North Bend at Cascade

WASHINGTON (AP) — A transcript of an interview Wednesday with House Speaker Paul Ryan by The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A transcript of an interview Wednesday with House Speaker Paul Ryan by The Associated Press.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Wildfires that are blackening the American West in one of the nation’s worst fire seasons have ignited calls, including from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to thin forests that have become so choked with trees that they are at “powder keg levels.”

The destruction has exposed old frictions between environmentalists and those who want to see logging accelerated, and it’s triggered a push to reassess how lands should be managed to prevent severe wildfires.

Zinke’s directive Tuesday for department managers and superintendents to aggressively prevent wildfires was welcomed by Ed Waldron, fire management officer at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.

Waldron was exhausted after fighting two fires that have been burning since late July in or near the park, whose centerpiece is a lake that fills the remains of an erupted volcano and is the deepest in the United States. But he wondered where the additional resources would come from to hire contractors to thin the fuel.

For now, Waldron and other firefighters have been too busy fighting blazes that forced the closure of a road into the park to thin vegetation elsewhere.

“We’ve been working hard,” he said Tuesday. “It’s day 50.”

For decades, logging was king in the West, notably in Oregon, which is famed for its majestic ponderosas and towering Douglas firs.

But restrictions on harvesting timber from federal lands to protect endangered species and lower demand led to a freefall in the industry starting around 1990. Meanwhile, wildfires — nature’s way of thinning and regenerating forests — were being extinguished instead of being allowed to burn.

The forests grew too thick, and they began to overlap, covering meadows and other areas.

“We’ve allowed forests to develop that never developed naturally,” said John Bailey, a professor of fire management at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

There is now a record amount of fuel for fires, such as brush, and “as a result, we have longer and hotter fire seasons that drive these megafires,” he said.

He advocated thinning forests through logging, prescribed burns and allowing naturally occurring fires to be managed instead of extinguished.

A fire becomes a megafire when it reaches 156 square miles. A megafire in southwest Oregon is the largest blaze in the West, having burned 290 square miles, authorities said Wednesday. It was reported July 12 and isn’t expected to be under control until Oct. 15.

Across the West, more than 12,000 square miles have burned this season, making it among the worst in land scorched.

Oregon state Sen. Herman Baertschiger Jr. called for a work group to revamp fire policy.

“The inability to manage our forest resources due to environmental concerns is threatening the safety and well-being of Oregonians and ultimately damaging our beautiful state,” the Republican said last week.

Residents of several communities in southwest Oregon opposed to a planned federal sale of old-growth trees say logging the fire-resistant timber will increase the risk of blazes spreading to communities. They say younger, uniform trees that will grow densely there will be twice as likely to burn. A coalition of residents will protest the sale Thursday in the town of Grants Pass.

“As fires burn throughout the region, area residents believe maintaining our last fire-resistant, old-growth forest is increasingly critical,” the coalition said in a statement Wednesday.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has denounced inadequate efforts to thin dead and dying trees, calling it a yearslong pattern.

He urged smarter policies, criticized the “broken system of fighting wildfires” and complained that federal funds earmarked for fire prevention are instead used for firefighting.

“The idea of ripping off prevention, which you need most, defies common sense,” Wyden said on the Senate floor last Thursday, standing next to a large photo of flames leaping from trees in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. “Shoddy budgeting today leads to bigger fires tomorrow.”

Bailey, the fire management professor, lamented that Zinke’s directive does not recommend using fire as a tool to restore forests.

Oregon Wild, which campaigns for conservation of roadless areas, suspects an ulterior motive behind the order from Zinke, who oversees more than 500 million acres of federal land, though the Forest Service, a unit of the Agriculture Department, is the nation’s largest firefighting agency.

“Sadly, policy will be all about more logging, not better fire management,” Oregon Wild tweeted.

In Montana, environmental groups last month sued over a proposal by the U.S. Forest Service to allow timber harvesting and some prescribed burning to reduce the risk of severe wildfires in the Flathead National Forest. The lawsuit argued the agency failed to analyze how the timber project, combined with another one nearby, would affect Canada lynx, grizzly bears and their habitat.

Forest fuels are at “powder keg levels,” Paul F. Hessburg Sr., a U.S. Forest Service research landscape ecologist, recently told an audience in Bend, Oregon, a former logging town that has remade itself into an outdoor recreation and microbrew mecca.

“If we don’t change a few of our fire management habits, we’re going to lose a few of our beloved forests,” he said.

CHARLESTON — A while back, I told you that while I've been at this for more than a decade now, there are still some restaurants that I hadn't been to.

BANDON — Have you ever walked into a restaurant and just knew right off the bat that you had found something special.

Could a revival of Oregon’s timber industry reduce the fuel load in public forests and ease the blistering wildfires that choked much of the state in smoke the past few weeks?

At this point it’s an intriguing question without a simple answer. But it arises as university researchers and industry officials explore advanced wood products such as cross-laminated timbers — called CLT — and mass plywood panels, which can support multi-story wooden buildings, even modest high-rises. Only two Western Oregon mills and a handful of others nationally make the products, but they appear to hold promise.

For one thing, the massive beams and panels can be made with small-diameter logs, the very type crowding forests and contributing to the explosive growth of the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and the much larger Chetco Bar Fire in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the southwest corner of the state.

A recent report by Oregon BEST, a quasi-public entity that funds clean technology startups and links entrepreneurs to university researchers, said CLT and related mass timber manufacturing could create 2,000 to 6,100 direct jobs in Oregon. Income generated from those jobs would range from $124 million to $371 million a year, according to the report. The estimate came from an analysis by Business Oregon, the state department.

Oregon BEST said Oregon and Southwest Washington are “poised as a manufacturing hub for the emerging Cross Laminated Timber market in the United States.” Pacific Northwest forests could easily and sustainably supply the wood needed for production, the report said.

People working in the field issue a cautionary, “Yes, but.…”

“In theory, it makes a lot of sense, but it requires for the forests to be actively managed in that way, and an outlet for that wood to be taken up,” said Timm Locke, director of forest products for the Oregon Forest Research Institute, an organization founded by the Oregon Legislature to enhance collaboration and inform the public about responsible forest management.

Locke said the public forests most in need of restoration and thinning work are east of the Cascades, where much of the milling infrastructure has “disappeared.” It doesn’t make economic sense to move poor quality trees from Eastern Oregon to mills in Western Oregon, he said.

“We need to be thinking about what’s stopping us at this stage,” Locke said. “What are the issues there?”

One of them, he said, is a lack of trust between industry and the public land agencies — principally the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Mills that once depended on logs from public forests were “burned” when the timber harvest was drastically reduced due to lawsuits and policy and regulatory changes over threatened species, wildlife habitat and watersheds. An often-cited statistic shows the Forest Service manages 60 percent of the timberland in Oregon but that land produces only 15 percent of the annual harvest.

“It’s difficult for government agencies to make significant changes quickly,” Locke said. “There’s a lot of process that has to happen.”

Locke believes the Forest Service is on the right track, but noted that conservation groups often oppose increased logging on public land.

“It’s a tricky subject, no question about it,” he said. “Public discussion about public land management — I think we’re ripe for that conversation.”

A Forest Service official said the agency makes 600 million board-feet of timber available for sale annually in Oregon and Washington, and the perspective that it is holding up an industry revival is “dated.”

Debbie Hollen, director of state and private forestry for the Forest Service in Portland, said the agency hopes tall wood buildings provide the market for restoration logging and thinning.

The agency’s Wood Innovation Grant Program provides funding to help create a market for fuel that needs to be removed from the forests.

“Our hope is that it will be the value-add that makes it worthwhile,” Hollen said. “Industry is not there yet.”

The research infrastructure is swinging into place. Oregon State University’s colleges of forestry and engineering have teamed with the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture to form the TallWood Design Institute at OSU. It is the nation’s first research center to focus exclusively on advanced structural wood products.

At this point, the one constant is fire.

John Bailey, a professor of silviculture and fire management at OSU, said the amount of biomass accumulated on forested hillsides is greater than ever before. Whether people see the biomass as scenery, recreation site, wildlife habitat or timber, it’s going to “exit the system” one way or the other, he said.

Humans remove less of the biomass through logging and thinning than in the past, which contributes to the fierce, explosive, “climate driven fire” that has gotten our attention. With more forested acreage closely connected, and with hot, dry, windy conditions prevailing, fires quickly grow large, he said.

Bailey said the Forest Service is doing all the management that society allows it to do, and it’s time to “rethink what we do with the hillsides in light of fuel accumulation” and climate conditions.

“They are going to burn,” he said.

Online

Oregon BEST CLT report: http://bit.ly/2fhpFTd

BEND, Ore. (AP) — Police say a man from Salt Lake City, Utah, has been accused of intentionally starting three wildland fires in central Oregon.

The Bulletin reports 37-year-old Christopher Glen Wilson was indicted Friday by a Deschutes County grand jury on three counts of arson and reckless endangerment.

Court records say the indictment involves three fires started in August; two along U.S. 97, and one east of La Pine, Oregon.

Oregon State Police Capt. Bill Fugate says authorities believe Wilson, of Salt Lake City, is also responsible for a fourth fire in south central Oregon.

Fugate says state troopers arrested Wilson Sept. 3 as he entered Oregon on Interstate 84 driving a stolen car.

Wilson was booked into jail on suspicion of unauthorized use of a vehicle and will be transferred to Bend, Oregon for arraignment.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Wilson had an attorney.

Oregon’s wolf management plan is supposed to be updated this year but that hasn’t happened yet. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission was to get a briefing on that process during its Sept. 15 meeting in Welches, Ore.

The pause in the process comes as ODFW has moved to kill five wolves for livestock attacks this summer and approved the shooting of a sixth. Four wolves from the Harl Butte pack were shot by ODFW staff after a series of depredations in Wallowa County. A Umatilla County livestock producer or an employee – ODFW has not clarified the details – legally shot a Meacham Pack wolf under authorization from the department.

Conservation groups are highly critical of ODFW’s actions, saying it shouldn’t be killing wolves while the management plan review is pending. A coalition of 18 groups asked Gov. Kate Brown to intervene, so far without success.

Meanwhile, a significant change is coming. Russ Morgan, ODFW’s longtime wolf program coordinator, is retiring in October. Morgan said he had planned to retire when the management plan was approved, but decided not to wait.

This year's Cranberry Festival Parade had 85 entries. The winners are listed below. View more photos of the festival at http://theworldlink.com/bandon/entertainment/bandon-cranberry-festival/collection

BANDON - The 71st annual Cranberry Festival was a pirate's booty for all. Not only was the weather cooperative, with mostly clear skies, little wind and warm temperatures for the events that were spread out over three days, but festival-goers…

BANDON - The 71st annual Cranberry Festival was a pirate's booty for all. Not only was the weather cooperative, with mostly clear skies, little wind and warm temperatures for the events that were spread out over three days, but festival-goers…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Tuesday directed all land managers and park superintendents to be more aggressive in cutting down small trees and underbrush to prevent wildfires as this year is on track to be among the worst fire seasons in a decade.

In a memo, Zinke said the Trump administration will take a new approach and work proactively to prevent fires “through aggressive and scientific fuels reduction management” to save lives, homes and wildlife habitat.

Wildfires are chewing across dried-out Western forests and grassland. To date, 47,700 wildfires have burned more than 8 million acres across the country, with much of the devastation in California and Montana, Zinke said.

As of Tuesday, 62 large fires were burning across nine Western states, with 20 fires in Montana and 17 in Oregon, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Nearly half the large fires in the West reported zero acreage gains on Monday, helping firefighters across the West make progress toward containing them, the agency said.

The Forest Service and Interior Department have spent more $2.1 billion so far this year fighting fires — about the same as they spent in all of 2015, the most expensive wildfire season on record.

Those figures do not include individual state spending. In Montana, where more than 90 percent of the state is in drought, the state has spent more than $50 million on fire suppression since June, with fires likely to burn well into the fall.

Oregon has spent $28 million, but the state expects to be reimbursed for part of that by the federal government and others.

Exacerbated by drought and thick vegetation, wildfires are “more damaging, more costly and threaten the safety and security of both the public and firefighters,” Zinke said. “I have heard this described as ‘a new normal.’ It is unacceptable that we should be satisfied with the status quo.”

Zinke’s memo did not call for new spending, but he said federal officials “must be innovative” and use all tools available to prevent and fight fires. “Where new authorities are needed,” he added, “we will work with our colleagues in Congress to craft management solutions that will benefit our public lands for generations to come.”

The Interior Department oversees more than 500 million acres supervised by the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies. The Forest Service, a unit of the Agriculture Department, is the nation’s largest firefighting agency, with more than half its budget devoted to wildfires.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Western lawmakers have long complained that the current funding mechanism makes it hard to budget for and fight wildfires, even as fires burn longer and hotter each year.

“I believe that we have the right processes and the right procedures of attacking and fighting fires,” Perdue said in a speech last week. “But if you don’t have the resources and the means of dependable funding, that’s an issue.”

Perdue called on Congress “to fix the fire-borrowing problem once and for all” so that officials are not forced to tap prevention programs to fight wildfires.

“Fires will always be with us. But when we leave a fuel load out there because we have not been able to get to it because of a lack of funding, or dependable funding, we’re asking for trouble,” Perdue said.

New Bandon football coach Aaron Freitag spoke fondly of the Cranberry Bowl and its significance to the players, both before and after the Tigers beat Riddle 58-0 on Friday night in this year’s version of the showcase game.

Bandon’s volleyball team has had an up-and-down few weeks getting ready for league play to start.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. ­— No matter the season, the fish are always jumping.

That’s because Ron Barnes and Tracey Liskey are tossing handfuls of fish food into one of their several fish ponds where they’re raising 2-pound tilapia that are live-trucked to fish markets in Seattle and San Francisco. Some remains local, often sold to Klamath Basin residents who especially enjoy the tasty, white fish.

For the past six-plus years Barnes, with Liskey’s help, has been experimenting with the best of speedily raising tilapias from tiny hatchlings until they’re large enough to be fresh-shipped to commercial markets. Before the year is out, Barnes said he expects his business, Gone Fishing, will ship about 50,000 pounds.

“We’re starting small, but deliberately so,” Barnes said, noting a commercial tilapia farm in Northern California’s Modoc County ships up to 20,000 pounds a week. His goal is raising 2-pound tilapias, admitting, “It was difficult to raise them to that size. We’ve overcome that.”

“We work together and get things done,” said Liskey. “I can fix things. I’m the mechanic, the engineer.”

He and Barnes believe the years of experimenting with feed, water temperatures and other variables have paid off. Barnes said his 80-acre operation south of Klamath Falls and adjacent to Liskey Farms, is “extremely efficient. My water use is a tiny, tiny fraction of what most fish farmers use,” noting the tilapias reach market size in about 90 days.

“There was learning curve learning how to grow them to size,” agrees Liskey. “It’s kind of like raising a beef cow to a size in the shortest amount of time.”

Liskey makes the cattle reference because he manages the family’s 1,500-acre ranch, which is 99 percent leased to others. At age 63, he calls himself semi-retired — “But I haven’t seen the ‘retired’ part yet” — because he remains active in many of the ranch’s day-to-day operations.

He said ranch operations are equally divided between cattle, hay and grain. A smaller area includes geothermal-reliant businesses that which have drawn his interest. Because of plentiful supplies of geothermal water — tests indicate flows of 5,000 gallons of 195- to 199-degree water a minute — he sees fish farming as one arm of a potentially broader operation.

“My main goal here is trying to develop a geothermal park ... to get something in here to make agriculture more productive,” Liskey said.

He envisions “cascading uses,” first using the extremely hot water to generate power. While that hasn’t yet happened, Liskey said he continues to work with power companies. Less hot, re-circulated geothermal water is already being used for three commercial greenhouses while the third tier of cooler, 84-degree “tail water” is used for raising tilapia, which require warm water.

Barnes breeds his own tilapia because, “When you do your own breeding you don’t inherit somebody else’s problems,” such as various diseases. While some believe commercially raised fish aren’t as healthy as wild fish, Barnes said the geothermal water negates the need for chemicals, insisting, “If it’s done correctly it’s better,” noting wild fish are often subject to fouled waters.

While tilapia is their current endeavor, Liskey and Barnes believe the Gone Fishing ponds could be expanded to raise other fish, including shrimp, catfish and sturgeon.

“Oregon has a lot of possibilities in the aqua industry and it’s just being done,” insists Barnes.

While Barnes focuses on tilapia, Liskey also monitors other geothermally related operations, including a trio of 200-foot greenhouses operated the last several years by Rick Walsh of Fresh Green. Certified organic produce — micro-greens, tomatoes, squash and more — grown in the greenhouses is sold regionally, with some going to Whole Foods.

Another adjacent geothermally heated section is used to grow medical marijuana. Medical and recreational marijuana is legal to grow and sell in Oregon, but recreational marijuana is not legal in some counties, including Klamath County.

Although Liskey voted against legalizing recreational marijuana, he believes the county should rescind the ban because, “We’re letting everybody else grow it and saturate the market. Let us grow it, too.”

“Without geothermal you couldn’t afford to have greenhouses or fish ponds,” Liskey said, noting the Klamath Basin typically sees below freezing temperatures and snow during the winter. As he explained while standing alongside the tilapia ponds, “It’s the cheap heat from the water that makes all this possible.”

Keeping young beef heifers penned over winter tends to delay puberty compared to letting them out on pasture, according to a new study.

Slowing a cow’s reproductive maturity may impair her ability to get pregnant in the first breeding season, which is economically undesirable for ranchers.

Only 32 percent of heifers kept in pens over winter reached puberty by late spring, compared to 67 percent that remained on pasture, the Oregon State University study found.

Among the cows that did reach puberty, those in pens achieved maturity 33 days later than those on pasture and they were 100 pounds heavier on average.

The stress of being kept penned was likely the reason that fewer heifers timely reached puberty and their maturity was delayed, said Reinaldo Cooke, who co-wrote the study.

“That may be taking a toll on the reproductive development of those females,” he said. “They like to walk around and graze and they don’t have that in the pen.”

Cows kept on pasture got more physical activity, averaging 20,000 steps a week, compared to 3,100 steps for penned heifers. Their hair also had lower levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress in cattle.

Pens probably make young heifers uncomfortable because they’ve spent their early lives on rangeland before weaning and are unaccustomed to being confined, said Cooke.

“That abrupt change in environment is pretty stressful,” he said.

Ranchers often keep young heifers in pens over winter because they’re easier to feed and check on, Cooke said. In some cases, cattle producers may not have enough property available to keep them on pasture.

“I’m not saying confinement is bad,” he said. “Many times it’s necessary. It’s the only option.”

However, ranchers should keep in mind that pens may prevent timely puberty, so they can try to reduce negative effects by avoiding overcrowding.

The half-year study compared 30 Angus and Hereford cows kept in pens with 30 heifers of the same breeds left out on pasture, with all the animals being fed the same diet.

Cooke was an animal scientist at OSU when the research was conducted in late 2015 and early 2016 but was recently hired as an associate professor of beef cattle production at Texas A&M University.

Researchers decided to conduct the study after noticing that penned heifers generally had poorer reproductive performance compared to those on pasture, Cooke said.

“Wow, maybe there’s something going on here,” he said.

An Oregon attorney known for advocating on behalf of farmers, John Albert, passed away last month at the age of 66.

Albert died suddenly in Salem, Ore., on Aug. 27 from what’s believed to be a massive heart attack. A memorial service was held Sept. 8.

After graduating from law school in 1976, Albert initially took a job with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and then held positions in Klamath Falls and The Dalles.

His became acquainted with the financial challenges faced by farmers upon joining the Churchill Leonard law firm in 1981, where he specialized in agricultural liens and bankruptcy law.

“Ag law was not his only area of expertise, but it was a primary area of expertise,” said Stephen Tweet, Albert’s friend and longtime law partner.

Among his most notable cases was the bankruptcy of the seed company AgriBioTech in 2000, which threatened to leave many grass seed farmers unpaid for their crops.

While his farmer clients initially feared huge losses, Albert was able to recover a “fair hunk” of what they were owed, Tweet said. “There were still losses but I believe a fair percentage of the growers’ claims were paid.”

Agricultural liens are a crucial tool for farmers who deliver crops to companies that go bankrupt, since they secure collateral in the buyer’s assets that can be used to compensate growers.

In such cases, Albert would often battle with banks that claimed to have the top priority for repayment, said Tweet. “The bank is competing with the farmer over who gets paid first, so that was a huge fight.”

After a decade at Churchill Leonard, Albert struck out on his own, forming two law firms with Tweet in the 1990s. He joined the firm of Sherman, Sherman, Johnnie & Hoyt after Tweet retired in 2014.

Aside from courtroom disputes, Albert also fought for farmers in the Oregon Legislature, where he was instrumental in the passage of a law strengthening their contract protections in 2011.

Among other provisions, House Bill 2159 established a mandatory payment date for delivered grass seed and a mechanism for resolving disagreements over price.

When he wasn’t delving into legal issues, Albert led an active lifestyle in his free time as a soccer referee, gardener and marathon runner.

“I couldn’t have been more shocked,” Tweet said of his friend’s death.

BEND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Hunters Association has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service, claiming its plan to build more than 130 miles of off-highway vehicle trails in the Ochoco National Forest could hurt elk habitat.

The Bend Bulletin reported last week that the association, which has more than 10,000 members, filed the lawsuit in the Pendleton Division of the United States District Court on Aug. 31. The association claims that the decision to approve the trails is not supported by scientific wildlife research and is in violation of the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Patrick Lair, a spokesman for the Ochoco National Forest, said the Forest Service will continue moving forward with planning the trail project.

Washington State University officials are recommending Northwest farmers be cautious after reports that some pollinator seed mixes elsewhere were found to be contaminated with the weed Palmer amaranth.

“As far as we know, we don’t have Palmer amaranth, and that’s the fear, that these packets of seed will bring it here,” said Drew Lyon, weed science professor at WSU.

A Weed Science Society of America survey has labeled Palmer amaranth “the most troublesome weed in the U.S.” According to the society, some native seed mixes designed to foster habitat for honeybees and other pollinators in the Midwest were found to contain the weed. Seed mixes should be tested to make sure they are free of the weed.

“There’s a big push for pollinator health, and so a lot of people want to plant these things,” Lyon said. “It doesn’t sound like maybe quality control on the end of these companies is great. And that seed is really tiny. It’d be an easy mistake to make, but it could be a costly mistake to make.”

The weed is common in fields across the South and the Southeast, and has been traveling north for several decades. Its small seeds are easily spread by birds and farm equipment, and in birdseed, livestock feed and manure.

Lyon said it’s possible someone could unknowingly order contaminated seed mix online.

The warm-season, broadleaf weed could pose the most risk for irrigated production in the Columbia Basin. The crops growing in July and August would be most affected, Lyon said.

“It’s a very prolific seed producer,” he said. “It’s glyphosate resistant, and ... we use a lot of glyphosate in our ag systems. If we have a weed like Palmer amaranth that’s so prolific and can spread so quickly, and we can’t use Roundup to help us control it, it’s going to become a bit problematic.”

Lyon also advises growers to keep an eye out and be aware of what Palmer amaranth looks like.

“If you see it, pull it before it can set any seed,” he said.

Growers should also alert the university. Researchers would try to confirm the weed and the source of the seed mix and spread the word, Lyon said.

WSU researchers will wait and see if any Palmer amaranth is reported.

“I don’t know if it’s inevitable that it will get here some day, but it seems like things move pretty good,” Lyon said. “As far as I know, we don’t have it in the state right now. And that’s the best situation to be in.”

Online

http://bit.ly/2y25xw5