Chad DelCurto parked his pickup beside the road winding the Snake River canyon, surveying the jagged green edge of Oregon where his cattle grazed. This is where he lost them.

There’s ample feed and room to wander on these remote and rugged stretches of public land. But there’s added risk to open range: harsh weather, disease, rustlers, predators.

“This is the reality — this is outside, all natural, grass-fattened beef,” he said.

DelCurto dresses in denim from neck to ankle, with mud-splattered black on his boots and hat. He’s been ranching all his life, and he’s teaching his 9-year-old son to do the same.

Last year, DelCurto claimed he lost 41 calves and 11 cows out here in Baker County. Each calf could be worth over $700, the cows almost twice that.

He blames wolves. Alerts from state wildlife officials showed them in the area. He said the landscape showed some scat and tracks. And he could sense it in his cattle.

“You got up in there and tried to move them, could tell they’d been spooked,” DelCurto said. “I can’t prove it because there’s no carcasses, but I know damn good and well the wolves had a big part in it.”

So DelCurto filed for state-funded compensation for the losses, just as he did for nine missing cattle the year before.

But here’s the issue: There hasn’t been a confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Baker County since 2012. And according to state biologists, there are only three known resident wolves in the county. Given that, a wolf-related loss of that size, with no carcass to show, would be unheard of.

Despite all that, the Baker County wolf compensation board approved DelCurto’s claim. That left one state official with the dilemma of whether to deny the rancher compensation or approve loosely documented claim so large it would have decimated the state program’s budget.

Ever since wolves’ return in the West, states have experimented with some form of compensation for ranchers, with mixed results.

Since 2012, Oregon has kicked in money for ranchers to hire range riders and purchase radios and fence lining, called fladry, to deter wolves. The state has also compensated livestock operators for both confirmed or unconfirmed losses of cattle, sheep or working dogs. It’s a well-regarded program that provides some relief for ranchers feeling the added strain of a returned predator: even some of the wolf-advocate groups who clash with ranchers say it was necessary.

But an EarthFix examination found the state has made a questionable pattern of payments that contradicts established knowledge of the state’s wolf population.

The investigation also found state and county officials do not take all the necessary steps to confirm claims of missing livestock and ensure a limited money pool flows toward legitimate claims of wolf kills. That can mean less money to prevent wolf conflicts, and less money for documented losses.

With no consistent system for verifying unfound livestock losses, the state has little way of knowing for sure whether it’s denying some ranchers their due compensation or paying out claims it shouldn’t.

Chart the payments year over year, and a pattern emerges.

Since 2012, payments for missing cattle have increased when actual confirmed losses did not. Experts say those rates should track together.

“There is no possible biological or ecological explanation for this,” said Luigi Boitani, an international expert on wolves who reviewed the data. In 2010, the University of Rome professor uncovered problems with wolf compensation in his home country of Italy.

“Small variations are understandable but the huge variation in the last few years has no justification,” Boitani said. “The rate of confirmed deaths and missing livestock should track together.”

Roblyn Brown, acting wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, had a similar assessment: “I don’t know of a biological explanation for why claims for missing livestock have gone up.”

Others, like the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which administers the compensation program, say the change could be attributed to awareness: more and more ranchers discovering and utilizing these compensation programs.

Map the payments and another pattern emerges that confounds wolf biologists.

Since 2012 the state of Oregon has paid a total of over $150,000 to compensate ranchers for over 380 livestock and sheep. All of it has gone to three Northeast Oregon counties: Wallowa, Umatilla, and Baker.

Umatilla and Wallowa have large known wolf populations, and a history of confirmed depredations. Baker County has little of either, yet ranchers there have received more money than anywhere else in the state, at $65,000.

Brown had no explanation for this, either.

“We would expect wolf-caused missing livestock to be more likely in areas where we have seen confirmed depredations, and have high wolf density,” Brown said.

In total, payments for livestock losses in Eastern Oregon have far surpassed what state officials had projected based on data from other states.

The government might not believe Delcurto’s numbers, but he doesn’t believe the government’s either. 

He searched by horseback, trudging up ridges of snow. He searched by helicopter. Still, he couldn’t find his missing cattle.

“A foot of snow and you’re not cutting any tracks,” DelCurto said. “At that point, you start counting up and cutting your losses.”

He turned out about 350 head of cattle, including pregnant cows to give birth on the open range. DeClurto has done it many times. Usually, he said, more of them come back.

“That just doesn’t happen,” he said. “You don’t go to grass and have them die.”

Fellow ranchers near Halfway reported a combined 21 livestock missing that year they say were wolf-related.

There’s a reason ranchers expect to be compensated for losses, even without proof wolves are to blame: You try finding a cow carcass in 10,000 acres of wilderness.

“It’s just damn rugged and steep. Trying to find a corpse or something like that is like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” DelCurto said.

If you could take the flight DelCurto did, you would see what he means.

It is not the open pasture you might picture for cattle ranching. An hour soaring over Northeast Baker County reveals miles of dense timber and canyons.

But even discovering the remains of a cow thought to have been preyed upon by wolves doesn’t always mean much to cattlemen. Some no longer bother to report wolf kills to ODFW, they say, because they are unsatisfied with the response. Ranchers in Eastern Oregon have complained to the state that dead livestock investigations are too slow and allow the deterioration of evidence that could implicate wolves.

“We’re losing it. You’ve lost a lot of it,” Todd Nash of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association told ODFW commissioners at a meeting in May. “Most of these aren’t called in in Wallowa County anymore. You have to backtrack into talking ranchers into participating again.”

There are at least 112 wolves statewide, mostly scattered across Wallowa, Umatilla and Union counties further north. There’s also a population further southwest, in the Klamath area.

The state’s best data show three wolves known to be residing in Baker County.

DelCurto disagrees. So does his neighbor, Dean Tucker, the cow boss at Pine Valley Ranch in Halfway.

“When the Department of (Fish and) Wildlife tells the public there’s only X number of wolves running around, they’re full of s--t,” Tucker said.

Last year, Pine Valley Ranch reported five cattle missing because of wolves. The year before, it was seven.

“There’s a hell of a lot more wolves than what they tell us,” Tucker said.

Brian Ratliff, the local ODFW biologist, said the state’s wolf population likely is higher than the official minimum estimates, but not by much. And there are wolves, like the Snake River Pack, for which the agency can only make educated guesses of their whereabouts.

He said his agency is almost surely under-counting the number of cattle and sheep killed by wolves, too, though he can’t say by how many.

“You could not find 100 percent of livestock depredations. You could not do it,” Ratliff said, referring to the forested landscapes where DelCurto and Tucker turn out cattle. “It’s too broken, it’s too rough.”

In 2003, a research team from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tackled the question of how many are missed. That often-cited study estimated for every livestock carcass you find killed by a wolf in rough country like this, there are seven more out there you don’t find.

Baker County’s payments fly in the face of that. For one proven depredation there, ranchers have been compensated for 85 missing cattle.

Other counties have much lower rates. In Umatilla County, the rate is just over one in seven. In Wallowa County, more cattle were confirmed dead from wolves than were claimed missing.

Most Western states have some form of wolf compensation, an attempt to help ranchers with the added costs and stress from a predator they didn’t want and felt was forced on them by people who don’t bear the burden.

But payments for dead livestock don’t cut it, many say.

Kelly Birkmaier, who ranches in Oregon’s Wallowa County, said wolves have killed her cattle, injured them, spooked them and caused them to run through fences. The cost of all that adds up.

Harassment from wolves stresses cattle in ways that can reduce their weight gain or pregnancy rates, according to ranchers and others in the livestock industry. Beyond that, wolves can render cattle dogs useless, because cattle begin to associate them with wolves.

“Is this something we can keep doing? At this point in time, yes, it seems to still be working. But the added hardship and the added labor from the wolves make it challenging,” Birkmaier said.

Ranchers take pride in their cattle, she said, and when something out of their control threatens that, “it is very hard, mentally, on you.”

For many years, the pro-wolf group Defenders of Wildlife compensated ranchers for losses as an attempt to increase tolerance for the predators, said Suzanne Stone, the organization’s Northwest representative. As wolves became more established, they stopped and states began creating their own, she said.

Idaho no longer compensates for missing livestock anymore, only for government-confirmed losses. When Idaho did compensate for missing livestock several years ago, its program was plagued by complaints about fraudulent claims.

“They would give compensation to their friends, sometimes they would compensate themselves,” said Stone, who is based in Boise, Idaho. “It was very loosely run. It would run out of money super quick, and people were only compensated for pennies on the dollar.”

Wyoming pays for missing cattle, but only if there’s also a confirmed kill. Using the ratio in the Fish and Wildlife study, Wyoming compensates for up to 7 missing cattle for each confirmed loss.

Washington recently began paying for indirect wolf losses, including missing animals, weight loss and reduced pregnancy rates. So far only two ranchers have used it since 2015. Its process is long and involved — each file for a livestock producer’s claim is over 50 pages of documentation. In Oregon, sometime’s it’s only two or three pages.

In Oregon, ranchers submit their claims through county boards, made up of county commissioners, ranchers, business members and wolf advocates.

When Oregon established its local-focused program, Stone said it had the potential to become the best in the country. The plan was to try it for a year or two, she said, and then re-evaluate to see if the right people are being compensated.

“I don’t think that the program’s been evaluated, at all,” she said. “And that really is an important step, so that you can make sure that it’s transparent, honest and sustainable.”

Last year, the claim from Baker County was so large it raised questions at the Department of Agriculture.

Mike Durgan sat on Baker County’s compensation board at the time, when it approved a request of payment for 73 missing animals — 52 of which were DelCurto’s. Durgan quit, fed up with the county’s lack of due diligence.

“Baker County’s was not believable,” he said. “It was baffling to me how we let that slide by.”

He said unverified claims discredit a good program for honest ranchers.

“Some of the most anger I got was from other ranchers,” he said. “They realize something like this impacts them in a negative way.”

After the state started raising questions, Durgan said the board simply asked for less money, rather than trying to find the right number. Ultimately, Baker County received a total $16,125, still more than any other county. That included paying DelCurto for 12 missing cattle.

“I will say that the committee here, we started off with some missteps,” said Mark Bennett, a Baker County commissioner and rancher who sits on the compensation board.

Bennett said the county didn’t want to set a bar so high no rancher could clear it.

“We didn’t have a clear picture for our producers, what all was required,” Bennett said. “Some of them could come up with some really decent documentation, and some it was weak.”

Across Oregon these requests are supposed to document ranchers used techniques to prevent wolf damage. They’re supposed to document that all other potential factors for the loss besides wolves have been ruled out.

State and county records show some do not, and the amount of evidence varies widely from claim to claim. Counties and ranchers are under no obligation to consult with ODFW, the state’s authority on wolf populations, about missing livestock.

Missing livestock compensation requests also rely extensively on documents detailing cattle counts at the start and end of grazing season, as well as estimates of historical losses. But the state has no standard for what evidence suffices, meaning not all ranchers are held to the same standard.

Claims that sailed through the process left one worker at the Department of Agriculture, Jason Barber, doing the job meant for several county compensation boards. In the past two years, Barber has raised questions about claims in Umatilla, Wallowa and Baker counties that were submitted without supporting documentation.

The result is a system with spotty evidence and large gray areas, meaning legitimate claims could be denied and questionable ones could be paid.

In one case, the state paid nearly $1,500 for a confirmed wolf kill, only to realize it wasn’t one more than a year later. The county was allowed to simply move the funds to the “missing livestock” category.

Last year, the state approved Wallowa County’s grant application despite the fact that its compensation board never met to approve the request. Under deadline, a county commissioner sent the application to ODA without going through the process required by statute.

Barber, director of Internal Services and Consumer Protection at the Department of Agriculture, said the agency is working to improve the program and plans to create a checklist that counties can use “to make sure everything is kosher as far as what’s in statute, what’s in rule.”

The state also has been unable to prove that ranchers are using the wolf-deterrent materials it’s paid for ranchers to use, including fladry fence lining and radio boxes. The Agriculture Department didn’t collect some counties’ annual reports until EarthFix filed a public records request for them.

State-purchased fladry often sits in storage, as locals officials and ranchers say it is ineffective in the most problematic areas for wolf conflict.

To deter wolves, Baker County used the money to hire a range rider whom ranchers said they never saw. That left officials considering new ways to verify his time spent on the range.

Verifying the proper use of these funds has gained importance as wolves spread and more counties draw from the same pool of money — just over $210,000 this year. Already, the state has too little money to fund the requests it gets.

Dennis Sheehy saw this coming. The longtime rancher is the father of Oregon’s compensation plan.

As the sun set over Wallowa County, the cows mooed and cold air crept in over the Diamond Prairie Ranch. Sheehy was just finishing a long day of branding, and was facing another one in the morning.

“All of this was thought about when we put it together,” said Sheehy, who devised the first draft of the compensation plan with a fellow rancher in 2010. It was adopted by the Legislature a year later.

“What it’s based on is trust within the livestock industry here,” he said. “There may be some people that do or do not have the same set of integrity and honor, you might say, about that.”

As for a claim of 41 calves, like DelCurto’s? It all depends.

“That might be a little extreme, but then another guy that I really do trust, they lost 16 or 17,” he said.

Wolves are not the biggest threat, Sheehy said. At least to his ranch, they’re just another problem that takes incremental bites into his operation’s bottom line, along with drought, weather and cattle prices.

A few years ago, prices spiked and Oregon’s cattle industry surpassed $900 million in total value, making it the state’s top agricultural industry. Prices have fallen since.

“You’re going to see people going out of business,” he said, if prices stay low, and predators are just one more thing to tip the scale.

“Low prices, you get the wolves eating on you, lose two or three calves, it could be a little more serious,” he said.

Sheehy said compensation has done its job: Lessen the blow to ranchers. But wolf territory is expanding in Oregon, and Sheehy doubts state leaders would fund a statewide compensation program.

He now wonders what will become of what he started.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 19

Oregon State University’s agricultural research and extension programs stand to lose the equivalent of 17 positions under a budget recently approved by state lawmakers.

However, the outlook is much improved from earlier this year, when a budget proposed by Gov. Kate Brown would have resulted in an even sharper reduction of research and extension positions, according to university leaders.

The Legislature approved a 4.7 percent increase, to $66 million, for OSU’s agricultural experiment stations and a 4.6 percent increase, to $47.7 million, for the OSU Extension Service in the 2017-2019 biennium.

Due to the increasing cost of salaries and benefits, though, each program would need an increase of 7.9 percent just to maintain current service levels.

The equivalent of 17 positions must be cut due to the funding gap, but the university doesn’t expect to lay off researchers or extension agents. Rather, positions will be left vacant as people retire or change jobs, said Dan Arp, dean of the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences.

“We will be able to manage this with the normal attrition,” Arp said.

In early 2017, when the state government was facing a $1.8 billion budget shortfall, Brown recommended keeping OSU’s agricultural research and extension budgets flat.

Under that scenario, OSU would have probably been forced to lay people off, said Arp. “It would have been difficult to manage that by attrition alone.”

In OSU’s 2015-2017 budget, the agricultural research and extension programs received a hefty funding boost that allowed for hiring new faculty dedicated to several priorities: working landscapes, water, value-added products, workforce development and food safety.

Those “priority” researchers and extension agents won’t be affected by the reduction in positions, said Scott Reed, director of OSU’s Extension Service.

“This is not a last in, first out budget management thing,” Reed said.

Losing the equivalent of 17 positions is nonetheless a hindrance for OSU, particularly since researchers bring in additional money from grants, said Arp.

“Fewer positions, fewer people out there leveraging dollars,” he said.

Similarly, as there are fewer extension agents, those who remain employed by OSU must cover larger service areas and are spread more thinly across the state, said Reed.

Fortunately, voters in 26 counties have approved tax districts that raise funds for extension through modest property tax increases, he said. “That’s because of the support of the citizens of the state.”

In the 2017 legislative session, OSU also secured the authority to sell $9 million in bonds to help pay for a new 27,000-square-foot Fermentation Sciences and Research Center on the edge of its campus in Corvallis.

The university can only sell those bonds once it raises a matching $9 million in matching funds.

The Tillamook County Creamery Association has already pledged $1.5 million to the new building, which will feature dairy, wine and beer fermentation plants as well as joint cold storage and retail facilities.

Construction of the center is expected to begin within a year and a half.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Onion thrips were late to arrive in the Treasure Valley of Idaho and Oregon this year, delayed by a harsh winter and wet spring.

But temperatures have been well above normal this month and the onion pest’s population is exploding as a result. The average high temperature in Ontario has exceeded 100 degrees eight times in July already.

“The heat’s making things explode,” said Nyssa grower Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association.

Onion thrips can cause feeding damage and they are also a vector for the Iris Yellow Spot Virus, which can significantly reduce yields of the bulb onions grown in the region.

“They were a little late getting in but they have made up for it,” said Stuart Reitz, an Oregon State University cropping systems extension agent in Ontario. “With these higher temperatures, the populations are really going crazy. We’re starting to see a lot higher numbers.”

Virus pressure is just starting and has been detected in a few commercial fields recently, Reitz said.

“We haven’t seen much (virus) around the area. Yet. It’s probably coming,” he said.

While the timing of the pest’s appearance in the valley can vary from year to year, they are an annual headache for Treasure Valley onion farmers.

There are no effective biological controls for onion thrips, so that leaves the use of insecticides as growers’ only option to control them, Reitz said.

The thrips problem has only gotten worse for growers over the years, Skeen said.

“When I started farming here 45 years ago, if we sprayed four times in a season, that was a lot,” he said. “Now, it’s not uncommon to spray seven or eight times.”

Onion grower groups in the region are helping fund a field trial overseen by Reitz that seeks solutions to the thrips problem.

One of the main goals of the trial is to help growers find the right mix of insecticide treatments that allows them to spray as little as possible.

Researchers are rotating chemistries and using them at different times of the season to try to find the right combination for thrips control.

It costs between $20 and $100 an acre to spray for thrips, depending on which chemical is used, so reducing the number of times a grower has to spray can save a lot of money, Reitz said.

OSU researchers recommend not overusing any one chemistry to prevent resistance in thrips.

“You have to manage them in the season but you also have to look at the longer term picture and that’s why we’re really stressing rotating chemistries so you don’t have resistance building up,” Reitz said.

OSU researchers recommend not using the same onion thrips insecticide more than two times in a season and have adopted the slogan, “Two sprays and put it away.”

Controlling volunteer onions is also recommended.

“The longer the volunteers are out there, the more virus and thrips they are going to generate,” Reitz said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal jury in Las Vegas is due to hear openings in the retrial of four men who brought assault-style weapons to a standoff that stopped government agents from rounding up rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle in April 2014.

Trial starts Monday for defendants who maintain they drove from Idaho and Montana to Bunkerville, Nevada, to protest Bureau of Land Management tactics that included agents using dogs and stun guns against Bundy family members.

Prosecutors want jurors to focus on conspiracy, assault on a federal agent, weapon and other charges.

A jury in April found two co-defendants guilty of some charges, but failed to reach verdicts for Scott Drexler, Richard Lovelien, Eric Parker and Steven Stewart.

Trial is expected to take several weeks.

Bundy and other defendants are jailed pending trial later.

PENDLETON, Ore. — Imagine putting on a pair of virtual reality goggles and being able to control a robot that mimics human movements to prune clusters of premium wine grapes.

Sounds futuristic, but the Remote Operated Vineyard Robot, or ROVR, may become an integral tool for U.S. winegrowers sooner rather than later.

Engineers at Digital Harvest, a Virginia-based company specializing in precision agriculture, have spent the last 18 months working to build the ROVR system, which will be on full display during the 2017 Future Farm Expo coming Aug. 15-17 at the Pendleton Convention Center.

The Future Farm Expo is a three-day summit and trade show that invites local agriculture professionals — including growers, consultants and food processors — to meet with high-tech developers and learn how they can use drones and droids to make their operations run more efficiently.

This year’s expo will feature drones capable of flying beyond the pilot’s line of sight, mobile farming apps, advances in irrigation technology and, yes, a live demonstration of ROVR, which was built from scratch at Digital Harvest’s research outpost at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range.

The ROVR has already been tested in vineyards around Echo, seeking to overcome a chronic shortage of manual labor in the wine industry. Using the virtual reality platform, skilled workers can essentially take command of the robot from anywhere in the world — a Chinese office building, for example — potentially opening a global workforce.

Young Kim, CEO of Digital Harvest, said the company tried a number of different tools to operate the ROVR, such as joy sticks and game controllers. However, none were able to duplicate the same level of speed and accuracy from workers in the field.

“By using virtual reality as an operator interface, we not only improved manual dexterity but also opened up the possibility of human workers being able to teleport to work from anywhere,” Kim said in a statement.

The ROVR will be fitted with remote sensors to provide real-time crop data, such as the size of grape clusters and estimated yield, and moves via driverless golf cart, which was donated to the project by Yamaha Unmanned Systems.

Like Digital Harvest, Yamaha has set up shop at the Pendleton UAS Range, where they help to form the backbone of the Oregon UAS Future Farm program. Jeff Lorton, Future Farm manager, said adopting automated technology is key for agriculture moving forward. Future Farm exists to help bridge the connection between Silicon Valley-types working to make those machines a reality, and farmers who can best explain the issues they face.

“The idea is to bring the people who can develop these solutions here, and give them the benefit of agricultural wisdom in the Columbia Basin,” Lorton said.

For three days, the Future Farm Expo helps to facilitate a meeting of those minds.

“The whole goal is to bring these two groups of people together and create an environment where they can learn from each other and form personal relationships,” Lorton said.

Lorton, who also serves as creative director for the Duke Joseph advertising agency in downtown Pendleton, said this year’s Future Farm Expo has assembled perhaps the greatest ever panel of farm automation experts. The event’s keynote speaker is George Kellerman, a founding member of Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory, whose presentation is titled, “How robotics and automation will save farming in the 21st century.”

In order for agriculture to thrive, Lorton said farmers need to be forward-thinking.

“Nationally, we are bleeding off (individual) farm owners every year,” he said. “We have to turn to technology.”

The final day of the Future Farm Expo will also feature a “pancake summit,” where participants can learn more about joining Future Farm and accelerating the development of farm technologies. Lorton said he hopes to see their industries run with the program.

Registration for the Future Farm Expo can be done online at www.futurefarmexpo.tech. The cost is $125 for all three days, though participants can save 25 percent by using the promotional code “earlybird.”

ELKTON, Ore. — Retired agricultural teacher Denny Quinby was recently honored as one of only six individuals nationwide who received the National Association of Agricultural Educators Outstanding Service Citation.

Quinby retired in 2010 after a 31-year educational career as the ag teacher and FFA advisor at Elkton High School. He chartered the ag program at the school in 1980.

“I feel very honored,” he said. “But I don’t do things in life for recognition. I don’t want to be on the stage. I want the kids to be up there on the stage. Keeping kids in school in order for them to graduate, that was always my ultimate goal, not the recognition.”

So when looking for Quinby, look behind the scenes of the Douglas County Lamb Show or the Douglas County Fair. He is all about the kids and their animal projects at those events getting the spotlight while he helps with advice and guidance from the sidelines.

But thanks to a couple of his younger colleagues who initiated his nomination, Quinby was selected for the national service citation. He was recognized for his many contributions to his profession, both while teaching and continuing into retirement. He has been the chairman of the Lamb Show committee for the past five years and has helped with ag courses and projects at some county schools since retiring.

Quinby and his wife, Shortie, established the Elkton Wranglers 4-H Club and were its leaders for 30 years until retiring from it in 2010.

During his career at Elkton High, Quinby had two students become state FFA officers. He supervised many students through traditional and nontraditional agricultural experiences — projects related to agriculture that helped the students connect classroom learning to real-world activities.

Rachel Kostman, the ag science teacher at Oakland High School and a former student of Quinby’s at Elkton, said the Umpqua District ag teachers nominated Quinby for the award.

“He has devoted his life to ag education,” Kostman said. “Even in retirement he has stayed involved, mentoring young teachers in the district and inspiring students to learn hands-on applicable skills. He has a passion for agriculture and for agricultural education.”

Quinby has remained active in the FFA Forestry Career Development Event, a competition that develops student skills related to diagnosing forest disorders and managing forests. He has helped at the district and state level competitions and has coached forestry teams from Elkton and Oakland that have competed at the national level.

In the nomination letter that was submitted on behalf of Quinby by the Umpqua District, his continuing efforts to mentor both teachers and students were emphasized.

“Mr. Quinby has taken the role as a mentor to the current advisor (Braden Groth) of the Elkton agriculture program and other advisors in the district, a leadership role that is unmeasurable. Though he is retired, he still has a positive impact on students through his active role in the agricultural educational community. He still has, and always will have, a heart for kids.”

Even while helping others, Quinby does have his own agricultural projects at his home in the Elkton area — a mother cow and sheep operation.

“I guess I’ve just done some things right,” he said of the recognition. “I wouldn’t have done any of this if I hadn’t enjoyed it. I’ve done this for the betterment of the kids and the school system. If you want to help kids improve themselves, you have to give them your time.”

MEDFORD, Ore. — Since undertaking a review of Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke hasn’t gotten a satisfactory answer to a key question.

“How were the boundaries made? Nobody knows how the boundaries were made,” Zinke said during a July 15 visit to the monument.

The original 53,000-acre monument was created in 2000 but was increased to roughly 100,000 acres by the Obama administration last year.

It’s now one of 27 national monuments created in the last two decades that are under review by the Trump administration.

Zinke’s recommendation for potential changes to the Cascade Siskiyou’s monument is due Aug. 23, after which any final decision will be in President Donald Trump’s hands.

“He’s the best boss I’ve ever worked for. He doesn’t micromanage,” said Zinke.

Unlike many national monuments, the Cascade-Siskiyou isn’t known for a particular geological feature, but rather for its unique biodiversity.

“Other monuments don’t have the same object,” said Zinke.

Another particular trait of the Cascade-Siskiyou is the large amount of private land that’s enclosed within its boundaries, which can create access problems for landowners, he said.

While he’s prepared to accept the premise that the area’s flora and fauna justify a monument designation, Zinke said the Cascade-Siskiyou’s boundaries seem arbitrary in some areas.

So far, nobody at the Interior Department has taken responsibility for drawing the boundaries or explaining their placement, he said.

It’s become clear the boundaries weren’t established at the direction of local U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials, Zinke said.

“They had nearly no input in drawing the boundaries and that concerns me,” he said.

Any changes to the national monument would be based on science — specifically, which areas contain watersheds, plants, animals, soils and geological features that should be protected, Zinke said.

Zinke is also examining how the boundaries affect traditional economic uses, such as grazing and timber, as well as recreational uses, including hiking, snowmobiling and horseback riding.

A top concern is that managing the land as a wilderness increases the amount of fuels that can contribute to a catastrophic fire, he said.

“Burning habitat down is not acceptable,” Zinke said.

Grazing is an important industry in the region, but it’s also a tool to keep those fuels in check, said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who accompanied Zinke on the two-day trip.

“Cattle can play a productive role,” Walden said.

Legal precedents have made clear that presidents can modify national monuments — it has occurred 18 times in the past, Zinke said.

The law is less certain when it comes to an outright rescission of a monument, Zinke said.

Such a decision would have to be substantially justified by the science, he said.

National monuments have been controversial since the first one — the Devils Tower in Wyoming — was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Zinke said.

Such designations have protected some of the greatest national treasures in the U.S., he said.

At the same time, Zinke said he’s a strong advocate of multiple uses for public lands.

“Public land is not a political issue, it’s an American issue,” he said.

During a stop at Hyatt Lake, which abuts the monument, Zinke was greeted by supporters and opponents of the monument.

Robin Haptonstall said he didn’t believe the expansion was legal because much of it encompassed “O&C Lands” that the federal government dedicated to timber production.

As a rancher, Haptonstall said he’s also worried about the previously proposed Siskiyou Crest National Monument, which could affect his property.

“I’m trying to stop this disease,” he said.

Bonnie Johnson, a monument neighbor who supports the expansion, said the Cascade-Siskiyou is a major tourist draw.

“It’s like a cathedral,” she said. “It’s a spiritual experience.”

The expansion is necessary to ensure the survival of native plants and animals, Johnson said.

“You can’t confine them in a little island of protection,” she said.

Oregon State University’s dry farming project, which began when drought still gripped much of the West, has expanded to the point that 30 farms are hosting field trials this year on the prospects of growing vegetables and orchard crops with little or no irrigation.

Twelve Western Oregon sites will host field days in August, with visits available every Tuesday — Aug. 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. The cost is $10 per person per date. Registration and other details are at http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/dry-farm/dry-farming-collaborative

Amy Garrett, an assistant professor who heads the project for OSU Extension’s Small Farms Program, said the idea of reducing or even eliminating irrigation continues to draw interest from farmers and gardeners across the country and even internationally. This year, project participants in Western Oregon are growing squash, melons, zucchini, dry beans, tomatoes or corn in 100-square-foot plots that allow for replication and comparison of results.

Garrett, who has been researching dry farming since 2013, said the project is 10 times larger than when she started. The project’s Facebook group, Dry Farming Collaborative, now has more than 270 members.

The program particularly attracts small farmers and new farmers, who are drawn to growing food but run up against one of agriculture’s basic problems.

“What started me off on this path is that I work with a lot of landowners who are on land without water rights,” Garrett said.

The most recent, or “junior,” water rights holders are the first to be shut off during shortages, and Garrett said some people interested in dry farming came to it after losing irrigation in 2015. Others lack the capital to sink a well or set up an irrigation system.

In urban areas, master gardeners who are paying for expensive city water make up a growing contingent of people interested in dry farming, Garrett said.

It’s not for everyone, however, and it’s not as simple as keeping the sprinklers turned off. Dry farming is best suited for Western Oregon and Western Washington, where the soil soaks up plentiful rain from fall, through winter and into the spring. In addition, dry farming requires careful site selection, soil preparation and planning, Garrett said. Seeds and plant starts are planted deep to put them closer to the damp soil below.

Garrett said melons, peaches and tomatoes grown by the dry farming method attain intense flavor.

Allen Dong, who operates Regulus Associates farm in Elmira, Ore., west of Eugene, is hosting one of the field day events. He’s a former University of California-Davis irrigation researcher, and said dry farming comes with trade-offs.

Dry farming hastens plant maturity and shortens the season, he said, but yield decreases in a linear relationship to water availability.

Dong grows dry beans and garlic for market, and dry farms the garlic to help with disease control. “I get a higher yield if I irrigate, but it’s not very marketable when they get all that gray mold.”

Plants don’t care where water comes from, he said, and will seek it out in the soil profile if not getting it from irrigation.

“For people with no water rights, they can do dry farming with no irrigation, but they have to keep in mind there’s a lot of competition for that water stored in the soil profile — mainly weeds.”

He said people trying to dry farm must reduce planting density, remove cover crops that will compete for water and make sure no tree roots are snaking underground to steal moisture.

He said a model of reduced irrigation, rather than no irrigation, is a better choice for farmers.

“There are things you have to pay attention to with dry farming,” he said. “You can make a lot more mistakes when you reduce irrigation, and still come out ahead.”

LANGLOIS — The Langlois Public Library invites children ages 3-15 to Build a Better World during its 2017 Summer Reading Program.

ONTARIO, Ore. — Eastern Oregon is on the path to landing a major rail transload facility, and that news is sending a jolt of excitement through the region’s agricultural industry.

The Oregon Legislature’s recently passed $5.3 billion transportation bill includes $26 million to create a transload facility near Ontario in Malheur County.

A transload facility allows shipping containers to be transferred from one mode of transportation to another, in this case between truck and rail.

The facility would be a big benefit to the area’s agricultural sector, particularly the onion industry, Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, said.

“It would drive down the cost of freight significantly,” he said. “It would be a real benefit to our community.”

The facility could benefit the region’s alfalfa, timber, dairy and other industries as well but it would be a huge win for the onion industry, Bentz said during a public presentation June 13 in conjunction with a Malheur County Onion Growers Association board meeting.

“The entire facility is built around the onion industry,” he said. “Eighty to ninety percent of the facility is going to be for you guys.”

Onion growers and shippers applauded plans for the facility.

“This thing is huge,” MCOGA President Paul Skeen, a farmer, told Capital Press. “It’s a big, big deal. It will allow us to move product faster and cheaper.”

Most of the region’s onions are shipped by rail to the East Coast. They currently have to be taken by truck to the nearest transload facility in Wallula, Wash., before heading east.

It costs onion growers in Eastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho about 50 cents per 50-pound bag to do that, said Grant Kitamura, general manager of Murakami Produce, an onion shipping company.

With a transload facility near Ontario, “That could be money in our pockets,” he said. “This is going to be a real salvation for our local onion industry.”

Shay Myers, general manager of Owyhee Produce, an onion shipper, estimates the transload facility could result in about $15 million per year in freight savings for the Oregon-Idaho onion industry.

“That’s just freight savings; it doesn’t include new market share that might be created by that (new) freight advantage,” he said.

Bentz, who was vice-co-chair of the 14-member committee that hammered out the transportation bill, said the biggest advantages of the transload facility would be reducing freight costs and speeding up delivery times.

He said the facility would attract product from the nearby Boise area and as far away as Burley in southcentral Idaho.

Kay Riley, general manager of Snake River Produce, an onion shipper, said that when it comes to shipping to the East Coast, the Oregon-Idaho onion industry enjoys about a 50-cent per bag natural geographic advantage over onion growers in Washington.

However, he added, that advantage is wiped away by the fact Oregon-Idaho onions have to backtrack to Washington before being shipped by rail to the East Coast.

“This (transload) facility would re-establish that advantage,” he said. “It’s huge (and) could be a real game-changer for us.”

Oregon’s attorney general is threatening to sue the Trump administration if it tries to change the boundaries of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The Department of Interior is currently reviewing the status and size of national monuments across the country.

In his final days in office, President Obama invoked the Antiquities Act to expand Southern Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument by nearly 50,000 acres. The region is considered a bio-diversity hotspot in the West.

Supporters of the expansion fear the current review will be used by the Trump administration to reverse course.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum threaten to sue if that happens.

“As you review the vibrant landscape within the Cascade-Siskiyou region, I know that you and the President will share our desire to preserve it for future generations, she wrote. “However, if the President attempts instead to revoke or reduce the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, we stand ready to take appropriate legal action.”

State attorney Paul Garrahan said the Trump administration would be exceeding its executive-branch powers if tries to undo Obama’s action.

“The Antiquities Act does not include authority for the President to reduce or reverse a decision to designate a national monument,” said Garrahan, who is in charge of the Natural Resources Section at the Oregon Department of Justice.

Two timber companies filed a lawsuit earlier this year to block the expansion. That suit is on hold pending the result of the current federal review.

This week, the Interior Department recommended that the administration keep Washington’s Hanford Reach National Monument and Idaho’s Craters of the Moon intact.

It’s unclear if those decisions will have any bearing on the outcome of the Cascade-Siskiyou review. It’s also unclear what the Interior Department is using to make its recommendations, says Oregon State Representative Pam Marsh, whose district include the Monument.

“I don’t really understand what the criteria is that they’re looking at this point,” she said.  “And is it the same criteria across all monuments?”

Reports have surfaced that Zinke will be visiting Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument this weekend to meet with stakeholders. The Interior Department would not confirm those reports.

Jefferson Public Radio’s Liam Moriarty contributed to this report.

Statesman Journal

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — More than 350,000 fingerling trout are being dropped from helicopters into lakes across the mountains of Oregon.

The goal of this week’s drop is to offer fishing opportunities to those willing to venture into the backcountry, The Statesman Journal reported. The fish to be stocked in high mountain lakes include juvenile brook, cutthroat and rainbow trout.

“Trout fishing is still by far our most popular type of fishing in Oregon,” said Mike Gauvin, manager of recreational fishing for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “The thing about Oregon’s high lakes is there are not a lot of places in the lower 48 United States where you can have this kind of wilderness fishing experience.”

The fish drop happens every two years, and it usually takes two years for the small fish to reach the 8-inch size where anglers can keep them.

The trout are transported mostly by helicopter in a custom shuttle carrying 30 individual canisters that hold a few gallons of water and up to 1,000 fingerling trout. The canisters are opened by remote control from inside the cockpit while the chopper hovers over a lake.

A helicopter crew can seed as many as 20 lakes with 20,000 trout in a single one-hour flight. In other areas, the agency still must use the old-fashioned way of getting trout to the outback — afoot or on horseback.

Biologists generally use 3-inch juvenile fish because the 100-foot fall is less traumatic for them than larger fish.

Ninety-five percent of the little fish survive the drop, but biologists believe they may have a tougher time surviving once they’re in the lake. The state will experiment with larger trout in some locations, to see how their survival rate compares.

Spots near Salem that will get fish include numerous lakes in the Cascade Range, including in the Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington and Three Sisters wilderness areas. The Fish and Wildlife website includes a statewide list.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Authorities are investigating a logging accident that killed a man in northwestern Oregon.

The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office says 32-year-old Casey Schlundt of McMinnville died Wednesday when an unexpected log shift caused a cable to break. The logs and Schlundt fell about 50 feet. He was pronounced dead at the scene in Tillamook.

The sheriff’s office and Oregon OSHA are conducting the investigation.

In the wine world, and in the curious niche it occupies in Oregon agriculture, it is big news that a professor, a wine climatologist, is moving from one college to another.

Greg Jones, although as unassuming an academic as you’ll find, carries that kind of heft.

Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in Yamhill County where the state’s wine industry came of age, announced that Jones has been hired to oversee its Wine Education Program. The college offers an interdisciplinary minor in the subject, which seems unfair to previous generations of college students.

Nonetheless, Jones is leaving Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he directs the Division of Business, Communication and the Environment and is a research climatologist with SOU’s Environmental Science and Policy Program. He’s considered an expert on how climate variability and change affect grapevine growth and wine production.

The website Great Northwest Wine said Jones’ move to Linfield is “international news.” Tom Danowski, president and CEO of the Oregon Wine Board, described Jones as a “longtime friend to Oregon’s grape growers and winemakers.”

“His stellar global reputation for excellence in his field continually reminds us how lucky we are to have him here in Oregon’s wine community,” Danowski said in a prepared statement.

Linfield President Thomas Hellie said Jones has “earned an international reputation for his research on wine, climate and the environment.” In a prepared statement, he said Jones is a “perfect fit for Linfield.”

Jones agrees. The opportunity was unexpected, he said, but came at a time when he was ready for change and new challenges after 20 years in Ashland. The move puts him physically at the nexus of Oregon’s expanding and well-regarded wine industry, with 100 wineries within 50 miles.

Equally exciting, Jones said, is the chance to shape Linfield’s wine education program. The first task, he said, is to make wine studies an academic major in addition to a minor. He said Linfield will not compete with universities to crank out winemakers, but instead will offer a broad liberal arts overview of how wine functions as a business and a sustainable agricultural enterprise.

He envisions students getting a four-year degree in wine studies from Linfield, then perhaps going on to master’s degrees in viticulture from Oregon State, Washington State, the University of California-Davis or elsewhere.

Jones organized the industry’s Terroir Congress that was held at Linfield in the summer of 2016, with about 100 scientists attending from around the world. Wine Business Monthly named him one of the top 50 industry leaders last year as well. The Oregon Wine Press chose him Wine Person of the Year in 2009 and the website intowine.com picked him as one of the 100 most influential people in the industry in 2012 and 2013. He’s one of 10 Americans honored for his work with the Portuguese wine industry.

Jones, 57, said his interest in wine climatology is a “chicken or egg” question. His parents, Earl and Hilda Jones, founded Abacela Winery in Roseburg, Ore., in 1995. It was questions his father asked while starting the Tempranillo varietal winery that started Jones thinking about the niche science of wine climatology.

Jones said he still has projects in Southern Oregon and will remain involved with the region and will continue producing his email climate reports.

“I’m really not leaving, I’m just residing somewhere else,” Jones said.

“I’m grateful for all SOU and the Southern Oregon wine region have allowed me to do,” he said. “It’s been a wonderful 20 years.”

AGNESS, Ore. (AP) — A 3.2-million-board-foot timber sale federal officials said was designed as a landscape restoration project will reap little financial benefits other than the first major repairs in three decades to a popular forest road.

Compared to other sales, the Green Knob timber sale fetched pennies on the dollar from a Brookings mill that will pay $350,000 in culvert replacements so its trucks can use Bear Camp Road to ship its mill enough logs to build 200 homes.

Known on maps as Forest Service Road 23, Bear Camp Road is a one-lane, paved road over the Siskiyou Mountains used by lower Rogue Canyon rafters and others.

It will be closed for up to two months beginning Monday so contractors for South Coast Lumber Co., the sale’s purchaser, can begin replacing 22 culverts along a 7.5-mile stretch to return the 30-year-old road to log-truck worthiness for fall logging.

Tina LaNier, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest’s Gold Beach district ranger, said Green Knob was crafted over 201 acres to improve large-tree growth, reduce wildfire intensity and improve habitat for species such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.

“The point of the sale is landscape restoration,” LaNier said. “We’re increasing resiliency of these stands to fire. We’re trying to improve late-successional characteristics.”

The sale also was managed knowing that whoever bought it would have to improve the road, where failed culverts lead to sloughs in the pavement and washouts that dump unwanted sediment into the Rogue River.

“We knew it needed repair,” said Jim Campbell, the forest’s timber-sale contracting officer. “Almost every culvert in that road is rusted out.”

Knowing potential buyers would need to recoup the estimated $350,000 in required road improvement through lowered timber costs, the forest set the minimum bid at $10.34 per thousand board feet of timber, Campbell said.

South Coast Lumber was the only bidder and offered just the minimum bid, which is less than 5 percent of the forest’s five most recent sales, which garnered $200 to $250 per thousand board feet of timber, according to Andy Hill, a forest resource specialist.

At the sale price, Green Knob’s 3.2 million board feet of timber will add $33,088 to forest coffers, making the Bear Camp Road repairs by far the sale’s largest financial benefit to the forest.

“When you look at it, that’s what it’s showing,” Campbell said. “But we don’t really look at things that way. That (road improvements) was a secondary issue.”

About 16,000 board feet of timber goes into the average 2,000-square-foot home. A board foot is a 1-square-foot board of usable timber that is 1-inch thick.

Completed in the late 1980s, Bear Camp Road is seasonally closed by snowdrifts and is the only paved road between Galice and Agness. It has become a staple for rafting companies and private parties shuttling trailers for people rafting the Rogue’s Wild and Scenic Section, as well as summer motorists looking for a forest drive that offers spectacular panoramas of largely unscratched backwoods.

It was originally built to safely transport log trucks, but the original corrugated galvanized steel culverts have failed over time, causing regular sloughing of the serpentine soils there and requiring repairs almost annually.

While forest roads are public, upgrades to log-haul quality are the responsibility of those who buy timber sales transport logs on those roads. The Green Knob sale is the first in the area, hence the first with major road improvements built into the sale.

“They are good tools for us to repair the road,” assistant forest engineer Paul Podesta said. “(But) we are not going to fix all the issues with that sale.”

Campbell said the forest plans more timber sales in that area, with more improvements to Bear Camp Road, but to lesser financial levels than the Green Knob sale.

“It just happened that this sale footed the bill for most of it,” Campbell said. “The future timber sales will pay a hefty price to haul over that road.”

Oregon State University Extension Service is looking to taxpayers for help funding local outreach and education programs in Umatilla and Morrow counties.

A citizens advisory committee has proposed creating two new service districts for OSU Extension — one in each county. If approved by voters, the districts would tax at a rate of 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

That money would go toward paying for things like additional staff, supplies, maintenance and utility costs. OSU Extension not only has farm and livestock agents working across both counties, but supports educational programs such as 4-H and Master Gardeners.

The Umatilla County extension district would also include OSU’s Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center north of Pendleton and Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center, where scientists conduct experiments to improve farming practices.

Mary Corp, who serves as both the regional administrator for OSU Extension and director at CBARC, said the districts would add much-needed sustainability to the budget. Twenty-five of Oregon’s 36 counties already have extension districts in place.

Both county boards of commissioners would oversee the districts and set their budget committees, constituting three citizens and three commissioners.

Corp said they are aiming for May 2018 to place the district on the ballot, though it will be a long process going forward.

First, OSU Extension must convince Umatilla and Morrow county commissioners to approve an order initiating the development of a special district. Then, Corp said, they will be looking to get resolutions of support from all 17 incorporated cities across the two counties.

Voters will have the final say, and though new taxes are never the most popular choice, Corp said she is confident in the communities’ support for OSU Extension.

“People really see a lot of value in the work we do,” Corp said.

As it stands, OSU Extension is already supported in part through general fund dollars from both counties. In their most recent budgets, Umatilla County will be contributing $321,090 while Morrow County has earmarked $167,065.

Still, Corp said funding is on the decline due to cuts in state and federal funding. That has left OSU Extension without the ability to fully staff programs or address new needs.

An advisory group consisting of eight different stakeholders started meeting about a year and a half ago to go over their options, and they decided in May that a service district would be the best choice to generate long-term stability.

The agricultural research stations, meanwhile, are also finding themselves scraping for funding. Back in 2008, the university decided that 25 percent of each station’s budget must come from local dollars, and since then Corp said CBARC has received a block grant worth $250,000 from the Oregon Wheat Growers League.

“If I didn’t have that block grant coming in, I would be in the red,” Corp said.

However, Corp said the Wheat Growers League no longer has the money to continue that level of support as wheat prices and acreage decline.

“They’ve told me they see this (grant) sunsetting very soon,” she said.

At HAREC, director Phil Hamm said he has also had to go fundraising for as much money as he can just to keep the doors open. Some dollars have come from the Oregon Potato Commission, and some from local growers.

“It’s been a pain in my neck to go out and search for dollars,” Hamm said.

An extension district would ensure the facilities remain in shape, Hamm said, with substantial economic rewards for the region. Agriculture contributes roughly a half-billion dollars in farm gate value for both Umatilla and Morrow counties, and that total increases to $1 billion if you add in the value from trucking and food processing.

OSU Extension helps to keep the industry thriving with programs and research, Hamm said.

“We have provided what our stakeholders would say is very important information for what they do,” he said.

OSU Extension will make its initial pitch to Morrow County commissioners on July 19. The same presentation will also be given to Umatilla County commissioners, though a date has not yet been set.

Don Russell, Morrow County commissioner, said Corp has already met with each commissioner individually. Initially, he is in favor of the district but has some questions about whether the state will pull additional funding if it moves forward.

George Murdock, Umatilla County commissioner, said the county is extremely supportive of OSU Extension.

“It’s one of those things where the return on investment is many times over,” Murdock said. “We’re talking high-value operations that require a high level of sophistication. That’s the return we’re getting from cooperative extension.”

Hamm said the district would be beneficial across all sectors of extension, from farmers to families with children in 4-H.

“It’s nice to see all these folks appreciate what we do,” he said.

THURSDAY, JULY 13

HEPPNER, Ore. — A new invasive weed has been spotted for the first time growing in southern Morrow County.

Plumeless thistle, which has previously been identified in neighboring Grant County and a few small locations in Wallowa County, was recently found by a landowner while out spraying for other types of thistle in the area.

While it may look similar to Scotch thistle or musk thistle — with their distinctive rose-colored flowers — plumeless thistle is distinct from its fellow invasive brethren. The weed can grow more than 4 feet tall, with spiny leaves measuring 4-8 inches long.

Blooms usually occur between May and July, and each plant can produce up to 1,000 seeds. Once established, plumeless thistle can degrade pasture land by crowding out more desirable forage, making it all but impossible to graze cattle.

Landowners who suspect they may have plumeless thistle on their property should call the Morrow County weed control office at 541-989-9500. Early detection and rapid response is key to controlling the weed before it can become widespread.

The Pacific Northwest wheat crop is at the point when adult plant stripe rust resistance is kicking in and hot, dry weather has slowed the disease’s development, a top researcher says.

Stripe rust in winter wheat fields is under control, but low levels of rust pustules are still active in spring wheat, said Xianming Chen, research plant pathologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Pullman, Wash.

Fungicide application is no longer needed except in late-planted fields, at higher elevations or where there is a lot of soil moisture, Chen said.

Stripe rust was still severe this year, especially in winter wheat, Chen said. Late plantings and early fungicide applications reduced the amount of stripe rust in spring wheat, he said.

The disease can reduce yields in a highly susceptible wheat variety by up to 60 percent. No highly susceptible winter wheat varieties are grown in the region, but popular varieties such as Xerpha, Clearfield 102 and Eltan can have a yield loss of as much as 30 percent, Chen said.

As farmers consider fall planting, Chen recommends that farmers consider a variety that has high resistance to stripe rust.

Syngenta Ovation has more resistance but still needed a fungicide application this year.

Spring wheat varieties JD, Diva, Louise, Whit, UI Platinum, Dayn and Glee are resistant. Babe, WestBred’s WB 1035CL+ and Syngenta’s SY 605 CL are particularly susceptible, he said.

Chen hopes to see more acres of the Washington State University soft white spring wheat Seahawk and the WestBred hard red spring wheat Expresso, which don’t require any fungicide applications.

In addition to the Western states, stripe rust has also been reported in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi. Noth Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, Virginia, Delaware, Tennessee, Michigan, Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, Georgia, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and New York.

Chen said the disease’s distribution was similar to last year. The biggest losses were last year in the Great Plains, while damage was less this year, due to relatively dry conditions in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, he said.