PORTLAND — Government helicopters spraying pesticides over funky neighborhoods in a liberal city would seem a recipe for outrage.

But the Oregon Department of Agriculture completed its gypsy moth eradication campaign over North Portland May 2 without much protest or hubbub. A few people were concerned about the spraying but opposition was “scattered,” department spokesman Bruce Pokarney said.

“I would say the vast majority of people inside the treatment zone either were happy with what we were doing or at least accepted what we were doing,” Pokarney said.

The department sprayed about 8,800 acres three times since April 16, using aerial applications of a biological insecticide called Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, or Btk, which kills moth larvae. Gypsy moths, an invasive species, can do horrendous damage to trees, and Btk has been the insecticide of choice since the 1970s.

Monday’s final application involved the St. Johns, West Hayden Island and Linnton areas, a portion of Forest Park, and an industrial area of the Port of Portland. The department also sprayed at the Port of Vancouver, across the Columbia River from Portland, under an arrangement with the Washington Department of Agriculture. The Washington department carried out its own gypsy moth campaign involving 10,450 acres, including parts of Seattle and Tacoma. The department intended to finish May 3.

Pokarney, of the Oregon ag department, said the lack of widespread protest may be due to a couple factors. First, Btk has been used for decades and is widely viewed as effective and safe, he said.

But a public information campaign was crucial, he said. The department held neighborhood meetings, invited comments, arranged for residents to receive project information by automated calls or text messages, and took to Facebook and other social media to explain the operation.

“I think there’s a direct correlation between the amount of transparency in this project and the opposition we faced,” Pokarney said. There were a few glitches — some people who signed up for automatic notification of spraying didn’t receive it — but overall the public seemed to accept the project.

“There’s now an expectation of transparency of what government is doing,” Pokarney said. “You tell them what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and allow them to ask questions That’s the bare minimum now.”

The department will place monitoring traps in the area this week and check them over the summer to make sure gypsy moths haven’t returned, he said.

Last summer, three Asian gypsy moths and two European gypsy moths were detected in the Portland area, including one Asian gypsy moth on the Washington side of the Columbia. Oregon hadn’t sprayed for them since 2009, Pokarney said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Three Oregon lawmakers have been hit with an ethics complaint filed by environmentalists, arguing they broke state law by deliberately misrepresenting the purpose behind House Bill 4040, the so-called wolf delisting bill, during the legislative session earlier this year.

Environmentalists filed the complaint Monday with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission against Republican Reps. Greg Barreto, Brad Witt and Sal Esquivel.

The Oregon Court of Appeals cited the bill last month when tossing out a lawsuit filed by environmentalists trying to reverse a state decision to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

The ethics complaint says the lawmakers in February repeatedly denied that the bill’s purpose was to intervene in the courtroom.

Esquivel, R-Medford, said Monday that he had not received a copy of the complaint, but he was not worried about it because he did nothing wrong.

“We didn’t intentionally try to mislead anyone,” Esquivel said. “It’s our opinion, and our opinion’s our opinion.”

Hillary Borrud of the EO Media Group/Pamplin Media Group Capital Bureau contributed to this report.

TUALATIN, Ore. — An aerial pesticide applicator is fighting allegations of willful misconduct from Oregon farm regulators who want to revoke his spraying license for at least five years.

An administrative law judge heard the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s case against Mike Applebee and his company, Applebee Aviation, which are accused of ignoring an emergency order to stop spraying last year.

Aside from license revocation, Applebee and his company could be subject to $180,000 in civil penalties.

During the hearings, held in Tualatin, Ore., on April 26-28, the agency argued that Applebee Aviation had a pattern of safety violations leading up to the emergency suspension but continued pesticide treatments after the order was issued in late September 2015.

Applebee countered that he wasn’t properly notified of the suspension and responded to it belatedly due to an out-of-state hunting trip from which he didn’t return until the order had been already effective for several days.

The company also sprayed cheatgrass on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property in Eastern Oregon because ODA officials didn’t clearly answer whether the suspension order prevented operations on federal land, according to Applebee.

Dale Mitchell, manager of ODA’s pesticide program, said he could not comment on the pending litigation against Applebee but acknowledged such contested cases are rare.

Companies have only challenged roughly a dozen pesticide violation citations issued by ODA over the past quarter-century, and most of those did not involve license revocations, he said.

The Applebee dispute has erupted at a time of broader controversy over aerial pesticide applications in Oregon. A prospective ballot initiative filed for the 2016 election would seek to ban aerial spraying across the state.

Oregon lawmakers passed a bill that increased no-spray buffers and doubled fines for pesticide violations last year, but environmentalists argued the legislation didn’t go far enough.

Applebee’s case came to public attention when a former employee, Daryl Ivy, claimed to have been sprayed with herbicides and released videos allegedly depicting improper aerial operations.

The ODA couldn’t substantiate that Ivy had actually been sprayed but found he possessed “credible evidence” of safety violations, such as insufficient “personal protective equipment,” or PPE, according to court documents filed by the agency.

During the recent hearing, Applebee testified that he provided pilots with credit cards to ensure the company’s crews always had enough protection.

However, some employees didn’t like using the equipment, such as thick gloves that made unscrewing chemical containers difficult, he said.

“The problem wasn’t the PPE, it was getting people to wear the PPE. That was the problem,” Applebee said.

Applebee’s testimony was supported by some of his current and former pilots, who said personal protective equipment was made readily available.

“We always did things the safest way possible,” testified David McDaniel, who flew for Applebee until December 2015.

That testimony was countered by witnesses called by ODA, including former batch truck driver Kevin Vanderlei, who said the company had a “minimal amount” of PPE and pressured employees to finish spray operations quickly.

Vanderlei said he was terminated in 2015 for complaining about leaking spray nozzles, but another Applebee pilot said he was fired for insubordination and vandalizing a company truck.

Rob Ireland, the attorney for Applebee, said the company is currently challenging the ODA’s original emergency suspension order in the Oregon Court of Appeals.

An administrative law judge found that the emergency order should be overturned, but the ODA later overrode that decision, Ireland said.

If the Court of Appeals agrees that the original suspension was invalid, it would undermine the agency’s case for license revocation and fines, he said.

Applebee Aviation has been able to spray pesticides in Oregon again for the past six weeks because the company’s license was reinstated while the litigation is pending, he said.

ODA and Applebee have until May 27 to submit their closing arguments in the administrative case on license revocation. Administrative Law Judge Jennifer Rackstraw said she would try to issue an order within 30 days of their submission.

MOXEE, Wash. — Hop acreage is increasing for the fourth straight year in the United States and for the third year globally.

U.S. hop acreage is projected to increase by 6,000 acres this year, a 13 percent rise. That follows a 19 percent last year, according to the Hop Growers of America.

The 13 percent is a conservative estimate and could be higher by the time final figures are available. Last year’s initial estimate was 15 percent, but the actual increase was 19 percent, said Jaki Brophy, Hop Growers of America spokeswoman.

Of the increase, 5,400 acres are in Washington state, Oregon and Idaho and 600 acres are in other states.

With the new acreage, the U.S. total is 51,275 acres, widening the gap with Germany, the other leading producer at 45,468 acres. Germany’s acreage is up 10 percent.

The worldwide increase is 8,347 acres, up 6.7 percent, which was predicted by the International Hop Growers Convention in Paris on April 18. The convention estimates 2016 production at 232 million pounds globally, up from 190.4 million in 2015. In the U.S., the estimated production is 97 million pounds, up from 80.2 million in 2015.

Of the U.S. estimate, 60.6 million pounds are aroma varieties and 36.4 million pounds are alpha. Aroma varieties are mainly used by craft breweries and alpha are mainly used by large brewers.

Drought in Europe reduced the worldwide production in 2015. U.S. yields are expected to be better due to more acreage coming into production and no drought in the Yakima Valley, where about 70 percent of the U.S. crop is grown, Brophy said.

The acreage increase continues to be driven by the growing number of craft breweries, said Ann George, administrator of Hop Growers of America and the Washington Hop Commission.

The number of breweries in the U.S. reached 4,144 at the end of November, topping the historic high of 4,131 in 1873, according to the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colo.

Brewery openings exceeded two a day in 2015 with 15 states each now home to more than 100 breweries, the association said. California, Oregon and Washington are among the top 15.

The U.S. inventory of hops was 131 million pounds on March 1, up 10 percent from a year earlier. For perspective, that compares with 190.4 million pounds harvested worldwide in 2015.

“We are finally beginning to see some signs of breathing room in the supply chain, especially in popular craft varieties hard-hit last summer, although we have not reached comfortable levels quite yet,” said Pete Mahony, vice president of supply chain management and purchasing at John I. Haas in Yakima.

Early maturing aroma varieties in the Yakima Valley experienced lower yields last year due to drought but there’s adequate water this year from a larger mountain snowpack.

It looks like a good season and more breweries are buying hops by contract versus the spot market, resulting in more breweries reliably having their needs met at a known price, George said.

“We hope to see this continue, reducing reliance on the spot market, which acts as a good buffer for unanticipated need and yield variances,” she said.

Too much spot market supply causes market price volatility and more grower risk, she said.

Forward contracting also allows growers to secure necessary capital from lenders, as they can prove their crop is sold, George said.

That’s crucial for expansion estimated at a minimum of $40,000 per acre, including the cost of land, growing supplies, rootstock, labor, equipment, harvesting, cold storage and packaging, she said.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Farmers who depend on the Owyhee Reservoir will receive more irrigation water in 2016 than they have the past two years combined.

As a result, they are planting more high-water — and more lucrative — crops such as corn, sugar beets and onions, which they cut back on the past three years because of the drought.

Land that was left idle because of the lack of water is now being put back into production.

A good snowpack year in the Owyhee Basin has caused the water supply situation to go from good to better.

The Owyhee Irrigation District has increased the 2016 allotment for its patrons to 3.8 acre-feet. It had been tentatively set at 3 acre-feet in March.

The 1,800 farms in Eastern Oregon and part of Idaho that depend on the reservoir received 1.7 and 1.6 acre-feet the past two years.

The OID system has been running for more than three weeks now but the reservoir level is still rising a little bit each day. It held 430,000 acre-feet of storage water on April 27.

“There is a hair more water coming in to the reservoir than is going out. We’re doing pretty good,” said Malheur County dairyman and farmer Frank Ausman, a member of the OID board of directors.

He said there’s a good chance patrons will end up with their full 4 acre-foot allotment this year.

“We think we’ll be able to tweak it again and get to 4 acre-feet but at this point we don’t want to give something away that we don’t have yet,” he said.

Reservoir in-flows were above 1,500 cubic feet per second on April 27, well ahead of last year, when they were near 200 cfs, said OID board member and farmer Bruce Corn.

“I’m very optimistic we’ll have a full 4-foot allotment this year,” Corn said.

Farmers and Oregon State University Extension agents say corn and sugar beet acres, which were down by about half the past two seasons, are up substantially this year, and onion acres will also increase.

“There definitely seems to be a lot more sugar beets and corn than there has been the last couple of years,” said Stuart Reitz, an OSU Extension cropping systems agent in Ontario. “I think things are getting back to a more normal routine and farmers are starting to get their rotations back in order.”

Ausman, who likes to grow as much of his own animal feed as possible, said he left a lot of ground idle the past two years.

“Now I’m farming every drop of land I’ve got,” he said.

Ausman said that in his area, “A lot of ground that was setting empty these past few years has been planted to corn this year.”

Corn said farmers in the area who get their irrigation water from the Malheur Basin are also in a much better situation this year.

“The whole Malheur County area is significantly better than we were the last couple of years,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Lawyers for Ammon Bundy say the leader of the Oregon wildlife refuge occupation offered after his arrest to plead guilty if charges against other defendants were dismissed, but the deal was rejected.

The assertion is made in a pre-trial motion filed in federal court on Wednesday.

Bundy was arrested by FBI agents and Oregon state troopers on Jan. 26. More than two dozen people have been arrested for the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that began Jan. 2 and ended with surrender of the last four on Feb. 11.

Bundy attorney Mike Arnold says his client offered on Jan. 29 to plead guilty to a federal conspiracy charge if charges against the others were dropped, and the proposal was rejected a day before the last occupiers gave up.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Harry’s Fresh Foods is adding a production facility in Nashville that the company says will lead to the creation of 302 new jobs.

The Portland, Oregon-based maker of refrigerated and frozen foods said it is investing more than $34 million in the 200,000-square-foot facility. CEO Jamie Colbourne said having facilities on both sides of the Rocky Mountains will improve the shelf life of delivered items.

Harry’s Fresh Foods is taking over a building that was previously run by Oberto Brands before the jerky snack company ceased operations there. The overhauled facility is expected to be operational by the third quarter of this year. It will produce private-label products for club, retail and food-service customers.

Gov. Bill Haslam applauded the decision by Harry’s Fresh Foods to locate in Tennessee. The governor cited the state’s central location in helping land the deal.

More than 1,000 registered food and beverage manufacturers are located in Tennessee.

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Medford, Ore. — Environmentalists want to limit cattle grazing along Oregon’s Sprague and Sycan rivers to protect bull trout habitat that the threatened species doesn’t actually occupy.

Despite the fish’s absence, environmentalists have asked a federal judge to invalidate grazing plans for 10 federal land allotments because livestock unlawfully degrade its “critical habitat.”

“What we have here is unoccupied habitat and the reason it’s unoccupied is because it’s not suitable for bull trout,” said Lauren Rule, attorney for the environmental groups during oral arguments April 26 in Medford, Ore.

Oregon Wild, Friends of Living Oregon Waters and the Western Watersheds Project claim in a lawsuit that the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by wrongly concluding that grazing won’t adversely affect the bull trout’s habitat.

That conclusion was “irrational” and ignored water quality problems caused by cattle, such as higher water temperatures from denuded vegetation and trampled streams, the plaintiffs claim.

Any activity that occurs within the bill trout’s “critical habitat” — as designated by federal regulators — cannot slow the species’ recovery, Rule said. “It needs to expand to areas it’s not currently occupying.”

The plaintiffs argue that mitigation measures intended to reduce impacts from cattle are insufficiently enforced, so the federal agencies should not have taken them into account in deciding that grazing won’t hurt the species.

“They’re not certain to occur at any regular frequency,” Rule said.

The federal government is also accused of violating the Clean Water Act by failing to ensure that streams in the allotments met water quality standards for temperature. Environmentalists argue that cattle widen stream channels, raising temperatures to the detriment of fish.

Grazing was permitted despite numerous stream temperature “exceedances” across the landscape, said Elizabeth Zultoski, attorney for the plaintiffs.

“This is simply not an isolated problem,” Zultoski said, adding that federal regulators largely ignored the problem when re-authorizing grazing. “This court cannot defer to a void.”

Several ranching families that rely on grazing allotments in Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest have intervened in the case as defendants and joined the federal government in asking the judge to reject the environmentalist arguments.

“This is their livelihood,” said Scott Horngren, attorney for the ranchers. “They’re not out there year after year to get willows off the range or prevent the bull trout from recovering.”

There’s no proof that “exceedances” of stream temperature standards were caused by grazing, as high temperatures occur even in areas where grazing isn’t permitted, Horngren said.

Impacts from grazing don’t rise to the level of causing unlawful harm to the bull trout’s critical habitat, he said. “Just because you cut a tree or graze a blade of grass does not mean there’s an adverse effect.”

More than 90 percent of the sites evaluated by federal regulators were in “proper functioning condition or showing an upward trend,” the ranchers say.

Before bull trout can re-occupy the allotments, the streams would have to be cleared of non-native fish and culverts that act as barriers for the species, the government argues.

Federal regulators examined every pasture in each of the allotments and found grazing to have insignificant effects, said Sean Martin, an attorney for the government.

While the environmentalists may disagree that grazing doesn’t adversely affect the fish, that doesn’t justify overturning the federal agencies’ conclusion, the government claims.

The environmental groups incorrectly argue that any federally sanctioned activity occurring in the bull trout’s critical habitat must improve the species’ chances of recovery, Martin said.

“That’s absolutely unworkable,” he said.

Grazing is generally a neutral activity that’s been ongoing in the forest since the 1860s and its effects are now regularly monitored by regulators, Martin said. “The Forest Service is doing what it said it would do.”

Deer, elk and beaver also eat streamside vegetation, such as willows, but such “browse” hasn’t been found to materially increase stream temperatures, he said. “To blame it on grazing goes too far.”

It’s true that temperatures in some streams are too high, which is bad for bull trout, but “what’s speculative is which of the contributing causes is the culprit,” he said.

Natural conditions in the region can cause “exceedances” of water temperature standards, he said.

For more than a decade, the Forest Service has partnered with Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality to restore eroded streambanks, replace culverts and otherwise enhance water quality to ensure compliance with the Clean Water Act, Martin said.

“This is really for Oregon DEQ to administer, not for a group with an agenda,” he said.

Decreasing wheat acreage over the past couple years poses some complications for the Oregon Wheat Commission as it puts together its 2016-17 budget.

Meeting at Oregon State University’s Hyslop Farm on April 25, commission members approved a proposed budget that attempts to balance research funding requests with crop assessment projections. The commission will adopt a final budget before the start of the fiscal year July 1.

Commission CEO Blake Rowe said revenue from assessments — a fee collected at the time of a wheat crop’s first sale — is projected at $1.85 million in the coming fiscal year. The projection is derived from USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service acreage estimates and yield averages.

Rowe said the average annual revenue from assessments is $2.2 million. Meanwhile, research funding requests for the coming fiscal year topped $2.6 million, Rowe said.

“What do you fund versus what do you cut?” he said. “It puts more pressure on the commission to adjust funding.”

The commission carefully built up its reserve fund over time, but operates under rules that require spending down reserves when they reach a certain level. The commission is most likely looking at a $2.2 million budget, he said.

The reserve spending rules come from wheat farmers who “want us to use grower dollars for grower purposes,” Rowe said.

Wheat acreage is down in part because some Willamette Valley growers have returned to planting grass seed after giving it up when the market plummeted. Grass seed markets are closely tied to housing and other development, which stalled during the recession.

“The demand for grass seed really fell through the floor,” Rowe said. “We saw a number of grass seed acres shift over to wheat. Now we’ve seen some go back to grass seed.”

Wheat acreage fluctuation is not unusual. Oregon growers planted about 965,000 acres in 2010, but harvested acreage dropped to 868,000 acres in 2013 and 818,000 acres in 2014, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

In other business, commission members toured OSU facilities. Among other things, they saw a combine and seed drill scaled for work on research plots.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Idaho and Oregon farmers were given an overview of FDA’s new Food Safety Modernization Act rules April 26 during a meeting hosted by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

FDA’s produce safety rule will require farmers who grow fruits and vegetables that are consumed raw to comply with numerous provisions meant to ensure food safety.

It is one of seven rules FDA has developed to comply with FSMA and was the main focus of the meeting.

The rule includes a host of new requirements for these fruit and vegetable farmers and “the produce industry has never been regulated in this manner before,” said ISDA Chief of Staff Pamm Juker.

But she told farmers not to panic because the department and other groups are gearing up to help growers understand and comply with the provisions.

“We’re here to try to find answers for everybody,” Juker said. “The training and technical assistance everyone is going to need to comply with these rules is coming.”

Small operations with $25,000 to $250,00 in average annual produce sales have to start complying in 2019, farms with $250,000-$500,000 in sales have to comply in 2018 and bigger farms have to start complying in 2017.

Juker called the April 26 meeting a “FSMA 101” course and said farmers would be provided more detailed information as FDA releases promised guidance on the rules.

The produce rule will require farmers to test every source of agricultural water on their farm annually for general E. coli.

Farms with less than $25,000 in produce sales annually are not covered by the rule and produce that FDA has identified as rarely consumed raw is also not covered. Produce headed for commercial processing that reduces pathogens with some type of “kill step” is also not covered.

Produce farmers will be required to assess their fields to see if any of their crop has been contaminated by animal droppings and will not be allowed to harvest any part of the crop that has.

Other components of the produce rule include personnel training, worker health and hygiene and the sanitation of equipment, tools and buildings.

Accurate record keeping to prove compliance is critical, Juker said. “Everything you do must be documented.”

Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Ontario, said the scope of the rule seems overwhelming and “not just to the farmers.”

“At this point, I think the lack of guidance from the FDA is confusing and is upsetting people because they recognize they have to comply with these rules but we still don’t know how,” he said. “As soon as we know things, we will pass that information along to people.”

Kay Riley, chairman of the National Onion Association’s food safety committee, said the water testing provision is the part onion growers have the most angst with and they need more guidance on that requirement.

“It’s doable but I think it’s exasperating for sure,” he said of the produce safety rule.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

The Washington State Department of Agriculture’s spring offensive against gypsy moths passed the halfway point Tuesday, with a second pesticide application over a densely populated Seattle neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Agriculture made the second of three passes over Portland.

An airplane spent 15 minutes in the early morning spraying Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, commonly known as Btk, over 130 acres on Capitol Hill in Seattle

Runners, dog walkers and WSDA observers were out as a fine mist fell, department spokesman Hector Castro said, but there were no street protesters, unlike in 2000 and 2006, the last years the department sprayed in Seattle for gypsy moths.

“We’re definitely hearing from people not happy about the spraying, but it’s not in the numbers as in the past, not even close,” Castro said.

WSDA began spraying more than 10,500 acres in seven cities on April 16. It’s the state’s second-largest spaying campaign ever against forest-defoliating gypsy moths. Each site will sprayed three times to catch caterpillars as they emerge over several weeks. The operation probably will be over by May 9, Castro said.

ODA on Tuesday sprayed 8,800 acres over North Portland neighborhoods and the Port of Portland. ODA also sprayed over the Port of Vancouver on behalf of WSDA.

The final application is scheduled for Sunday or Monday, ODA spokesman Bruce Pokarney said. The department has heard a handful of complaints, he said.

European gypsy moths are established in many Eastern and Midwestern states. Western states, which also must guard against Asian gypsy moths, have aggressively sprayed areas where the moths have been found.

Washington and Oregon both trapped gypsy moths in urban areas last summer.

To prepare residents, WSDA mailed four rounds of postcards to 38,000 addresses with information about the department’s plans. The department also updates weather-dependent spraying schedules online.

WSDA has stressed that Btk is approved for organic agriculture.

“On the whole, social media has been a real benefit,” Castro said. “It allows us to share a lot of information and get information out quickly.”

A streak of warm weather motivated WSDA to compress the spaying scheduled to catch early emerging caterpillars.

WSDA also is spraying over Tacoma, Gig Harbor, Lacey, Nisqually and Kent. Most sites have now been sprayed twice.

BANDON – The Port of Bandon’s, Old Town Marketplace opens on April 29 for its fifth season and will run from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. every Friday and Saturday through Dec. 17, in the big green building at 250 First St.…

BANDON – The Port of Bandon’s Old Town Marketplace opens on April 29 for its fifth season and will run from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. every Friday and Saturday through Dec. 17, in the big green building at 250 First St.…

TUESDAY, APRIL 26

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Scientists say a $67 million rehabilitation effort following a wildfire in southwest Idaho and southeast Oregon is starting off well thanks to good precipitation over the winter.

About $14 million has been spent since October as part of a five-year restoration plan to develop new strategies to combat increasingly destructive rangeland wildfires in the West.

“This fire occurred in an area that has a lot different terrain, different ecotypes,” said Cindy Fritz, a natural resource specialist with the Boise District of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. “There’s a ton of variety out there and we’ll be able to see how our treatments work.”

She said about half of the $14 million has been spent on seed and the other half on labor and operating costs.

The new wildfire approach ordered by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell last year is credited with preventing many small rangeland wildfires from getting big. But the Soda Fire scorched 436 square miles of sagebrush steppe that supports cattle grazing and some 350 species of wildlife, including sage grouse.

Jewell’s order calls for a “science-based” approach to safeguard greater sage grouse while contending with fires that have been especially destructive in the Great Basin. The bird did not receive federal protections under the Endangered Species Act last fall, but various efforts to protect sage grouse habitat have been put in place.

Part of that effort is making sagebrush steppe resistant to wildfire and more resilient should a wildfire occur. On-the-ground specifics of how to actually achieve those goals are being tested in the areas scorched by the Soda Fire.

Among the notable difference with the current wildfire rehabilitation compared to previous efforts, scientists say, is that the plan is five years rather than three.

Another change is that the plan is adaptive, meaning that if restoration efforts appear to be failing in some portion of the burned area managers can go back in with another effort, such as planting native vegetation.

The BLM has also partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey to see what works. Some 2,000 sample monitoring plots are being tracked to measure results of techniques that could become templates for future wildfire rehabilitation efforts.

“We’ve devised a new approach to monitoring that has more sampling rigor in terms of design and the intensity of sampling,” said USGS research ecologist Matt Germino, who specializes in sagebrush ecosystems and is working on the Soda Fire rehabilitation.

The process includes re-treatment triggers if rehabilitation efforts are failing, continued monitoring of areas doing well to make sure progress continues, and monitoring to determine when cattle grazing can return. Experts say returning cattle too soon could hinder rehabilitation efforts.

Another significant change for Idaho is that a herbicide is being used that targets cheatgrass, a fire prone invasive annual that displaces native perennials with wildfire and part of the reason for the gigantic size of the Soda Fire.

KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — Two environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to recover threatened bull trout.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan filed the lawsuit on April 19 in U.S. District Court in Oregon, accusing federal wildlife officials of not doing enough to help the trout and saying the recovery plan violates the Endangered Species Act with its inadequacies.

The agency released its Bull Trout Recovery Plan in September outlining actions to boost bull trout populations in six recovery units spread over Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and a tiny portion of Nevada.

A spokesman with FWS said the agency wouldn’t comment on pending litigation, but biologists with the federal agency have defended the plan as realistic.

MONDAY, APRIL 25

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Proponents of certain water solutions in the Klamath Basin say an energy bill amendment that passed the U.S. Senate provides key support for improving facilities and other initiatives.

The amendment by Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both Democrats, authorizes measures first proposed as part of the 2010 Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, although it doesn’t address the controversial removal of four dams on the Klamath River.

The provision allows the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to help farmers in the basin deal with reduced water supplies as a result of future water-sharing agreements and to provide reduced-cost power for irrigation, the senators said in a news release.

The provision, which also enables the bureau to do certain upgrades of irrigation facilities, was part of an energy bill that passed the Senate, 85-12, on April 20 and now heads to a Senate-House conference committee.

“It’s really good news,” said Beatty, Ore., cattle rancher Becky Hyde, who represents the Upper Klamath Water Users and is a long-time proponent of the KBRA. “The nice thing is, we’re slowly … starting to put regulatory assurances for species back into place for agriculture. This facilities bill resurrects some of the power stuff (in the KBRA).

“We still have a long way to go on water balance, but we’ve got some good things happening,” she said.

As is often the case in the Klamath Basin, the measure is not without controversy. Lawrence Kogan, an attorney for the Klamath Irrigation District, and representatives of U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., were meeting with Reclamation officials on April 21 to discuss the objections of basin irrigators to some of the plans.

Kogan said the bureau is using coercive tactics to pressure the KID to accept terms of a government loan to replace a nearly 100-year-old flume on one of its main canals by linking future water deliveries to the district’s acceptance of the contract.

“It’s a poison-pill bill that will kill the basin because Congress doesn’t even know what it’s put in the bill,” Kogan said. He accuses proponents of “deception,” arguing their true aim is to turn much of the basin into non-productive wildlands.

But the senators insist that their amendment, along with other parts of the newly resurrected Klamath Basin plan, will benefit agriculture as well as fish and wildlife. The aim is to bring down power costs for basin irrigators, whose electricity costs are higher than those in similar Reclamation projects, officials say.

The plan will “help ensure that Klamath agriculture is a sustainable foundation of the local economy,” Merkley said in a press release.

It’s been a decade since the expiration of a 50-year contract between the U.S. Department of the Interior and PacifiCorp caused power rates in the region to skyrocket from a half-cent per kilowatt-hour to as much as 10 cents, Hyde said. The lower rates were a trade-off for the ability to pump water through the project for its Klamath River hydroelectric facilities.

While the bill doesn’t identify a funding amount, it enables the bureau to find lower-cost power for irrigators with projects that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, the senators said. One solution could be putting in micro hydro facilities along irrigation canals or the river, Hyde said.

“Micro hydro is a really interesting concept,” she said. “One of the things (the bill) asks for is to study in a really expedited way what’s the best return for dollars invested in energy infrastructure upgrades, so that means solar could play a role or micro hydro could play a role.”

The bill’s passage in the Senate comes two weeks after top state and federal officials gathered in Klamath, Calif., on April 6 to sign the final version of a dam-removal plan they announced in February. The plan calls for a nonprofit organization to take control of the four dams from owner PacifiCorp and seek a go-ahead for their removal from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In addition, the parties signaled a plan to revive the KBRA, a companion to the original Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, with federal legislation that would provide money to operate two diversion dams within the basin that PacifiCorp would turn over to Reclamation so irrigators wouldn’t have to pick up the cost, Craig Tucker of the Karuk Tribe has said.

Most of the 42 original signatories have been working for the past few months to revive provisions in the original agreements, which expired when Congress failed to authorize dam removal by the end of 2015. Going through FERC for dam removal could make it more politically palatable for lawmakers to support other aspects of the agreements.

“I’m very hopeful” the amendment will survive the House-Senate conference, Hyde said. “I think it’s a great thing. I’ve been hopeful in the past … but my sense is the thing has got momentum.”

An environmentalist legal challenge against Oregon’s decision to remove wolves from the state’s endangered species list has been dismissed due to legislation passed earlier this year.

Wolves were delisted by state wildlife regulators last year, but three environmental groups — Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity and Oregon Wild — asked the Oregon Court of Appeals to reverse that decision, claiming it wasn’t based on sound science.

Earlier this year, lawmakers passed House Bill 4040, which held that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife had followed the law in delisting wolves.

Opponents of the bill claimed it would deny the environmentalists their day in court. Supporters, on the other hand, argued the lawsuit was filed to pressure wildlife regulators while Oregon’s wolf recovery plan is updated.

Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill despite environmentalist calls for a veto in March, stating in a signing letter that the “trajectory of wolf populations in Oregon remains strong.”

The legislation was expected to nullify the legal challenge, which proved correct — on April 22, the Oregon Court of Appeals held that HB 4040 rendered the environmentalist petition moot.