WEDNESDAY, AUG. 15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environmental groups were worried.

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

———

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANDON - Get ready for the Bandon Cranberry Festival by spending an hour with cranberry farmers and an Ocean Spray representative at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 22, at the Bandon Public Library, 1204 11th St. SW.

BANDON - Get ready for the Bandon Cranberry Festival by spending an hour with cranberry farmers and an Ocean Spray representative at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 22, at the Bandon Public Library, 1204 11th St. SW.

FRIDAY, AUG. 10

BANDON - Fall sports practice officially starts Monday for high schools in Oregon, and that means Bandon’s football, volleyball, cross country and soccer athletes will be starting preparations for the new season.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Oregon beef packing company that shut down earlier this year has attracted a “potential buyer” to purchase its facilities and equipment “as a package.”

When Bartels Packing of Eugene, Ore., closed in March, the company owed about $4.6 million to cattle suppliers and feedlots and left the local livestock market without a significant buyer.

The court-appointed receiver who took over the company’s finances, Richard Hooper of Pivotal Solutions, has since met with four interested parties who toured the slaughterhouse and processing plant.

Hooper has also been in contact with liquidators, but owner Chris Bartels preferred to sell the equipment “as part of a functioning meat harvest and packing facility” to fetch the highest value, according to court documents.

One of those potential buyers has now submitted a “letter of intent” to purchase the packer’s assets as well the underlying property, which is owned by an affiliated firm.

“Hopefully, we will be able to convert that interest into a purchase-and-sale agreement,” Hooper said.

Possible sale terms and the potential buyer’s identity weren’t disclosed but the chance of a new beef packer operating the facilities is welcome news for Oregon’s cattle industry.

“We definitely need another packer in the game,” said Tom Elder, manager of the Woodburn Livestock Exchange, one of the auction yards where Bartels bid for cattle.

Though he’d like to see cattle prices go higher, the market has remained “steady” since the company shut down, Elder said. “It didn’t fall apart.”

Bartels was an important buyer of organic and grass fed cattle, so finding a replacement could boost prices in those niche markets by 10 to 20 percent, said Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

“Competition should really help to drive that market up,” Rosa said, particularly since cattle shipped to more distant packers are “really getting discounted.”

Hopefully, a sale would allow cattle suppliers to be repaid and the facilities to restart soon, he said. “They’d really modernized it and spent quite a bit of money on the facility.”

Upon filing for receivership, owner Chris Bartels expected the company’s roughly $14 million in assets would cover its $8.3 million in debt, which includes the amount owed for cattle.

The judge overseeing the case recently approved USDA “trust” payments of more than $600,000 to eligible cattle suppliers, but not all sellers qualify for such claims under federal law. Only those who don’t sell livestock on credit are covered by a defunct packer’s “trust” assets.

The Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce has met with the receiver and served as a “resource” to facilitate a potential sale of Bartels Packing, which employed 142 people before closing.

“Our overall hope is to find an owner-operator to run that facility and bring back those jobs,” said Josh Monge, the chamber’s economic development director. “We don’t want it pieced out. ... It’s not just the jobs, it’s the economic activity surrounding that, too.”

A federal appeals court has upheld a legal victory won by Oregon farmers who prevailed against an out-of-state bank’s lawsuit over their radish seed crop.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Northwest Bank of Warren, Pa., could not seize 7.4 million pounds of radish seed grown by the farmers as collateral for a loan to a defunct seed broker.

More than 40 growers had produced the seed but were unable to sell it when Cover Crop Solutions, the seed broker, shut down operations in 2015.

Then, Northwest Bank filed a complaint against the farmers, arguing they had to turn over the seed because it served as collateral for a $7.2 million loan issued to Cover Crop Solutions.

A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in 2016 but the ruling was challenged before the 9th Circuit, which has now agreed that Northwest Bank had no security interest in the radish seed.

Although a licensing deal with the radish cultivar’s breeder said the seed was the property of Cover Crop Solutions, that’s irrelevant in the dispute with farmers because “the growers were not a party to that agreement,” the 9th Circuit said.

Cover Crop Solutions entered into the licensing agreement before the radish seeds were harvested and then never acquired the finished crop, so the broker had no ownership interest in it, the ruling said.

Even if the seed broker hadn’t breached its contract with growers by failing to pay them, its licensing agreement for the cultivar assigned contract rights to the breeder, the 9th Circuit said.

Capital Press was unable to reach attorneys representing the farmers or the bank.

Now that the appeal has ended, it’s likely the farmers will resume their own lawsuit against the bank seeking more than $6.7 million for lost crop value and added storage costs.

Last year, a federal judge stayed that litigation until the 9th Circuit had reached a decision in the earlier case.

BROOKS, Ore. — A rhythmic popping sound filled the air at Powerland Heritage Park on Sunday as all sizes of antique machinery chugged along gravel roads and hissing steam came from all directions as exhibitors stoked their boilers to keep agricultural history alive.

The 48th annual Great Oregon Steam-Up welcomed 17,000 to 20,000 people during its two-weekend run, said Michelle Duchateau, president of Powerland Heritage Park, which is on 62 acres off Interstate 5 near Brooks, Ore.

“(The Steam-Up) goes along with our mission to educate people about how agriculture has changed and how machinery has fielded that change,” Duchateau said.

The Steam-Up offers visitors a chance to witness the sights and sounds of the past through many types of antique steam-powered equipment, a blacksmith shop, a unique steam-powered lumber mill and even and old-time electricity-powered trolley. Each day the highlight is the Parade of Power, during which the tractors and machinery drive past grandstands filled with people while an announcer tells the history of each piece.

Tim Ruffing has attended the Steam-Up for decades and now brings his 1911 steam tractor to the event.

“I have been coming here since about 1970, back when this was just an open field,” he said.

“This engine, supposedly … they used it as a road engine,” Ruffing said, adding that the tractor was used to pull a road grader.

Ruffing started out bringing stationary steam engines but eventually worked his way up to a steam tractor.

He thinks that teaching people to run the engine is important, and he usually has other people operate the engine for the Parade of Power.

First held on the current grounds in 1970, the Steam-Up’s roots go back farther, Duchateau said.

“It started as a threshing bee,” she said.

Farmers would get done with their harvests and want to do something fun, so they would hold the threshing bee, Duchateau said. As the event grew they ran out of space on the farm property they were using. They eventually gained use of the current location from another group and purchased it later.

The park is now home to 15 heritage museums, including a truck museum, an antique Caterpillar museum and a blacksmith shop.

One of them is the Oregon Vintage Machinery Museum featuring John Deere. Vickey Winn and her husband, John, have participated in the Steam-Up for 30 years. She is the president of the John Deere museum. While the museum opened in 2013, the John Deere club at Powerland has been around a lot longer, she said.

The Winns and a friend, Joel Messer, have long appreciated John Deere equipment.

“We had John Deeres on the farm,” John Winn said, adding that there was a Deere dealer down the road from his family’s house when he was young and they found the brand reliable.

Messer’s story was similar, he said as he motioned to a yellow John Deere tractor and said he had driven one just like it.

For all three, being a part of the Steam-Up each year and being members of the museum allow them to preserve the heritage of farming for the next generation.

“This is history,” John said.

The three spoke of the old machine shop across the way from the museum and mentioned there is an importance to showing younger generations how things used to be done.

That’s why the museums and Powerland exist, Vickey Winn said.

Powerland Heritage Park is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Sunday from April through September and periodically hosts other events. It is closed Aug. 18.

Online

www.antiquepowerland.com

The second-place winner of the first-ever Pillsbury Bake-Off just celebrated her 100th birthday in a very special way. Friends, family, and even the Doughboy gathered at Laura Rott’ s residence in Naperville, Illinois, to enjoy the cookies that scored her…

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — The state Department of Forestry says a complex of wildfires burning since mid-July in southwestern Oregon is now more than 80 percent contained.

The agency said in a news release Monday that crews using infrared scanners to detect pockets of heat near containment lines are finding fewer hot spots. Extinguishing the remaining ones is at the top of the agenda for crews on Monday.

No hot spots pose a threat to the fire’s control lines.

The fires known as the Garner complex are expected to be fully contained by week’s end. The lightning-sparked blazes have cost more than $40 million to fight.

Pairing satellite imagery with technology to track cattle movement on the range and field estimates of forage could give ranchers and land managers a new tool in grazing management.

That’s the goal of researchers at the University of Idaho College of Natural Resources who just won a $661,118 matching grant for the project from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The three-year project, Deploying CERT (Climate Engine Rangeland Tool), will kick off in January, Jason Karl, associate professor at the college and project leader, said.

The project will track cattle and measure forage on large rangeland landscapes and calibrate that information with satellite imagery in the CERT system — being developed by University of Idaho associate professors Crystal Kolden with the College of Natural Resources and John Abatzoglou with the Department of Geography.

The research team will outfit 300 to 400 cows with GPS collars developed by Karl and deploy them on the university’s Rock Creek Ranch, private ranches and Bureau of Land Management land in southern Idaho and on the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve in northeast Oregon.

“The whole idea is to see how we can do a better job at getting more timely information on how much forage is available and how much is being consumed,” Karl said.

Currently, only rough estimates or field observations are available to inform grazing-management decisions. The challenge on large landscapes is observing conditions across the expanse, which can lead to inaccurate estimates of available forage, he said.

The GPS data will be used to more effectively link on-the-ground observations of forage utilization with remote sensing techniques for mapping forage availability and change developed by Vincent Jason, a doctoral candidate at the university.

The resulting maps and forage utilization data will be built into CERT, an online tool to analyze and visualize information on how much forage the cattle consume.

Satellite imagery allows for monitoring landscape changes over time but it doesn’t provide information on what caused the change. The research will use the field measurements to inform the satellite imagery and give it greater content, he said.

“The (GPS) collars are the links that tie these two data sets together,” he said.

The collars will give on-the-ground verification where forage is being consumed by livestock, he said.

Ranchers and land managers will be able to access maps of forage availability through CERT, look at how the range and forage availability are changing over the growing season and decide when it’s time to move cattle, he said.

In some cases researchers will be able to distinguish livestock utilization from forage changes due to other events — such as insects and fires, which have distinctive patterns. The challenging types of events to distinguish solely from satellite imagery are forage utilization from wild horses or wildlife, he said.

“This is why the field observations will always be a necessary part of a system like CERT (and) rancher input is central to the CERT project. Without those field observations, the satellite forage maps have limited utility,” he said.

The long-term goal of the research, once the system is developed and demonstrated, is to expand it and deploy it in other areas, Karl said.

Matching funding for the project will come from the University of Idaho, The Nature Conservancy and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Air quality in the Rogue Valley of southwestern Oregon worsened this weekend after a change in wind direction pushed more wildfire smoke into the area.

The Mail Tribune reports Medford’s air quality fell to a “hazardous” level and Ashland’s was almost at that level. National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Weygard says the smoke is coming from the Taylor and Klondike fires in Josephine County. Those fires have combined to scorch more than 100 square miles.

Though winds are forecast to be lighter on Monday, they are expected to continue blowing in the same direction.

Weygard says a cold front is expected to move into the area at the end of the week. Until then, expect hot temperatures and more smoke.

He says the silver lining is there are no fire-igniting thunderstorms in the forecast.