp proponents is that Oregon law does not allow its seed to be used for anything but planting new crops, whereas seed oil for cosmetic and health food products is a highly lucrative component of hemp.

“You can’t leave the seed out of the mix,” said Jerry Norton of Salem, who plans to grow hemp and recruit other farmers to cultivate it.

Using hemp purely for its fiber — a raw material for textiles and other products — would generate much less profit, said Tim Pate, a hemp supporter from Portland.

“We are shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “We need to solve the seed problem.”

Limiting the use of hemp seeds for planting also doesn’t make sense due to advances in asexual reproduction methods, such as tissue culture propagation, said David Seber, who owns the Hemp Shield wood sealant company.

“There’s no reason to even deal with seed if one doesn’t want to anymore,” he said.

Provisions in the hemp rules that require the crop to contain less than 0.3 percent THC also lack purpose now that marijuana containing higher levels of the chemical will become legal in 2015, said Doug Fine, a hemp researcher from Mimbres, N.M.

“We’re in a different era now than when the regs were conceived,” he said. “There’s no reason for the belligerent, fearful tone.”

Farmers in Canada and Kentucky are eager to bolster their agricultural economies with hemp, so Oregon should not fall behind with inflexible rules, Fine said.

“Every state is going to take its own path,” he said. “We can’t wait one second to let Oregon farmers grow seed.”

Apart from geographic competition, biotech companies may take beneficial genetic traits from hemp and insert them into plants that aren’t as strictly regulated, said David Seber of Hemp Shield.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture initially approached the hemp rules with a “fat, dumb and happy” approach, planning to allow seeds to be used for multiple purposes other than planting, said Ron Pence, operations manager of the agency’s commodity inspection program.

However, attorneys with the Oregon Department of Justice interpreted the state law as prohibiting seed for any other uses, he said. “That’s the way the statute is written.”

Similarly, the 0.3 percent THC limit and other provisions were enacted by the state legislature and cannot be overruled by ODA, Pence said.

Even so, it’s likely that hemp supporter state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, will push to revise the law in the upcoming legislative session, Pence said. “I would expect changes to be made to the statute.”

ODA does not have an official agreement with the federal government to develop rules for hemp, but its goal has been to create rules that will be tolerated by federal officials, Pence said.

The agency is discussing the possibility of obtaining a permit from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to import hemp seeds from abroad, he said.

While it’s likely aspiring hemp growers already have available seed supplies, ODA’s regulations require them to disclose their source, Pence said.

Jerry Norton said he’s working with Oregon State University to get permission from DEA to bring in a low-THC variety of hemp seeds from Canada in time to plant this spring.

He also hopes the Oregon Legislature will clarify the law to allow the sale of hemp seeds for multiple uses.

“We’ve got to know what we can do with it after we grow it,” Norton said.

Federal agencies are seeking input on the plan for a new 305-mile electric transmission line from the Boardman area, to a substation southwest of Boise.

The Bureau of Land Management and other agencies are in the midst of an environmental review of the Idaho Power Company project, because roughly one-third of the transmission line would pass through federally managed public lands. In addition to the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Reclamation also manage land along the proposed route.

A draft environmental impact statement that the BLM released Dec. 19 includes suggestions for Idaho Power Company to alter the proposed route in three locations to minimize environmental impacts, in particular to avoid destruction of sage grouse habitat.

Officials in Oregon and other states have been expecting a decision in 2015 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether to list the bird under the Endangered Species Act, although recent a recent bill passed by Congress could delay that decision. Federal lawmakers attached a provision to a recent $1.1 trillion spending bill, in an attempt to prevent the Interior Department from spending any money on rules to protect the greater sage grouse and three related birds, The Associated Press reported.

The BLM also examined the potential impacts of the transmission line on agriculture, historical resources in the area such as the National Historic Oregon Trail and ongoing use of public lands by American Indian tribes.

The transmission line would add capacity for times of peak demand, and it is one of the transmission projects prioritized by the Obama administration to improve the power grid and allow for integration of more renewable energy sources, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Although the White House wants to speed up permitting of transmission projects, the project still faces a lengthy approval process.

The Bureau of Land Management is accepting comments on the draft environmental report. The agency plans to analyze comments and prepare a final environmental document by early 2016. If the power company begins construction in 2018, it could complete the project by 2020.

Stephanie McCurdy, a communications specialist with Idaho Power Company, said the utility is simultaneously going through a process with the Oregon Department of Energy to gain approval for the project. The public will have an opportunity to comment in Oregon’s process once the utility has completed its application.

J.R. Cook, director of a group called the Northeast Oregon Water Association that represents water users in the area, said the route initially proposed by Idaho Power Company would not have much of an impact on irrigated agriculture in the area. But an alternative route proposed by federal agencies in the draft environmental document would cut through valuable agricultural land.

“It’s irreplaceable,” Cook said of irrigated farmland that would be affected. “We’ve stressed the fact you can relocate a line, and you can route around this ground.”

It could be difficult for farmers to convince federal agencies that the transmission line should follow a different route, because the transmission line cannot interfere with activities at the nearby Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman. However, Cook said he believes it is still possible to design a better option.

The public can comment on the draft environmental document until March 19, 2015.

For more information or to submit comments online, visit www.boardmantohemingway.com.

MADRAS, Ore. (AP) — A Central Oregon farmer has been killed by falling hay bales.

Jefferson County Sheriff Jim Adkins says the 76-year-old farmer was apparently moving the hay when several bales fell and pinned him against his tractor, likely suffocating him.

Adkins says the bales of alfalfa hay weighed 80 to 90 pounds.

KTVZ-TV says he was Harvey Ludwig Stickler, who farmed south of Madras.

Adkins says Stickler’s wife told deputies he was missing for about an hour when she went to look for him.

It was Central Oregon’s second hay-related farming fatality in about seven months.

In June, the Crook County sheriff’s office reported that 77-year-old Gordon Evan Stroebel of Prineville was killed when three bales of hay fell from the truck he was loading.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon agriculture officials are drafting rules that would allow industrial hemp farmers to plant crops this spring.

The Oregonian reports the state Department of Agriculture is holding a public hearing Tuesday in Salem on the draft rules.

Prospective producers said they’re happy the state is finally moving ahead with a hemp program, but they’re concerned about high licensing fees and restrictions.

They say industrial hemp can be used to make biofuel, food and paper products.