MARSING, Idaho (AP) — Small, green blades of grass are sprouting next to bundles of buttercup flowers in some areas of Owyhee County, near Jordan Valley. A contrasting scene to what the hills looked like directly after the Soda Fire last summer, black and scorched.

Ed Wilsey, owner of Wilsey Ranch outside Marsing, said that over the past few months he’s watched the Bureau of Land Management seed the land through aerial tactics and drill seeding.

“I have to give them credit because they seeded fast,” Wilsey said. “Now we just have to hope Mother Nature brings us enough rain.”

While most of the grass seen growing near Wilsey’s ranch was established grass that survived the fire, a mix of rain and sun could help the diverse grass seed the BLM placed sprout within the next month.

The BLM created an extensive rehabilitation plan to help growth of sage brush and grass in Owyhee County, but months after the fire, ranchers are skeptical about the BLM’s chance of success.

During a meeting between Idaho and Oregon BLM officials and local ranchers affected by the fire, the BLM asked ranchers, who used the burned public land to graze cattle, to sign agreements saying they will stay off the land for at least two years. If ranchers did not sign the contracts, the BLM said it could suspend ranchers’ grazing rights.

“We need to get cows out there,” Wilsey said. “Cows will help get the seed in the ground. Just by walking, they dig and create a better land.”

Resting land for two years after a natural disaster is basic protocol. The Soda Fire ended more than six months ago, and many local ranchers are paying high costs per day to keep their cattle off the ground.

According to BLM documents, on Oct. 16 the BLM made the decision to implement emergency stabilization and rehabilitation projects and land treatments “necessary to reduce the immediate risk of erosion or damage due to the Soda Fire.”

The plan, which can be found on the BLM’s website, states the land in Owyhee County must be stabilized immediately. An Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation team of more than 40 natural resource specialists assessed damage and threats to life, property and resources on BLM managed lands in Idaho and Oregon.

In the plan, the BLM recognized four significant threats to the land: expansion of invasive plant species; habitat recovery for threatened species; increased runoff, erosion potential and resulting flooding; and loss of cultural resources.

The BLM plan is to plant desirable grasses and shrubs in the area.

“This will not only combat invasive weeds, it will assist the area in recovering back to sagebrush steppe,” the plan stated. “Which will in turn attract native wildlife, such as greater sage-grouse, deer, elk and hundreds of other sagebrush steppe species.”

The BLM also stated in the plan that fire lines, fuel breaks and other fire preventative methods will be sought to help keep the burned acres safe while sage brush is re-established. According to the BLM, it takes decades for sage brush and its coexisting wildlife to re-establish.

“We plan to implement fuel breaks as we work on rehabilitation plans,” the BLM wrote, “so we can improve the odds that this area will make a full recovery.”

According to the plan, almost 180,000 acres of BLM land burned in Idaho during the Soda Fire. Another 100,000 acres of privately owned land was burned as well.

In fiscal year 2015, the BLM plans to spend $10.8 million on the emergency stabilization portion of the rehabilitation. In 2016, the BLM estimates spending $18.9 million on emergency stabilization.

In the written agreement presented to ranchers during the meeting on Feb. 18, ranchers would have to stay off specific parts of the BLM land for at least two years or until certain objectives are met. BLM officials said in the meeting that ranchers would not have access to land after two years if plan objectives were not met, but they seemed positive that would not be an issue.

The objectives are broken into four sections: drill seeding, aerial grass seeding, natural recovery and other treatments.

Tony Richards, a rancher near Reynolds Creek, spoke up during the meeting saying he was concerned about the objectives.

“We could be off anywhere from six to eight years on parts of our allotment,” Richards said.

Richards and others at the meeting, including Owyhee County Commissioner Kelly Aberasturi, said land owners should not sign the agreement until it states only a two-year figure.

During the meeting, Peter Torma, a BLM range land management specialist, said the objectives are not meant to be unattainable.

“We’re not trying to get cows back in a hurry, but we are not trying to preclude them,” Torma said. “We’re trying to identify a path that we feel is actually going to keep us moving in the right direction.”

According to the agreement, the earliest that ranchers could start grazing on public land would be in the year 2018. Many land allotments will be closed until 2019 because the BLM will perform drill seeding in the fall of 2016.

Other BLM officials during the meeting asked ranchers and farmers to look at the “bigger picture” when it comes to the health of the land, stating the plan could create a long-lasting future and protection from other natural disasters.

At Wilsey’s ranch, it’s hard to tell where the fire burned. New grass is growing on the hills, both seeded and grass that survived the disaster. He said the BLM provided him with enough seed to start growth on his private land, and they aerial-seeded the land around him.

Overall, the success of the grass is a mix of good luck and diligent effort.

“We were lucky we had a wet season,” Wilsey said. “They really did work hard out there, but now we have to hope the seeds germinate. But I have a lot of faith in what they did this fall.”

If Wilsey and other ranchers agree to stay off the land for two years or more while BLM objectives are met, it could cost the ranchers millions.

February and March is calving season for cattle ranchers, and Wilsey already has 60 new head of cattle walking around on his land. Many of Wilsey’s neighbors are feeding hay to their cattle, which is a much higher cost than grazing. Wilsey and others have taken some of their herds and moved them to other ranches to feed.

Wilsey said the cows are used to walking and grazing. Because of this, the animals he chose to keep on site are eating less hay, hoping to start eating the new grass on the other side of the electric fence. Lines of hay sit untouched by hundreds of cows and the new calves.

To keep a cow on another ranch costs $2.50 per day, and Wilsey has 180 cows. To keep a yearling on the ranch costs $1.80 per day, and the Wilsey ranch has sent 150 yearlings. So it is costing Wilsey $720 per day to keep his cows on another ranch to graze.

“The best method is to let the cows graze,” Wilsey said.

The beef from the Wilsey ranch is sold at the Boise Farmers’ Market, the Boise Co-op and many other local markets in the Treasure Valley. He said raising the price of his beef would not help cover costs because his competitors would beat him with lower prices.

It’s the high costs to ranchers like Wilsey that have Owyhee County commissioners concerned. During the meeting on Feb. 18, Commissioner Jerry Hoagland commented that the loss of revenue to ranchers will hurt his county’s economy.

“That’s affecting us beside you,” he said. “Now you’ve got to increase more money to go out and find pasture somewhere else. You can’t survive in that, which means a loss to us.”

Wilsey said he and his wife, Debbie, are playing the waiting game in hopes the seeds germinate and BLM will open its land up soon.

LANGLOIS — The Langlois Lions will be hosting their famous Spaghetti Feed starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, April 2, at the Lions Club on Floras Lake Loop. This annual benefit event is ear marked for the club's 2016 Pacific High…

The first step of reviewing and perhaps revising the state’s contentious wolf management plan begins March 18 in Salem when the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission meets with selected panelists.

The review comes as Oregon’s wolf population continues to grow and stake out new territory, a development cheered by activists and frowned at by livestock producers. An annual survey by ODFW biologists showed the state had a minimum of 110 wolves at the end of 2015, up from 81 at the end of 2014. In 2009, the state counted only 14 wolves.

An ODFW wolf report said 33 pups born in 2015 survived through the end of the year.

The ODFW Commission voted 4-2 in November 2015 to remove wolves from the state endangered species list. Environmental groups challenged the decision, arguing among other things that ODFW should have completed the plan review before de-listing wolves. The Oregon Legislature and Gov. Kate Brown approved a bill that ratified the decision and nullified the legal challenge, however.

The plan review may take nine months. Friday’s commission meeting will include input from organizations that have been involved in wolf issues the past 10 years, including Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Oregon Wild, Oregon Cattleman’s Association, Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Hunters Association and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Although no longer covered under the state Endangered Species Act, wolves ranging west of Highways 395, 78 and 95 – the western two-thirds of the state – remain protected under the federal ESA. ODFW officials say the state wolf management plan remains in effect and believe it will protect wolves from illegal hunting.

The commission meeting at 8 a.m. Friday at ODFW headquarters, 4034 Fairview Industrial Drive S.E., Salem.

BANDON — The community has an opportunity to support the Bandon Swimming Pool program and enjoy an evening that includes a great meal, interesting silent auction items to bid on, and a night of special entertainment with its first Spring…

ANDERSON, Calif. — Private landowners in Northern California and parts of the Northwest are scrambling to adopt conservation plans for the fisher, which may soon be added to the federal list of protected species.

In Northern California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is taking public comments through April 1 on Sierra Pacific Industries’ proposed 10-year enhancement-of-survival permit, which would allow incidental take of fishers in exchange for improving their habitat on its timberlands.

Measures the timber company would undertake on about 1.5 million acres in 16 counties would include limiting logging activities during critical denning periods, taking steps to keep out trespassers growing marijuana and making sure fishers can’t get into water tanks at logging sites and drown, according to USFWS.

The permit “would allow us to continue managing as we would have absent the listing because we are improving habitat conditions for the fisher,” Sierra Pacific spokesman Mark Pawlicki told the Capital Press in an email.

The proposed Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances “provides benefits to the fisher that exceed any protections that would occur from a listing,” he said.

The USFWS is expected to decide April 7 whether to list the West Coast population of fishers as threatened in Washington, Oregon and California.

A mammal about the size of a house cat, the fisher is a member of the weasel family

Sierra Pacific’s application is one of two proposed CCAAs for which the federal government is taking comments. The other is from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which wants to sign up forest landowners to voluntarily protect fishers to avoid facing tougher land-use limits.

About 60 to 75 landowners have expressed interest in Washington state’s agreement, WDFW wildlife biologist Gary Bell has estimated. The public comment period for that agreement ends March 30.

A similar plan organized by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is under review at the Department of the Interior headquarters in Washington, D.C., and should be out for public comment soon, said Jody Caicco, a USFWS forest resources division manager in Portland.

About eight timber companies have voiced interest in Oregon’s plan, Caicco said. As long as the plan is published before April 7 and the comment period is underway, landowners can sign up within 30 days of a listing, before it is recorded in the Federal Register, she said.

“It’s actually going to be down to the wire, for sure,” Caicco said. “But … all it is is a matter of submitting their application.”

There would be differences between the agreements, officials said. While Washington’s plan would be administered by the state, USFWS would handle applications from individual landowners in Oregon under a single agreement, Caicco said.

In addition, while Washington’s plan protects known fisher sites, California’s is geared toward generally preserving habitat. That’s because animals in Washington are collared, enabling officials to know where they are, while in California they are not collared, said Robert Carey, a USFWS wildlife biologist in Yreka, Calif.

Neither Carey nor Caicco are aware of other landowners preparing CCAA applications on their own, and they doubt there would be enough time. Despite all the scrambling to meet the deadlines, there is no chance a listing decision would be delayed, Carey said.

“The decision was already extended once,” he said. “Originally the decision was due out in October 2015 and they extended it out to April of 2016. … I don’t think they can (extend it again).”

Once a listing is published in the Federal Register, a landowner would not be able to obtain a candidate conservation agreement, Carey said. He or she could submit a Habitat Conservation Plan and apply for an incidental take permit, but they would not give a landowner quite as much latitude, Carey said.

Some landowner groups hope their voluntary conservation efforts will avert a listing of the fisher, as voluntary protection measures were a major factor in the USFWS decision not to list the greater sage grouse. The Washington Forest Protection Association and Washington Farm Forestry Association are among groups supporting the state’s approach.

For Sierra Pacific Industries, the CCAA is seen as a sort of insurance as the company anticipates taking fishers as a result of periodically harvesting and moving timber within the animal’s habitat.

Even if the fisher is not listed, “we will still incorporate the measures in the CCAA in our forest management to assure that the fisher is protected during our normal operations,” Pawlicki said.

ELLENSBURG, Wash. — Mary Lou Masterson Burke, a cattle rancher well known for her expertise in water and private property rights, died March 13 in John Day, Ore. She was 80.

Burke was born July 3, 1935, in Ellensburg, and grew up on the historic Masterson Ranch, homesteaded by her great-grandfather in 1880, in the Teanaway Valley.

She married Pat Burke in 1956 and they ranched and raised their family together in the Teanaway until moving to Fox, Ore., near John Day, in 2006. The family operates ranches near Fox and Ellensburg.

Mary Burke was the first woman president of the Washington State Cattlemen’s Association and was past president of Kittitas County Cattlewomen and Kittitas County Cattlemen. She served on committees of the National Cattlemen’s Association.

“She’s been friends of my grandparents longer than I’ve been alive. She was always an inspiration to me, encouraged me to become an attorney and mentored me,” said Toni Meacham, a Connell attorney active in agricultural issues.

“She would say, ‘Go forth and do good.’ She always told me that,” Meacham said.

Marriage interrupted Burke’s college career but she became self taught in water and private property issues and law and became a knowledgeable resource to legislators and attorneys in the 1980s and 1990s, Meacham said.

She testified before Congress multiple times on agricultural issues and people across the nation consulted her, she said.

Her interest in law was nurtured when she went to work in a law office in the 1970s when cattle prices were low. She had a quick grasp of issues and written material.

“She read the whole ESA (Endangered Species Act) and could digest it, remember it and see the impacts,” Meacham said.

She had a distinctive voice, a way with words and “could insult people and they wouldn’t even know they’d been insulted,” Meacham said. “She didn’t speak frivolously. She always had a point and would get to it even when you thought she was rambling.”

Burke is survived by her husband, Pat, of Fox, and sons Joe, of Fox, and James, of Ellensburg, and other family members.

A funeral service was set for 11 a.m. March 18 at the Ellensburg Presbyterian Church. Memorial contributions may be made to the Presbyterian Church of Mt. Vernon, Ore., or the Washington Cattlemen’s Association Endowment Trust Fund. Arrangements are by Brookside Funeral Home.

PORTLAND — Heavy rain and mountain snow that socked Western Oregon March 10-14 restored the low- and middle-elevation snowpack that had been lost during an earlier warm stretch, but continued weather fluctuations make summer water predictions a guessing game, according to the USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service.

Scott Oviatt, NRCS snow survey supervisor in Portland, said it’s becoming more likely the region will have sufficient water this summer, but an extended warm spell and early snowpack melt could change the outlook.

Irrigation districts and reservoir operators might want to hedge their bets, he said. “If you have the ability to store a little more (water) now, that’s great,” he said.

Oregon river basins are “right at the cusp” in terms of having sufficient water, Oviatt said. In most of them, the amount of water contained in the snowpack — called the “snow-water equivalent “ — is near normal or above normal for this time of year.

Notable exceptions are the Willamette River basin, which is at 83 percent of normal, the Hood-Sandy-Lower Deschutes areas, which are at 84 percent of normal, and the Owyhee Basin, which sits at 82 percent. The comparisons are based on averages compiled from 1981 to 2010.

The snowpack levels are somewhat mixed, but heavy rain this winter has put precipitation totals off the charts. Every Oregon river basin measured by NRCS has recorded precipitation more than 100 percent of normal.

“That doesn’t mean the drought’s over,” Oviatt said. Many reservoirs were low, and refilling them with rain or melting snow takes time.

“It’s a building process,” Oviatt said. “This is a step in the right direction.”

A bill that averts an environmentalist lawsuit by ratifying the removal of wolves from Oregon’s list of endangered species has been signed by Gov. Kate Brown.

Oregon wildlife regulators found that wolf populations have recovered enough to delist the species last year, which prompted three environmental groups — Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and the Center for Biological Diversity — to petition the Oregon Court of Appeals to overturn the decision.

House Bill 4040, which holds that the delisting process complied with the law, was approved by Oregon lawmakers during the 2016 legislative session and effectively voided the environmentalists’ argument that the decision was illegal.

Brown signed HB 4040 on March 15 over the objections of environmentalists, who urged her to veto the bill, arguing the legislature shouldn’t have interfered with a judicial review of the wolf delisting that they had sought.

SALEM — A ballot initiative to end daylight-saving time in Oregon is on hold until 2017.

Medford resident David Miles launched a petition drive in November to abolish the tradition by 2018.

Miles said his force of about 20 volunteers was insufficient to gather the required 117,578 signatures to place the measure on the ballot in November. As of Sunday, the group had collected about 1,000 signatures, Miles said.

“We have our sights set on next year,” Miles said.

“I had to look at it realistically, as much as I would have loved to have it on the ballot this year,” he added.

Miles said he plans to start a Go Fund Me page to raise money to hire paid petitioners next year.

The community service officer with Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said he started the initiative after feeling tired of complaining every year about losing sleep and adjusting clocks and deciding he should do something about it.

Adjusting the clock forward in the spring may cause spikes in workplace accidents and traffic crashes, according to multiple bodies of research, including one by the University of Colorado.

A University of California Berkeley study found that a two-month extension of daylight-saving time in Australia during the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 failed to curtail electricity demand.

Lawmakers in several states, including California, have proposed alternatives to daylight saving changes or asked that voters decide on whether to keep the practice.

“What I would really like to see the country say is enough is enough and end daylight saving nationally,” Miles said.

He said if more states opt to abolish the practice, there may be more momentum for a national change.

Oregon Sen. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, introduced a bill in January 2015 that would have let voters to decide whether to abolish daylight saving in 2021.

Dozens of Oregonians testified in favor of the measure.

The legislation stalled in the Senate Rules Committee because some lawmakers were concerned about being out of sync with Washington and California, according to Thatcher’s office.

The country had an on-and-off-again relationship with daylight-saving time until 1966 when Congress codified it to try to simplify a confusing patchwork of different time zones across the country. Individual states were allowed to opt out. Arizona, Hawaii and some U.S. territories have chosen to remain on standard time.

The No More Daylight Saving Time in Oregon initiative was the first that Miles sponsored.

“I’m not upset it didn’t get on the ballot,” he said. “I learned a lot. I understand that some of my goals were unrealistic. It’ll give me more of an ability to be successful next time.”

In the meantime, he maintains a Facebook page where he’ll give supporters updates on the effort.

https://www.facebook.com/nomoredstinoregon/

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Ammon Bundy has come to the defense of a sheriff who is under investigation for his actions during the occupation of a national wildlife refuge in southeast Oregon.

The state agency that licenses police officers has asked the state Justice Department to look into complaints that Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer met with some of the occupiers during the 41-day standoff.

Bundy, the now-jailed leader of the occupation, said in a recording posted on the Bundy Ranch Facebook page that Palmer didn’t get caught in the “political deception” that the people of Burns were in danger during the protest. He says Palmer went to the source and learned that the protesters “would not hurt another person.”

If Palmer is found to have violated standards, he could lose his police certification.

BAKER CITY, Ore. (AP) — Seven months after Baker County fought its largest wildfire ever, a helicopter has returned to the region -- this time with wood instead of water.

The Baker City Herald reports that the chopper is dropping hundreds of tons of wood mulch on land burned by the Cornet-Windy Ridge fire. The Forest Service hired Mountain West Helicopters of Provo, Utah, for the work.

The mulch is expected to stabilize steep slopes that were stripped of vegetation by the fire.

Ray Lovisone of Wallowa-Whitman National Forest is overseeing the work. He says it will reduce the risk of mudslides in Stices Gulch and along Highway 245.

Lovisone says the work focuses on about 88 acres where the combination of steep ground and high-intensity fire has caused a high risk of slides.

BANDON – The economy, the competition, the mindset of building and keeping a business thriving and relevant is the key to life’s success for Granny. Unfortunately, her long-time recipe for success has grown old-hat to customers. New businesses and creative…

Sundays

EAGLE, Idaho — ConAgra Foods, Inc. announced Friday that its Lamb Weston processing facility will expand operations in Boardman, Ore.

The $30 million investment will add additional processing capacity for making formed products such as hash brown patties and potato puffs. The addition of the line at the company’s existing facility is expected to add 50 jobs to the 390 people already employed by the company in Boardman.

With continued increase in demand for frozen potato and formed products, this capacity expansion is necessary to fulfill Lamb Weston’s global growth projections, according to a press release from the company.

Construction on the processing line is expected to begin this spring, with completion in 2017. The added line will increase processing capacity by approximately 50 million pounds.

“With the frozen potato category growing globally, we have tremendous opportunity to support our customers’ growth in the U.S. and around the world,” said Lamb Weston President Greg Schlafer in a press release. “To capture that growth, we need to make more products. Expanding our operations in the Columbia Basin — with access to great potatoes, people and ports — just makes sense.”

The facility in Boardman is close to growing, storage and shipping operations, with easy access to the Port of Morrow. The company opened an initial expansion of the facility in June 2014, adding 300 million pounds of capacity with a new fry line. That $200 million project included plans for the addition announced Friday.

“Lamb Weston’s planned expansion shows their continued commitment to the Port of Morrow, Boardman and the Mid-Columbia region as the right place to do business,” said Gary Neal, general manager of the Port of Morrow. “Their ongoing investments add good paying jobs to our region and we are fortunate to have such great partners at the Port.”

Lamb Weston employees approximately 4,500 people at a corporate office and seven manufacturing facilities in the Columbia Basin, and operates 22 manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and China.

PORTLAND — Jason Ball has an unusual job at an unusual place. He’s the research chef at the Food Innovation Center in Portland, which itself is a joint venture of Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences and the state Department of Agriculture.

The FIC was among the first in the U.S. Ball believes his position is still somewhat unusual, but may become more common over time.

Ball’s job is to help develop food products. He said being a research chef combines the technical skills of culinary arts with the principles and methodologies of food science.

Which leads us to dulse, which is basically a red seaweed. Yum.

But it’s nutritious. OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport figured out 15 years ago how to raise dulse in tanks rather than harvest it from the ocean. The Marine Science Center was raising it to feed abalone when an OSU business professor, Chuck Toombs, took notice and turned his marketing students loose on the project. OSU fisheries researcher Chris Langdon and colleagues patented a strain of dulse, and Ball was hired to figure out what to make with it.

His hiring had its own bit of dulse kismet. Ball was in Copenhagen, working on plant-based ice cream products for the Nordic Food Lab, when he saw the job notice from the Food Innovation Center.

He was snacking on a dulse ice cream sandwich as he emailed then- center Director Michael Morrisey and FIC Product Development Manager Sarah Masoni to ask about the position.

He made sure to mention his snack choice; he got the job and started about 14 months ago.

The first commercial product to come from Ball’s FIC work is a dulse seaweed salad dressing and marinade, sold at New Seasons stores in the Portland area.

Ball enjoys the challenge of developing products that are “less luxurious or appealing.” It’s easy to make lobster or steak taste good, he said, but seaweed?

“I like to say that I am an equal opportunity cook — I don’t discriminate against ingredients,” Ball said by email. “Why can’t we approach all ingredients with that excitement and enthusiasm?”

Jason Ball

Who: Research chef at the Food Innovation Center in Portland, a joint venture of Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

Personal: Age 31, originally from Chicago. Worked as a chef there, and in New York and outside London. Bounced about Europe. Began work at FIC in January 2015. Lives in Portland.

Best known for so far: Dulse development work. Developing food than can be made from seaweed, which in turn is grown in tanks, not harvested from the ocean.

All hail vegetables and bread: Finds cooking meat and fish “somewhat easy” and thinks vegetables are more interesting. Enjoys baking bread, especially natural yeast sourdough. “Honestly, warm bread (out of the oven — with butter and salt) is one of my favorite things to eat — so simple, yet so delicious,” he says by email.

His choice for an Oregon breakfast: A frittata with kale sprouts, heritage farm cheese, green garlic, chili flakes and potatoes, probably garnished with herbs and flowers. On the side he’d have a salad of mixed chicories, hazelnuts, herbs and tahini dressing. Fresh bread and coffee, as well.

When not cooking: Can most often be found at Lovely’s Fifty Fifty in North Portland, which he says has the best pizza and ice cream. Ever. “Hands down my favorite restaurant in Portland, maybe even the world,” he says.

A wintertime sighting of sage grouse could prove significant in the legal controversy over proposed wind turbines on ranchland in southeast Oregon.

Nearly five years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved a 12-mile transmission line across its property that’s necessary for the construction of a 100-megawatt wind power project in Harney County.

Ranchers and community leaders hoped the installation of wind turbines on private land would provide a new source of income and jobs in the rural county, which has long stagnated economically.

The Oregon Natural Desert Association and the Audubon Society of Portland filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to block the transmission line, but the BLM says continued legal uncertainty has preventing the project from moving forward.

The dispute has now landed before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held oral arguments in the case in Portland, Ore., on March 10.

During the hearing, appellate judges Raymond Fisher and Marsha Berzon sharply questioned why the BLM omitted mention of sage grouse being sighted in vicinity of the project in late winter.

Plaintiffs argue the sighting lends credence to their claim that the bird — formerly a candidate for Endangered Species Act protection — uses the area for over-wintering habitat.

“Wind-swept ridges are precisely the types of places you’d expect to find these birds in the winter,” said Peter Lacy, attorney for ONDA.

The environmentalists claim that BLM’s approval of the transmission line violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the agency didn’t specifically analyze whether the project area contained winter habitat for the species.

Instead, the agency extrapolated that sage grouse didn’t inhabit the area over winter from data collected at nearby sites, noting in its “environmental impact statement,” or EIS, that no birds were sighted after December.

Judge Fisher said this extrapolation was based on error, since the record of evidence shows that a consultant observed four sage grouse in the area during a visit in February.

“There is a factual misstatement that appears in the EIS,” he said. “I don’t know how you get around that.”

Judge Berzon also seemed troubled by the BLM’s mistake, saying that if the agency is going to extrapolate, then the extrapolation should be based on particularly solid data.

Peter Krzywicki, an attorney for BLM, acknowledged the report contained a “misstatement” but said the “stray sighting” of sage grouse does not change the conclusion that the species generally doesn’t occupy the area in winter.

The “exceptional case” of sage grouse appearing in the vicinity of the project in February doesn’t mean it’s a regular occurrence, Krzywicki said.

Dominic Carollo, an attorney for Harney County, said the 9th Circuit should defer to the BLM’s expertise about land conditions in the area.

The agency is familiar enough with the region to know the site is too snowy to support winter habitat for sage grouse, Carollo said.

Federal courts are required to defer to agency technical expertise, so it stands to reason they must also defer to its knowledge about something as basic as snow conditions, he said.

Peter Lacy, the attorney for ONDA, countered that wind can blow away snow from such an “escarpment,” uncovering sage brush habitat, so the the agency must conduct site-specific monitoring rather than simply “eyeball it.”

PORTLAND (AP) — Two Oregon state troopers who fatally shot one of the main figures in an armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge say they believed he was about to shoot one of their colleagues.

Transcripts of interviews with the troopers are contained in 360 pages of documents released Thursday by Oregon law authorities from their investigation into the Jan. 26 death of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.

The two troopers said they believed Finicum was reaching for a gun inside his jacket pocket and that he was about to shoot a colleague of the officers about 15 feet from Finicum.

Both troopers said Finicum repeatedly reached into his jacket while refusing to surrender.

Investigators say a loaded pistol was found inside Finicum’s jacket pocket after his death.

Earlier this week investigators said they have concluded that the troopers were justified in shooting Finicum.

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office says reports related to the ongoing federal and state investigations aren’t included in the 360 pages released Thursday.

The documents include forensic reports, interview transcripts, photos from the shooting scene and other material.

A prosecutor ruled the shooting was justified, but FBI agents at the scene are under investigation for failing to disclose that they fired two shots during the confrontation. Neither hit Finicum.

An overwhelming majority of voters in Malheur County rejected the idea Tuesday of a national monument in a corner of southeast Oregon known as the Owyhee Canyonlands.

The vast and rugged area is known for its stunning red rock geology and canyons, extreme remoteness, and wildlife habitat. It’s also an important area for cattle grazing and hunting.

The idea of an Owyhee National Monument is championed by Keen Footwear. The Portland-based company led a petition campaign to convince President Obama to designate the monument, using his executive authority through the Antiquities Act.

Malheur County leaders decided to put the idea to citizens with an advisory vote, and county Clerk Deborah DeLong says voter turnout was high for a special election — higher even than some primary elections. Ninety percent of voters rejected the monument proposal. In some rural precincts, 100 percent of voters voted no.

“It’s amazing to me that the difference in the vote was 90 percent no and 10 percent yes,” said DeLong. “That’s a huge statement.”

Malheur County resident Tim Davis leads the grassroots group Friends of the Owyhee in Malheur County. He voted yes on the monument proposal, because he said it’s important “to have areas like this for people to explore and love.”

“Now that the people of Malheur County have spoken loudly and clearly against a 2.5 million acre federal monument, it’s time for Gov. (Kate) Brown and our U.S. senators to speak out against it as well,” said Steve Russell, Chairman of the Owyhee Basin Stewardship Coalition, in a statement. “Oregon already has millions of acres of protected lands, rivers and oceans.”

Conservation proposals for wilderness or monument designations in the Owyhee have also drawn fierce local opposition during recent public meetings. The Oregon Natural Desert Association has been talking about wilderness in the Owyhee for years, but that can only be designated through Congress.

President Obama has not given any indication that he plans to designate the Owyhee a national monument, as some conservationists propose. Obama has already created or expanded 19 national monuments. Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell said last week that she is not aware of any coordination between her office and the White House on a monument proposal.

The Malheur County vote is advisory only and holds no legal weight.

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