Oregon’s statewide snowpack is 22 percent above average in early 2017, which is good news but not enough to inspire confidence in the 2017 irrigation season.

Before irrigators get too confident, it should be noted that snowpacks were even higher at this point last year, said Scott Oviatt, snow survey supervisor for Oregon at USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

By April, though, the advantage of that early accumulation was wiped away by high temperatures and record snowmelt, Oviatt said.

“At this point, it’s wait and see,” he said. “Things can change on a moment’s whim in spring.”

The above-average snowpack also reflects conditions in early winter — unless the snow keeps accumulating, Oregon will fall behind by spring, Oviatt said.

“You really need to have storms coming in periodically, if not daily then two to three times a week,” he said.

In early January, snowpack levels across Oregon ranged from a high of 39 percent above average in the Hood, Sandy and Lower Deschutes basins to a low of 9 percent below average in the Klamath basin, according to NRCS data.

The danger of snowpacks melting quickly in spring is that in-stream flows won’t be sufficient to meet the needs of irrigators during summer, said Oviatt.

A sudden rush of melting water can also overwhelm the control structures at irrigation reservoirs, forcing managers to release water that may not later be replenished, he said.

While the weather and temperature forecast for the upcoming months is a wild card, current conditions are certainly optimistic compared to early 2015, when there was no snow on the ground, he said.

A five-year study of cattle grazing on federal rangeland showed they spend only 1 percent to 2.5 percent of their time in streams or in riparian buffer areas, a finding that may prove important as debate continues over the impact of cattle on public land.

Researchers at Oregon State University outfitted cows from three ranches with homemade GPS tracking collars and mapped their positions during spring to fall grazing seasons over five years. The collars reported the cows’ positions about every five minutes and compiled more than 3.7 million data points over the course of the study. The technology was able to pinpoint when the collared cows were within 30 meters of streams.

The study took place on federal grazing allotments in the Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla national forests. The findings are potentially significant because critics of public land grazing practices have long contended cattle trample and erode streambanks and pollute water.

But John Williams, an OSU Extension rangeland expert in Wallowa County, said cows enter riparian areas for two reasons: “One is to drink, the other is to cross,” he said.

The cows typically did not rest or graze near streams. Instead, they spent most of their time grazing on higher ground or resting in dry areas away from streams, according to Williams.

Not surprisingly, the location of good forage was the primary factor in their movement. Water sources, fences, and previous logging or fires also influenced cattle movement, as did topography and the herd’s point of entry at the beginning of the season. Cows used 10 to 25 percent of the stream area in each grazing allotment.

Williams said the findings could be important to livestock management. The cattle impact on riparian areas “isn’t for very long, and it isn’t for all of the stream,” he said. “What might we look at in management options that let us be more efficient?”

Cows were more likely to enter stream areas during the heat of summer, but in the cool spring showed little interest in riparian areas, Williams said. That suggests adjusting management practices across the seasons may be appropriate.

“If talking about riparian pasture grazing in April, maybe it isn’t a big issue,” he said. “But in August, maybe you take a look at it in a different light.”

Williams said he’s shared the study findings with the U.S. Forest Service, which manages grazing allotments in the national forests.

“I believe it’s real straight forward in terms of, here’s where cows go,” he said.

The study had some quirks. Researchers selected cows at random from among the 300 to 400 in each of the three herds, and kept some of them collared for several years. About a third of the collared cows were new each year as older participants were sold or disappeared, or collars wore out.

Williams said funding for the research was tight, and the team chose to make their own GPS collars to save money. They bought plastic boxes to hold the electronics, made leather collars to fit around the cows, bought motherboards and “soldered, taped and glued” the devices for about $450 apiece in material. Williams said he was told pre-assembled GPS units would have cost $2,000 to $3,000 each.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An early 2017 storm dumped snow in southern and central Oregon, and more is expected.

The Mail Tribune reports up to 3 additional inches could fall Wednesday in Medford, Ashland and Grants Pass, and up to 18 more inches could fall higher up along the Siskiyou Pass and around Crater Lake.

Southbound traffic on Interstate 5 over the Siskiyou Summit remained closed early Wednesday. The state Department of Transportation says the problem continues to be trucks on the steep Anderson Grade between Klamath River and Yreka. It’s expected to reopen before noon.

Along with school closures, all state offices are closed in Jackson and Josephine counties.

School and state agencies are also closed throughout central and south-central Oregon.

KTVZ reports that a National Weather Service spotter northwest of Terrebonne reported a foot of new snow overnight and three-foot snow drifts early Wednesday. A weather spotter southeast of Bend reported 8 new inches and also had three-foot snow drifts as snow continued to fall.

When in America did we lose our common sense? Who would think for one second that Hillary was running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor, and then repeat said story to many other people? Have we become…

BANDON — The health insurance open enrollment period for private insurance policies ends Jan. 31. Individuals and families who haven't already signed up for 2017 health insurance can learn more about Oregon policies and get help shopping the Health Insurance…

BANDON — The health insurance open enrollment period for private insurance policies ends Jan. 31. Individuals and families who haven't already signed up for 2017 health insurance can learn more about Oregon policies and get help shopping the Health Insurance…

Tuesdays

President Obama has turned two vast sections of Nevada and Utah into national monuments. The Bears Ears monument in Utah covers 1.35 million acres; Nevada’s Gold Butte monument is closer to 300,000 acres.

A monument under consideration for southeastern Oregon would be larger than both those monuments combined. But there’s no word on whether such a designation is coming for the Owyhee canyons of southeastern Oregon.   

Conservation groups have been pushing for creation of an Owyhee national monument, but ranchers and local leaders generally oppose that. 

Monument designations change what can be done on the land, often putting tight restrictions on mining and possibly ranching. Monuments come from executive orders outside the public process for most land-use regulations.

Malheur County rancher Elias Elguren opposes the proposed 2.5 million acre monument in his backyard.

Elguren said he has no idea if he has anything to worry about.  

“I just think there’s such a lack of openness to the process that who could really tell,” said Elguren. “President Obama has until his last day of office to sign one of these national monuments into existence. So, we really don’t know, either direction.”    

Monument supporters and members of Oregon’s congressional delegation don’t know if an Owyhee monument is coming either.

Tim Davis with Friends of Owyhee said he doesn’t know if the creation of the Nevada and Utah monuments make an Owyhee monument more or less likely in the remaining weeks of Obama’s presidential term.

“You know, I think there is a chance,” Davis said, expressing mixed feelings about the protections a monument would bring. “I mean, for myself and Friends of Owyhee standpoint, we’ve been somewhat supportive of it, but we’re still hoping for a collaboration of everyone sitting down at the table, to make a plan.”    

Davis said there are already discussions about bringing groups together to talk in March, with an eye toward limiting mining in the area and focusing on recreation activities. But Elguren said ranchers like him would need some incentive to come to the negotiating table. 

Where Davis and Elguren agree is that an open discussion would be a better approach than the high-stakes, wait-and-see situation they’re in now.

They won’t get an argument out of some in official capacities in Washington, D.C., either. Oregon Rep. Greg Walden’s spokesman, Andrew Malcolm, criticized the process by which Obama designated the other monuments this week.

“Nothing new that we have heard,” wrote Malcolm in an email answering OPB’s questions about a possible monument. “That’s part of the problem with the Antiquities Act — no transparency or public process. It could happen at any time with no warning.”

President Obama has until the day he leaves office — Jan. 20 — to take executive actions, such as designating monuments.

SALEM - Curry County Commissioner and State Representative-Elect of Oregon House District 1 David Brock Smith, R-Gold Beach, has been appointed to key legislative committees for the state.

Saturdays

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A Lane County winery has filed a lawsuit over nearly 800 gallons of apple cider it says it can’t sell because the Corvallis company that bottled it didn’t seek the proper label approval from federal regulators.

The Register-Guard reports King Estate Winery is seeking $100,000 in damages from Oregon Honey Products, which does business as Nectar Creek.

The suit, filed Dec. 19, alleges the winery paid $7,000 to Nectar Creek as part of an agreement requiring the company to bottle cider and obtain federal “certificate of label approval.” The approval allows an alcoholic beverage to be sold in interstate commerce.

The winery claims Nectar Creek never submitted the application for label approval, leaving the bottles of cider unable to be sold.

Nectar Creek co-founder Nick Lorenz declined to comment on the lawsuit.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge has denied Oregon refuge occupier Ryan Payne’s request to withdraw his guilty plea.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports that U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown ruled Wednesday that Payne’s plea in the Oregon case wasn’t, as his attorney argued, contingent on reaching a plea agreement in a case against him in Nevada.

Payne, of Anaconda, Montana, admitted in July that he conspired with others to prevent Interior Department employees from doing their jobs during the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildfire Refuge.

Payne was one of 11 defendants to plead guilty before others in the case went to trial and were found not guilty.

Payne will be sentenced at a later date.

In Nevada, he’s accused of organizing “armed protection” in an April 2014 standoff over impounding Cliven Bundy’s cattle.

RICHLAND, Ore. (AP) — Officials say dozens of elk are dead after the herd fell through the ice at a reservoir in eastern Oregon.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a Facebook post that 41 elk died Tuesday on the Powder River arm of Brownlee Reservoir.

The Baker City Herald reports someone who lives near the reservoir called to report the incident. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Biologist Brian Ratliff told the newspaper the elk were trying to cross the reservoir from the north side when the ice broke in four places.

Officials drove to the area to see if it was possible to save any of the elk or salvage meat, but Ratliff said neither option was possible.

The reservoir is about 260 miles east of Portland.

Tuesdays

Mondays

Saturdays

Clare Sullivan, south Willamette Valley field crops extension agent, is leaving Western Oregon to take an extension position in Central Oregon.

She will start in the newly created Small Farms and Community Food Systems position Feb. 1.

Her departure marks the second time a south valley field crops extension agent has left since Mark Mellbye retired from full-time duty in 2008. Paul Marquardt filled the position for less than a year, starting in March of 2012 and leaving in January of 2013, before Sullivan came on.

Her exit leaves the Willamette Valley with just one field crops agent, Nicole Anderson, who is based in McMinnville and has field crop extension responsibilities in Washington, Yamhill and Polk counties.

Sullivan said it was a difficult decision to leave the valley, where she has served as an extension agent since June 2014.

“It was a very, very tough decision,” Sullivan said. “I loved working with the farmers here. Basically, I feel like I was brought into a family. It makes it very tough to leave.”

Sullivan holds a master’s degree in soil science from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and a bachelor’s degree in global resource systems in agriculture from the University of British Columbia.

Derek Godwin, extension administrator for the West Central Region, which includes Marion, Yamhill, Polk, Benton and Linn counties, said refilling the south valley position, as well as filling a vacant field crops position in Marion County, are top priorities.

“Because so many large farms grow field crops, our field crops faculty are sort of first in line when it comes to working with growers and connecting with OSU,” Godwin said.

“Growers that have field crops may also be growing hazelnuts or blueberries or Christmas trees, but they tend to think of the field crops person as their kind of high priority person to go to,” Godwin said.

“That is why in my opinion it is so important to us to get these positions filled, because they are our front line in serving the industry,” he said.

Administrators could be hard-pressed to fill vacancies, however, with the Legislature facing a $1.7 billion state budget gap and with extension funding flat in the governor’s proposed budget.

According to Sam Angima, an assistant dean in the College of Agricultural Sciences, the flat budget puts extension at 8 percent below a continuing-service-level budget.

JOHN DAY, Ore. — On a recent wintry evening, members of the Grant County Public Forest Commission walked into the warmth of a rustic diner and took seats at their customary table for their bimonthly meeting.

They voiced anger and frustration. At this meeting, they were officially a nonentity.

A judge this fall dissolved the commission at the behest of a former county supervisor who worried it was becoming a risk, citing the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in a neighboring county.

While the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge grabbed the world’s attention, a quieter struggle over federal lands is being waged by those trying to use elections and the levers of government. Their grandparents and great-grandparents wrested a living from the West’s rugged landscape.

But now, the forest commissioners say, the government is tightening access to the same natural resources by closing roads and curtailing logging and other industries that allowed previous generations to be self-sufficient.

The commissioners feel they lost, by the stroke of a judge’s pen, a tool voters gave them to fight back.

Kim McKrola, a local, voiced the concern of many: “I would think we should have more say, because what does the federal government know about what’s going on around here?”

With 1,700 residents, John Day is Grant County’s biggest town, named for a fur trapper who in the early 1800s survived being robbed of everything by American Indians but trekked with a compatriot to safety.

Created by voters in a ballot measure 14 years ago, the forest commission was tasked with determining the fate of public lands, which comprise 66 percent of the county’s 4,529 square miles.

Hours before the meeting at the Squeeze-In Restaurant & Deck, forest commissioner Jim Sproul drove his pickup up a canyon and into the Malheur National Forest.

“My great-grandfather came here in the 1870s. He started the Humboldt Mine,” the 64-year-old said. A pin on his cap proclaimed support for Sheriff Glenn Palmer, a sympathizer of the refuge occupiers’ cause.

Sproul looked at skeletal trees killed by a 2015 fire that burned 43 homes and more than 172 square miles. He blamed the U.S. Forest Service, saying it let the forest grow too thick, allowing the blaze to crown and become a “huge fireball.” Sproul wants the agency to open more burned areas for loggers to salvage trees.

At the Squeeze-In, commission members voiced more complaints.

“You’re missing the point,” growled Commissioner Mike Smith from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “The point is, they want to make it so you can’t make a living in rural Oregon, so you have to leave.”

Others nodded assent.

Commissioner Dave Traylor said he suspects the government and environmentalists want to create a 200-mile-wide corridor from Canada to Mexico, with only animals present and no humans.

Federal officials say no such plots exist.

District Ranger Dave Halemeier noted the Forest Service has increased its transparency.

“We meet with the public before we even have an idea of what we want to do in an area,” Halemeier said in an interview. “Historically, we’d come up with a plan and then present that plan, and now the public’s involved in developing that plan.”

Malheur National Forest Supervisor Steve Beverlin said he had productive talks with a forest commissioner about modifying rules for gathering firewood, but faced hostility at commission meetings.

“It was difficult to engage because they wouldn’t share information,” Beverlin said

Mark Webb, whose petition for judicial review led to the commission’s dissolution, said he felt it was growing too close to Palmer and his “increasing belligerence toward federal government.”

The leaders of the wildlife refuge takeover were planning to meet with Palmer when officers intercepted them on Jan. 26. State police shot and killed LaVoy Finicum as he appeared to reach for a pistol.

Sproul said he had invited takeover leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy to speak to residents about the Constitution and states’ rights, with no ulterior motives.

“Anyone who says there’s a militia here is a liar,” Sproul said. “But are there patriotic citizens here? Hell yes.”

Forest commissioners say no one informed them of the petition.

Judge W.D. Cramer ruled Sept. 14 that the ballot measure that created the commission violated the U.S. and state constitutions and federal statutes. In explaining his ruling, Cramer said he “may have personal views that align with many on how public lands are managed (or not), and views on how those who live close to the land should be heard.” But “facts and the law” dictate a decision.

Webb heads another organization, Blue Mountains Forest Partners, which describes itself as a diverse group of stakeholders who work to improve local forests and communities. He said his group and the forest commission have similar goals but “radically different” approaches.

“The public forest commission thought they had authority to tell the county (officials) and the national forest how to manage public lands. But Blue Mountains respects the framework … we have to operate in.”

Webb ran in the May primary for one of the commission’s seven seats. His name was removed from the ballot because of a technicality, Grant County Clerk Brenda Percy said. Webb told The Associated Press he ran in case his petition failed, so he could “inform or redirect” the commission, which he said was ineffective.

The forest commission, meanwhile, is planning to appeal the judge’s decision and has been in contact with the secretary of state’s office, which manages elections, to seek a remedy, Sproul said.

Snowpack in the Owyhee River basin is well above normal for this time of year, which is a positive early sign for farmers in Eastern Oregon who receive their irrigation water from the Owyhee Reservoir.

“It’s certainly a good start and good news,” said Malheur County farmer Bruce Corn, a member of the Owyhee Irrigation District board of directors. “We’re still quite early in the season ... but we’re cautiously optimistic.”

The reservoir provides water for 1,800 farms and 118,000 irrigated acres in Eastern Oregon and part of Southwestern Idaho.

Those farms received their full 4 acre-foot allotment of irrigation water in 2016 after receiving only a third of their allotment in 2014 and 2015 because of drought conditions.

There was 166,000 acre-feet of carryover water in the reservoir at the end of the 2016 water year, less than normal but much more than what was left in 2015 and 2014.

The reservoir had 205,000 acre-feet of water as of Dec. 21.

Total snowpack in the Owyhee basin was 144 percent of average as of Dec. 22.

With the current abundant snowpack, “We’re in a much better position than where we’ve been the past several years,” Corn said. “We have a ways to go but things are looking promising.”

Across the border in Idaho, total snowpack in the Boise River basin is at 99 percent of normal.

Carryover water levels in Boise River reservoirs is comparable to last year and about average, said Tim Page, manager of the Boise Project Board of Control, which provides 167,000 acre-feet of water to five irrigation districts in Southwestern Idaho and part of Eastern Oregon.

“We’re on par for course,” he said.

But Page and other water managers stressed that it’s early in the season and a lot more snow is needed.

“This is a really good start,” said Greg Curtis, water superintendent of the Nampa & Meridian Irrigation District, which provides water to 69,000 acres. “But we need to see it continue. It needs to keep going.”

A lot of things can happen between now and spring, when the 2017 water season begins, said Mark Zirschky, manager of Pioneer Irrigation District, which provides water to 5,800 patrons.

But, “At this point at least, what we’re seeing in the hills is good,” he said. “I think the outlook is promising. As long as it stays cold and stays there, we should be in good shape.”

Snowpack in the Payette River basin is at 90 percent of normal and it’s 68 percent of normal in the Weiser River basin.

“We’re still in need of a lot more snow,” said Weiser Irrigation District Chairman Vernon Lolley. “We have a long ways to go to get to where we need to be.”

He said the district ended 2016 with a little bit of reservoir carryover water and if snowpack reaches about 85 percent of average, that should be enough to assure an adequate water supply for the district’s patrons in 2017.

World class show on Friday, Dec. 9. I had the opportunity to visit the Coos Art Museum opening gala for the museum’s permanent collection show and the premiere of porcelain clay sculptures by the late “Art Angel of Bandon,” Elena…