A Wallowa County ranch figures to save 1 billion gallons of water annually through a series of conservation projects, such as adding sprinklers and forgoing irrigation during peak summer months.

The Freshwater Trust, an environmental nonprofit with offices in Portland, announced it is working with Wolfe Ranch to upgrade irrigation infrastructure, transfer points of diversion and lease water rights on the farm to benefit endangered salmon in the Lostine River.

Funding comes from a $1.4 million grant awarded by the Oregon Water Resources Department. Irrigation upgrades are also expected to boost crop yields by 5 to 20 percent on the ranch.

“We’ve formed lasting relationships with dozens of farmers and ranchers who understand conservation isn’t just about protecting fish,” said Aaron Maxwell, flow restoration project manager for The Freshwater Trust, who works out of Enterprise. “It’s about the longevity of their farms, economies and entire communities.”

Nearly 1,100 acres of forage and grain crops will be converted to pivot sprinklers as opposed to flood irrigation at the ranch — which Maxwell compared to the difference between letting your hose run into the yard, or watering just the section that needs it most.

“In the face of present and future water scarcity, modernizations like this will only become more imperative,” he said.

Ditching flood irrigation may also have a positive effect on water quality, Maxwell said, reducing the amount of standing water in fields that can become contaminated with sediment, bacteria and toxins before draining back into streams.

Water saved through the irrigation upgrades will be transferred back into the Lostine River, which harbors summer chinook and steelhead populations. Wolfe Ranch will also voluntarily abstain from irrigating in August and September, when the river reaches critically low water levels.

The changes may allow Wolfe Ranch, a sixth-generation family operation, to begin growing more high-value food crops, which could have a ripple effect down the entire Wallowa County agricultural industry. Local businesses are already slated to provide approximately $2 million in construction materials and labor.

“Production and economics must always be taken into consideration with projects like these,” Maxwell said. “This will have positive implications for the landowner and the local economy.”

The Freshwater Trust has been working with farms and ranches on the Lostine River for more than a decade, Maxwell said, after chinook runs were nearly wiped out in the 1990s. The organization was also awarded $114,265 from the Water Resources Department last year to study whether irrigation efficiencies could help protect salmon on upper Catherine Creek in Union County.

Woody Wolfe, owner of Wolfe Ranch, said water scarcity and quality issues aren’t going to simply go away.

“Projects like this help further the responsible use of our natural resources while benefiting the environment,” Wolfe said.

Nov. 29, 1938 – Jan. 12, 2017

Saturdays

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Scientists at Oregon State University have sequenced the beaver genome thanks to a 2015 crowdfunding effort.

The Register-Guard reports that the funding drive raised $20,001 from 103 donors. OSU used the money to pay for research on the genetic code of its mascot animal, the North American beaver.

The project used a blood sample from the 5-year-old beaver, Filbert, who lives at the Portland Zoo. OSU researchers say they discovered that beavers have 26,200 genes, or about 33 percent more inheritable information that humans have.

OSU says the project was done in a spirit of fun but could also lead to scientific advances by providing insights into beaver populations, diseases and evolutionary history.

NORTH BEND — Researching Grants, for first time grant writers, is a free workshop for non-profit organizations. The workshop will begin at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, at North Bend Public Library. Anyone is welcome and no registration is required.

Corvallis, Ore. — The expansion of Oregon’s hazelnut orchards is gaining momentum, with acreage surging by nearly 64 percent in the past five years, according to an industry analyst.

Farmers planted about 9,200 acres of hazelnuts last year, up from 6,200 acres in 2015 and 4,300 acres in 2014, said Mike McDaniel, principal of Pacific Agricultural Survey, which tracks the industry’s growth.

“It’s an accelerated growth of new plantings,” McDaniel said.

Enthusiasm for hazelnuts is high due to healthy prices and the availability of new cultivars resistant to eastern filbert blight, a fungal pathogen that once threatened the industry.

Total hazelnut acreage in Oregon now tops 60,600 acres, according to McDaniel’s analysis. That’s an increase of more than 23,500 acres since the USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture.

To compare, Oregon’s hazelnut acreage increased by fewer than 4,000 acres in the entire decade between 2002 and 2012, according to USDA.

Pacific Agricultural Survey relies on aerial geographic data to monitor hazelnut acreage, McDaniel said on Jan. 18 at the 2017 Nut Growers Society meeting in Corvallis, Ore.

The company’s estimate of hazelnut acreage growth is conservative, since many growers think the expansion is even larger based on sales of nursery seedlings, he said.

It’s likely that some new trees are “intercropped” within existing hazelnut orchards, obscuring the new plantings, McDaniel said. “That’s not visible through a dense canopy cover.”

In other cases, McDaniel said he’s observed new orchards failing to become established, with the trees removed soon after planting.

Nik Wiman, an Oregon State University Extension orchard crops specialist, said he isn’t surprised.

“I think a lot of poor quality trees have been sold,” Wiman said.

Weak hazelnut seedlings don’t necessarily end up dying, though.

Farmers who buy weak trees may plant them in high-density sawdust nursery rows until they grow stronger and are ready for the orchard, Wiman said.

In his aerial reconnaissance, McDaniel has noticed that farmers haven’t been removing mature orchards all at once — not surprising, given the high prices hazelnuts have fetched in recent years.

Instead, growers divide orchards into several blocks and replace old trees with new ones “a few bites at a time,” he said.

Aside from the ongoing battle against eastern filbert blight, recent droughts in Oregon have stressed hazelnut trees, making new plantings vulnerable to flatheaded borers, which are tree pests.

“It advertises the tree to the borer. They’re less able to resist,” Wiman said of drought effects.

In 2017, OSU plans to conduct trials to determine the effectiveness of different pesticides in fighting the borers, he said.

Another pest, the brown marmorated stinkbug, is becoming a significant problem for hazelnut producers, but help is on the way, Wiman said.

The samurai wasp — a natural predator of the exotic stinkbug — was discovered at 11 sites in Multnomah County, Ore., last year.

Specimens of the wasp have been redistributed to fruit and nut orchards across the state to speed up their predation of stinkbugs, he said.

It will take a while for wasp populations to catch up with those of stinkbugs, but they are an effective predator in China, the homeland of both species, Wiman said,

“Over there, they hammer 80-90 percent of the eggs,” he said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The attorney for a leader of the armed occupation at an Oregon wildlife refuge is now facing three charges after an incident in which federal marshals tackled him for refusing to stop arguing with the judge in the case.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports a federal prosecutor assigned from Washington state filed court documents Friday charging Marcus Mumford with three misdemeanors.

The incident in question occurred when Mumford’s client Ammon Bundy was acquitted last fall.

The latest documents replace citations against Mumford which he had pleaded not guilty to earlier this month.

Mumford is accused of creating a disturbance by impeding or disrupting official government duties. He’s also charged with failure to comply with signs that prohibit disruption of official government duties and failure to comply with the lawful direction of a federal police officer.

Mumford and his lawyer, Michael Levine, have said they intend to vigorously challenge the charges.

Due to severe winter weather in the Columbia River Gorge, the Capital Press is experiencing difficulty in trucking the Jan. 20 edition from our printing plant in Pendleton, Ore., to the Postal Service in Portland. We expect delays in readers receiving their copies.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Subscribers have access to all Capital Press content, which is available on this website. Or, they can read the e-edition of this week’s paper, also available on this site.

If you are unsure how to access the e-edition, call us at 1-800-882-6789 for assistance.

With snow turning to rain in Western Oregon, producers are digging out and checking for damage in a variety of crops.

Some hazelnut orchards in the Eugene area sustained heavy limb breakage and even toppled trees during an ice storm in December, but the snow and ice of January was more widespread and may have affected a broader range of crops.

Bernadine Strik, an Oregon State University horticulture professor and berry crop specialist, said June-bearing strawberries should be fine, especially if protected by a snow cover. However, continual cropping varieties such as Albion may have sustained some damage if farm temperatures dropped below 20 degrees and lacked a snow cover.

Trailing blackberries vary in cold hardiness, Strik said by email. Marions are less hardy than Columbia Star or Black Diamond, for example.

“The good news is that it got cold when plants were fully dormant and it stayed cold — that’s better than fluctuating temperatures,” Strik said. “I think most growers of Marion should be OK, especially if temperatures stayed above the low teens (Fahrenheit). Farms where it got colder may see some damage.”

Raspberries and late-season fresh-market blackberries should be fine, and blueberry varieties are cold hardy when fully dormant, she said.

Strik said growers can’t assess damage now, as it takes time for cold-damaged tissue to express itself. She recommended sampling canes, buds or strawberry crowns in late winter, prior to bud break, by slicing open the tissue and looking for oxidized or brown and black material.

In the Columbia River Gorge, producers saw heavy snow and then were hit by an ice storm that arrived on the afternoon of Jan. 17. The storm quickly forced the closure of Interstate 84, which parallels the river, from Troutdale, a suburb on Portland’s east side, to Hood River, a stretch of about 50 miles.

The front hit Portland as rain but turned to black ice on the freeway farther east as moisture met the cold air that funnels down the gorge in winter.

In The Dalles, 85 miles east of Portland, OSU Extension small grains specialist Brian Tuck said “So far, so good” on ag damage but was keeping an eye on the ice storm approaching Hood River.

Luckily, a good snow cover was in place to protect the Columbia basin’s winter wheat crop, Tuck said. Snow acts like a blanket and insulates the young wheat plants, planted last fall, during extended periods of cold, he said.

At Surface Nursery outside Gresham, Ore., the first ice storm in December broke some tree branches but caused minimal damage overall. The bigger problem came with the subsequent extended cold in January, owner Graham Anderson said. “Our harvest was brought to a standstill by 4 inches of frost in the ground covered by 4 inches of snow,” he said. In addition, icy road conditions prevented employees from getting to work, he said.

The nursery grows shade and flowering trees and pulls them from the ground this time of year for a shipping season that normally starts Feb. 1, Anderson said by email.

“We are eager to thaw out and resume harvesting trees,” he said. “We will certainly be behind schedule due to winter weather delays and shortage of labor.”

In Southern Oregon, environmental science professor Gregory Jones said there may be some vineyard damage in the coldest areas and to selected varieties in the Rogue and Applegate regions.

“Nothing from the northern Umpqua south and throughout the Rogue,” Jones reported by email. “We have been cold and snowy since Christmas, but no ice or major damage from the snow.”

A Spray, Ore., landowner was awarded the state’s first loan under a program intended to jump-start the removal of Western juniper trees.

Jim Epley, who is restoring 1,500 acres of long-held family property to be a cattle operation, will use the $39,000 loan to continue cutting and milling juniper trees. He’s bought saws, a trailer, a portable mill and a skid-steer Bobcat to move logs. In addition, he’s hired two people and had a third coming on before recent bad weather force a temporary shutdown.

The state loan program, known as the Western Juniper Industry Fund, was established by the Oregon Legislature in 2015. Advocates have long held that removing intrusive juniper trees from Eastern Oregon rangeland has multiple benefits. Juniper is a “water thief,” as one rancher called it, that can use up to 30 gallons or more of water a day and rob native grasses of moisture.

A study by Oregon State University showed that removing juniper almost instantly improved watersheds and stream flows, and Epley said he’s seen that on his own property.

When he was growing up, the property had multiple springs that bubbled up to the surface in springtime. He left home to do other things, and when he moved back in 1996, juniper trees had crowded in and the springs had dried up.

He decided to clear 10 to 15 acres around one of the springs, cutting the juniper trees and hauling them out.

“The next day, the ground was wet,” he said. “In a week, water was running.”

Stories like that are why researchers, politicians, various government agency experts and environmental groups have pushed for juniper removal. In addition to improving rangeland, they believe juniper logging and milling could revitalize the economy in parts of rural Oregon.

Believing it and making it come about are two different things, however. Juniper is gnarly wood that is tough to cut and mill into lumber, and requires extensive de-limbing. Unlike fir and pine trees in national forests, it grows in areas of the state that often lack logging roads and other infrastructure. In the past, ranchers simply piled it and burned it, because doing more with it was time-consuming and expensive.

However, a small but strong market has emerged for juniper landscape timbers and posts, and some furniture makers seek it out as well. Juniper posts are naturally rot-resistant and don’t have to be treated with preservatives, making them attractive for use in organic vineyards, for example, and in playgrounds.

The Legislature approved the $800,000 juniper industry fund to support removal programs. Of that, $500,000 was intended as loans to increase harvesting and manufacturing; $200,000 was for technical assistance; and $100,000 was for workforce training.

Epley said there is enough juniper on the family property and adjoining neighbors to keep him busy for two or three years, and after that may explore logging elsewhere.

LANGLOIS — London to Paris via the Channel Islands: An Interesting Langlois event by Deanna McDermott will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, at the Langlois Public Library.

The deregulation was not unexpected. Last month APHIS released a final Environmental Impact Statement that recommended deregulation of the genetically engineered creeping bentgrass because it “is unlikely to pose a plant pest risk....”

Scotts and Monsanto petitioned USDA to deregulate the bentgrass, which was genetically engineered to withstand applications of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular Roundup weed killer.

The plant escaped field trials in 2003 and has taken root in Malheur and Jefferson counties in Oregon.

Some farmers and water manages in the affected counties worry that because the bentgrass is resistant to glyphosate and difficult to kill, it could clog irrigation ditches and affect shipments of hay and other crops to nations that don’t accept traces of genetically modified organisms.

Scotts reached a 10-year agreement with USDA last October that critics say allows the company to essentially walk away from any responsibility for controlling the plant in a few years.

As part of the agreement, Scotts and Monsanto agreed not to commercialize or further propagate the plant in the future.

JUNCTION CITY, Ore. (AP) — A 33-year-old vineyard worker from Corvallis is dead after he was found trapped under a utility vehicle at a winery near Junction City.

The Register-Guard reported Tuesday that Bentley Hart Chappell was pronounced dead at the scene on Saturday at Brigadoon Wine Company.

He was found by another employee at the bottom of a dirt road.

The cause of death is being investigated by the Lane County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.

Winery owner Chris Shown says the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is also investigating the death.

Shown declined to comment further to the newspaper.

Friends say Chappell — a native of Georgia — was working at the winery to learn more about winemaking.

He was also passionate about music and craft brewing.

———

Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Freezing rain, ice and fallen trees forced the closure of highways and roads in Oregon and Washington on Wednesday.

A 45-mile stretch of Interstate 84 between Troutdale and Hood River will remain closed all day.

Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass, east of Seattle, remained closed due to ice, snow slides and multiple crashes. The Washington State Patrol says troopers responded to 67 collisions overnight because roads are covered with layers of snow, sleet and freezing rain.

Oregon transportation officials are making the call Wednesday after a major ice storm hit the Columbia River Gorge and forced the highway to shut down Tuesday afternoon.

But temperatures are now warming and the next concern is flooding as heavy rains mix with melting snow and ice from recent storms.

Freezing rain also hit a broad swath of the Cascades, Central Washington and southwest Washington.

The Yakima airport in Washington closed at 6 p.m. while the runway at Spokane International Airport was closed at 9 p.m. due to freezing rain.

SALEM — With global blueberry production climbing, farmers should focus on improving efficiencies rather than hoping for prices to rise, according to an industry expert.

“If you’re the lowest-cost producer, you will survive whatever kind of price stress we have in this industry,” said John Shelford, strategic advisor to the Naturipe Farms food company, at the Jan. 16 Oregon Blueberry Conference here.

Cold storage inventories of frozen blueberries have mounted in recent years, suppressing prices for the processed crop, he said.

In 2016, the pile of frozen blueberries leftover from the previous year’s harvest hit 145 million pounds in the U.S., up from 51 million pounds just five years earlier, according to USDA.

Frozen inventories will likely grow to 160 million pounds before this year’s blueberries enter cold storage, said Shelford. “I do not see any improvement in pricing for the 2017 harvest.”

Shelford projects that annual blueberry production in the U.S. and Canada will increase roughly one-third, from 1.2 billion pounds to 1.6 billion pounds over the next decade.

Farmers can’t depend on domestic consumption of the crop to grow proportionately and will have to ship more blueberries overseas to keep prices stable, he said.

“We can’t take our eye off the export business,” he said.

Niche markets offer an opportunity for growers but they don’t have a lot of “elasticity,” Shelford said.

For example, the market for organic blueberries — a relatively large niche — can easily be overwhelmed by excessive tonnage, causing prices to collapse, he said.

Surplus organic blueberries are actually better off being sold in the conventional market to avoid affecting organic prices, he said.

The average number of calories consumed per capita in the U.S. is effectively flat at about 2,500 calories per day, and the share represented by whole fruits actually declined in recent years across several demographics, Shelford said.

“If you eat more blueberries, you’re going to displace something else. It’s really a zero-sum game,” he said.

New blueberry plantings have slowed in North America and Chile, but farmers have still been enthusiastically committing new acreage to the crop in China, South Africa, Peru and Mexico, said Cort Brazelton, who heads business development at Fall Creek Farm & Nursery and tracks global blueberry production.

Mexico is in a strong position to supply “counterseasonal” fresh blueberries to U.S. consumers, since the country can ship its crop to the U.S. much faster than Chile, a prominent counterseasonal producer, Brazelton said.

Expansion of blueberry acreage in Peru is occurring in conjunction with overall agricultural growth in that country, which is tied to the construction of major irrigation projects, he said.

“If it grows in Peru, they’re planting it like crazy,” Brazelton said.

While North America remains an important destination for South American blueberries, producers on that continent are increasingly shipping more fruit to European and Asian markets, he said.

For North American farmers, remaining competitive will require keeping the per-unit cost of blueberries down while retaining a reputation for high quality, Brazelton said.

The stronger U.S. dollar presents a headwind for overseas sales, he said. “I wouldn’t make relying on a weak currency a tenet of successful exports.”

Tuesdays

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Portland area is bracing for freezing rain that could bring up to an inch of ice to some areas east of the city, with heavier accumulations in the Columbia River Gorge.

The National Weather Service issued an ice storm warning for Portland on Tuesday and an ice storm advisory for the central Willamette Valley.

And an incoming weather system is also beginning to spread freezing rain across a broad swath of the Cascades, Central Washington and southwest Washington. The system could turn roads and highways into skating rinks.

Forecasters say freezing rain will begin Tuesday morning and could last until late afternoon, with slick conditions overnight.

Portland can expect less than one-tenth of an inch of ice, but areas east of Interstate 205 and into the Columbia River Gorge could get an inch or more.

Nearly two dozen flights had already been delayed Tuesday morning at Portland International Airport due to ice concerns.

Oregon has been pummeled by snow and below-freezing temperatures for days, but a warming trend should mean a thaw and possible flooding later in the week.

ALSEA, Ore. — The inception of Leaping Lamb Farm was far from auspicious for novice sheep producer Scottie Jones.

Upon moving to damp rural Oregon from dry metropolitan Arizona in 2003 with her husband, Greg, Jones seemed to encounter disaster at every turn.

“Things just fell apart,” she said.

Fences, irrigation equipment and farm machinery constantly broke down while the sheep had trouble birthing lambs, leading Jones to question whether they’d gotten in over their heads when buying the 44-acre farm near Alsea, Ore.

“Quite honestly, it was a mid-life crisis,” she said. “We were naive and idealistic. If we’d known a lot more, we probably wouldn’t have done it.”

Knowing full well that the couple’s friends in Phoenix were taking bets on how soon they’d give up and move back, Jones vowed not to quit.

With the help of neighbors and Oregon State University Extension agents, Leaping Lamb Farm gradually found its legs.

Much like the pioneers who traversed the Oregon Trail, Jones said she may have underestimated the challenges lying ahead, but she does not regret the venture.

The couple bought more land, expanding to 67 acres, and sold lambs both directly to consumers and to larger sheep producers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Due to the paltry wool market, Jones also switched to raising hair sheep — specifically a cross between Katahdin and Dorper breeds — which had fewer birthing problems and better resistance to parasites, she said.

Even as she fine-tuned the operation, though, the farm was just breaking even financially.

Since farm chores kept her tied to the property, Jones decided to make the operation more profitable by starting a side business on-site.

“If I’m not going to leave the farm, what can I do?” she said.

Since she’d never been shy about socializing with strangers and was familiar with the concept of on-farm lodgings in Europe, Jones decided to open her property to overnight visitors.

Jones admits that her business plan for offering “farm stays” amounted to little more than “build it and they will come.”

Although her strategy was rather vague, that’s exactly what happened.

After Jones obtained a conditional use permit from the county government and launched a website in 2006, Leaping Lamb Farm was mentioned in four paragraphs of a Sunset magazine story on agritourism.

Despite the brevity of the reference, it nonetheless spurred public interest and further media attention.

An article mentioning Leaping Lamb Farm in a “foodie” magazine caught the attention of Kim Hall, a resident of Portland, Ore., who wanted to teach her four-year-old daughter about agriculture.

“I will probably never own a farm myself, so it was an opportunity to see what that’s like,” Hall said.

Over the past six years, Hall and her daughter, now 10, have repeatedly returned to Leaping Lamb Farm during different seasons.

The experience has changed as her daughter has grown older and become interested in new things, she said. “It’s always a different adventure.”

Lisa Peters, another Portland resident, has been coming back to the farm for three years with her two sons, now aged 13 and 15.

“It was magical,” she said, noting that they’ve pitched in with feeding the animals and distributing hay. “I don’t know how well we did at any of the tasks.”

Leaping Lamb Farms appeals mostly to families, as well as people who are thinking of leaving behind other careers to start farms, said Jones.

Visitors commonly help with chores such as collecting eggs and cleaning stalls, but some even assist with tail docking, ear tagging and castration duties.

“If you want to help, that’s great,” she said. “If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, you’re paying to be here.” Roughly 60 percent of the farm’s guest come from the Portland area, while the rest generally live along the West Coast.

The “farm stays” eventually became so popular that Jones had to turn away guests, steering them to other farms that offer overnight lodgings.

Those references led her to another project, the U.S. Farm Stay Association, which provides information about roughly 900 other farms that offer overnight lodgings across the country.

Jones created a website for the nonprofit association, also known as Farm Stay U.S., which is sustained by about 133 paying members who are allowed to display additional information and photos.

Farm stays appeal to consumers because the property is an attraction, not just a place to sleep, like a hotel, Jones said.

“A lot of people think they’re going to go places, but they don’t go anywhere because there’s enough to do here,” she said.

Leaping Lamb Farm

Owners: Scottie and Greg Jones

Hometown: Alsea, Ore.

Purpose: Raising lambs while providing lodgings to agritourists

Family: The couple has two grown daughters

Ages: Scottie is 63, Greg is 66

Education: Scottie earned a master’s degree in medieval archeology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1980 and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix in 2003. Greg obtained a doctorate in psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1978.

ONTARIO, Ore. — About 18 onion storage and packing facilities in southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon have collapsed over the past week from the weight of snow and ice, knocking out about 25 percent of the region’s total onion processing capacity, industry sources say.

“This is major. There are a lot of them down,” said Murakami Produce General Manager Grant Kitamura.

Prices for the Spanish bulb onions grown in this region have risen dramatically as a result.

Heavy snowstorms since December were followed by near-freezing rain last week and then more snow. That has caused many structures throughout the Treasure Valley area to collapse.

Kitamura, chairman of the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee’s promotion committee, said several other onion packing or storage facilities are on the brink.

“Some are still standing but they’re not looking too straight,” he said.

Partners Produce’s main onion packing facility in Payette, Idaho, collapsed and will be out of commission for at least seven months, said co-owner Eddie Rodriguez.

“I have 25-30 million pounds of onions that were destined to run through that line,” he said.

The company’s empty inventory holding facility also collapsed.

The roofs of at least four onion packing facilities have collapsed because of the weight of snow and ice.

“At least three of them will be out of commission the rest of the season and several are wounded,” Kitamura said.

At least 14 onion storage facilities have collapsed as well.

The disruptions will affect growers as well, said Oregon farmer Paul Skeen, president of the Malheur County Onion Growers Association.

“When a shipper loses their packing line, it’s not just him but all his growers have to figure out what to do as well,” he said. “All those onions have to go somewhere.”

There are about 300 onion farmers and 30 onion shippers in the region, which produces about 25 percent of the nation’s storage onions.

About 25 percent of the region’s total onion processing capacity is currently off line, according to several sources, and demand is exceeding supply, which has pushed prices up dramatically.

The cost for a 50-pound bag of yellow jumbos has risen from about $3.50 before the damage occurred to close to $6.50 now, said Shay Myers, general manager of Owyhee Produce in Nyssa, Ore.

“It’s directly related to the disruptions,” he said.

Rodriguez expects demand to continue to exceed supply for awhile because of the production disruptions.

“I think that will be the case throughout the rest of the season,” he said.

Demand for the region’s onions typically increases significantly following the new year, Kitamura said.

But the lost production capacity, coupled with trucking and railroad transportation issues related to the severe weather, has caused a significant reduction in the number of onions being shipped, Rodriguez said.

There are usually an average of about 180 total 40,000-pound shipments leaving the area each day this time of year but the actual number right now is around 110, he said.

“There have been massive disruptions in onion production this week,” Myers said.

He’s hopeful the production disruptions will be fixed and the region’s remaining onions will be shipped. “It’s just going to take a bit of time and some plan B’s and C’s.”

The timber industry thinks it may able to reverse President Barack Obama’s expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Southern Oregon.

The president’s decision to add 48,000 acres to the 65,000-acre national monument was praised by environmentalists and Oregon’s two senators, Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley.

But a timber industry trade group argued that Obama misused his power under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Travis Joseph, president of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council, said Friday the expansion improperly included several thousand acres of federal land that Congress has prioritized for logging.

“Can an administration come and change the meaning of a statute through the Antiquities Act?” he asked. “That’s the legal question, and our answer is no.”

The expansion includes at least 7,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management acreage — known as the O&C lands — that the agency sees as “harvestable,” Joseph said. 

Supporters of the expansion noted the original Cascade-Siskiyou monument designation also included O&C lands, and that it was never challenged legally. 

Michael Campbell, a BLM spokesman in Portland, said he couldn’t comment on the timber industry’s contention. But he said the agency’s initial belief was that harvest contracts already signed in lands covered by the expansion would be honored.

In addition, Republican Congressman Greg Walden said Thursday he will talk with the incoming Trump administration about reversing Obama’s action. But there’s slim precedent for that. 

“With this designation, the outgoing administration is locking up more of our public lands through a process that cut out many in the surrounding communities,” Walden said in a statement Thursday. “It appears like it was rigged from the beginning.”

Dave Willis of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council said there is strong public support for protecting an area of key biodiversity, like the Cascade-Siskiyou Monument.

Merkley said Friday he backed the monument expansion because it helped preserve an important outdoor area while being compatible with many existing uses. He said there is still grazing and timber cutting for fire management — as well as hunting, fishing and hiking.