“To let fires burn in July and August is ridiculous.” — Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus in the New York Times, Sept. 22, 1988

Rich Fairbanks walks a forest trail through a stretch where two wildfires have burned in the last six years.

The ground is mostly bare, and the tree trunks are striped with black, scorched bark.

Fairbanks has worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a wildland firefighter and as a wilderness advocate. He is thrilled by all this. He points up at the green crowns of the trees with delight.

“Some beautiful hardwoods in here!” He exclaims. “Look at those canyon live oaks – really nice! They all made it.”

Last summer, the woods were on fire to the right of this trail in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, which straddles southwestern Oregon and northern California. But the flames died out soon after crossing the path – when they reached a part of the forest that had already burned in 2012. The old fire had taken out all the plants and brush that would have served as fuel.

“What they had was a very gentle kind of fire,” Fairbanks said. “It just all around was a good fire in many ways.”

This may sound like an odd way to talk at a time when catastrophic wildfires are burning throughout the arid West, literally causing death, widespread destruction and choking smoke that hangs like a funeral shroud over many communities.

But a variety of forest experts say that one of the best ways to reduce the threat of these mega-blazes is to use fire itself. They say we need to increase the pace of prescribed fire and let some wildfires continue to burn when it’s safe to do so.

Of course, there’s not nearly as much political support for letting fires burn as there is for putting fires out.

“Our knowledge of fire proceeds forward, and there’s always a lag between what we know and what the general public understands,” Fairbanks said. “And even lagging behind that is what the politicians are willing to act on.”

John Bailey, a forestry professor and fire expert at Oregon State University, said contrary to what Smokey Bear and the U.S. Forest Service once told us, “there is no smoke-free future” in western U.S. forests. We either use fire as a tool to help clear out the dense undergrowth, he said, or we wait for it to be done by explosive wildfires driven by the worst weather conditions.

“If you make me king and I’m able to control the future,” Bailey said, “I’ll burn thousands of acres at a time. Just burning hundreds of acres isn’t going to get us ahead of this program. It’s still going to leave wildfire doing most of the work.” 

In practice, that’s harder to carry out, in part because politicians who represent fire-prone regions are reluctant to tell their smoke-weary constituents that there sometimes needs to be more fire in the forest.

“Our members of Congress know that overall the public doesn’t like to breathe smoke,” said Andy Stahl, who heads the Eugene-based Forest Service Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “The public doesn’t like to feel threatened. The public thinks firefighters are heroes, and they want the fires put out.”

Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, represents eastern and southern Oregon. He is well-versed on wildfire issues. 

He said  fire can indeed be “a management tool when appropriately applied.” But in an interview with OPB, the Republican lawmaker was quick to raise several caution flags.

“We’re a long way from being ready to just say, ‘Oh, we can do prescribed burns throughout the forest. Let ‘er burn,’” Walden said.  “I don’t think that makes a lot of sense.”  

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington is the top Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, and she’s introduced legislation that includes a bigger role for prescribed fire. However, she was quick to raise concerns about the practice as well. 

“To me, one of the key issues in thinking about prescribed burn is that in hotter, drier conditions you have to be very careful,” Cantwell said. “There probably are some examples where people thought they could do prescribed burn … and what they found is it got out of hand really quickly because of those weather conditions.”

Some key members of Congress would simply like to avoid the subject. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been one of the most visible legislators on wildfire issues. He’s urged the Forest Service to beef up its fleet of aerial tankers, and he worked hard to revamp the agency’s budget to provide more money for fire prevention.

But the normally loquacious senator turned down a request for an interview on the subject of using fire as a management tool.  

Contrary to Northwest politicians’ concerns about prescribed fires, they are typically set during spring and fall, when conditions are less hazardous.

Bailey, the OSU professor, said thinning the forest first and applying fire afterward can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in forests that are overstocked with trees from a century of wildfire suppression. Northwest politicians are eager to support the thinning part of that equation, but they’re less enthusiastic about the burning.

Several legislators said that fire is hard to use as a tool when the forests are so much more densely stocked than they were 100 years ago.

“We’ve got to manage back to a point where you can regularly allow fire,” said Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, whose southwestern Oregon district regularly grapples with wildfire. “I mean, a lot of these forests are in a condition where you can’t go in with fire because it’s just way too dense.”

Political barriers might explain why some forest restoration projects complete the thinning but not the burning part of the plan. 

Bailey said the effectiveness of the dual treatment regime of thinning and burning was demonstrated during the 2017 Milli Fire that threatened the town of Sisters in the Deschutes National Forest. The fire roared through an area that had been thinned and burned by prescribed fire just a few years ago – and Bailey said that the treated area helped knock the Milli Fire down. Without that, he said, Sisters “would have been at the mercy of what the weather was doing.”

That experience has helped change local attitudes. Sisters Mayor Chuck Ryan wrote a letter to the state supporting the greater use of prescribed burns.

“While we may be reducing near-term exposure to smoke by limiting prescribed fire now,” he wrote, “it comes at the expense of future Oregonians who will face increasingly severe wildfires and wildfire smoke.”

Prescribed burning is only part of the equation. Bailey and other experts say the Forest Service should be more determined to let some fires burn. It’s the only way, they say, to make big reductions in that catastrophic fuel buildup. 

“Most ignitions happen during much more modest fire weather conditions,” said Bailey, when it’s cooler, wetter and safer to let the fire do some of the work of reducing fuel loads.

Ironically, he said, those are the easiest fires to extinguish, but putting those fires out “just kicks the can down the road to when the wildfires only happen under the worst conditions.” 

The notion of letting some fires burn is something not too many lawmakers want to endorse.

“Maybe if you’re in the middle of a wilderness area that has no abutting private property, that’s just fine,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. “But the real world is, in most cases, there are businesses and homes in some proximity.”

Even if legislators are hesitant to push forward on using fire as a tool, there are signs of change.

This year’s congressional budget deal included provisions aimed at allowing the Forest Service to keep its budget from being cannibalized by rapidly rising fire-fighting costs. As a result, there’s broad hope the agency can start working its way through a huge backlog of forest restoration projects. 

In Oregon alone, there is planned work on about 1.6 million acres that has passed environmental reviews but has gone unfunded. Prescribed fire has been recommended for about half of that acreage.

Vicki Christiansen, interim Forest Service chief, told Congress that “we have to use every tool in the toolbox for treating those hazardous fuels … That is also using fire when we are in control of fire because fire will reduce fuel loads in many of these ecosystems.”

Back in Oregon, the state departments of Forestry and Environmental Quality are working to ease the state’s stringent smoke management rules, making it easier to issue the permits needed to conduct prescribed burns.

State Forester Peter Daugherty said current rules prohibit any visible smoke in communities. The revamped rules, which are still under study, would allow some exceptions for a short duration if there are measures in place to protect people particularly vulnerable to smoke.

“There could be a significant increase in the use of fire if we had the resources and can effectively protect populations,” said Daugherty, adding that it “would help protect [us] from fire as well as from wildfire smoke in the long run.”

Richard Whitman, DEQ’s executive director, said climate-change projections show the coast range becoming more susceptible to wildfire. And thanks to winds blowing eastward across those mountains and into the Willamette Valley, that’s something that could threaten air quality in the state’s major population centers if more isn’t done to reduce fuel loads.

“The frequency and scale of wildfire on the West is going up,” Whitman said. “So this is an issue whether we like it or not … we’re going to have to deal this one way or another.”

Oregonians will have their own chance to weigh in on whether to open the door to more prescribed fire. The agencies will hold public hearings this month in LaGrande, Bend, Klamath Falls, Eugene and Medford. If history is any guide, several of these cities could be under a smoky haze at the time.

An Oregon beef packing company that shut down earlier this year has attracted a “potential buyer” to purchase its facilities and equipment “as a package.”

When Bartels Packing of Eugene, Ore., closed in March, the company owed about $4.6 million to cattle suppliers and feedlots and left the local livestock market without a significant buyer.

The court-appointed receiver who took over the company’s finances, Richard Hooper of Pivotal Solutions, has since met with four interested parties who toured the slaughterhouse and processing plant.

Hooper has also been in contact with liquidators, but owner Chris Bartels preferred to sell the equipment “as part of a functioning meat harvest and packing facility” to fetch the highest value, according to court documents.

One of those potential buyers has now submitted a “letter of intent” to purchase the packer’s assets as well the underlying property, which is owned by an affiliated firm.

“Hopefully, we will be able to convert that interest into a purchase-and-sale agreement,” Hooper said.

Possible sale terms and the potential buyer’s identity weren’t disclosed but the chance of a new beef packer operating the facilities is welcome news for Oregon’s cattle industry.

“We definitely need another packer in the game,” said Tom Elder, manager of the Woodburn Livestock Exchange, one of the auction yards where Bartels bid for cattle.

Though he’d like to see cattle prices go higher, the market has remained “steady” since the company shut down, Elder said. “It didn’t fall apart.”

Bartels was an important buyer of organic and grass fed cattle, so finding a replacement could boost prices in those niche markets by 10 to 20 percent, said Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

“Competition should really help to drive that market up,” Rosa said, particularly since cattle shipped to more distant packers are “really getting discounted.”

Hopefully, a sale would allow cattle suppliers to be repaid and the facilities to restart soon, he said. “They’d really modernized it and spent quite a bit of money on the facility.”

Upon filing for receivership, owner Chris Bartels expected the company’s roughly $14 million in assets would cover its $8.3 million in debt, which includes the amount owed for cattle.

The judge overseeing the case recently approved USDA “trust” payments of more than $600,000 to eligible cattle suppliers, but not all sellers qualify for such claims under federal law. Only those who don’t sell livestock on credit are covered by a defunct packer’s “trust” assets.

The Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce has met with the receiver and served as a “resource” to facilitate a potential sale of Bartels Packing, which employed 142 people before closing.

“Our overall hope is to find an owner-operator to run that facility and bring back those jobs,” said Josh Monge, the chamber’s economic development director. “We don’t want it pieced out. ... It’s not just the jobs, it’s the economic activity surrounding that, too.”

A federal appeals court has upheld a legal victory won by Oregon farmers who prevailed against an out-of-state bank’s lawsuit over their radish seed crop.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Northwest Bank of Warren, Pa., could not seize 7.4 million pounds of radish seed grown by the farmers as collateral for a loan to a defunct seed broker.

More than 40 growers had produced the seed but were unable to sell it when Cover Crop Solutions, the seed broker, shut down operations in 2015.

Then, Northwest Bank filed a complaint against the farmers, arguing they had to turn over the seed because it served as collateral for a $7.2 million loan issued to Cover Crop Solutions.

A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in 2016 but the ruling was challenged before the 9th Circuit, which has now agreed that Northwest Bank had no security interest in the radish seed.

Although a licensing deal with the radish cultivar’s breeder said the seed was the property of Cover Crop Solutions, that’s irrelevant in the dispute with farmers because “the growers were not a party to that agreement,” the 9th Circuit said.

Cover Crop Solutions entered into the licensing agreement before the radish seeds were harvested and then never acquired the finished crop, so the broker had no ownership interest in it, the ruling said.

Even if the seed broker hadn’t breached its contract with growers by failing to pay them, its licensing agreement for the cultivar assigned contract rights to the breeder, the 9th Circuit said.

Capital Press was unable to reach attorneys representing the farmers or the bank.

Now that the appeal has ended, it’s likely the farmers will resume their own lawsuit against the bank seeking more than $6.7 million for lost crop value and added storage costs.

Last year, a federal judge stayed that litigation until the 9th Circuit had reached a decision in the earlier case.

BROOKS, Ore. — A rhythmic popping sound filled the air at Powerland Heritage Park on Sunday as all sizes of antique machinery chugged along gravel roads and hissing steam came from all directions as exhibitors stoked their boilers to keep agricultural history alive.

The 48th annual Great Oregon Steam-Up welcomed 17,000 to 20,000 people during its two-weekend run, said Michelle Duchateau, president of Powerland Heritage Park, which is on 62 acres off Interstate 5 near Brooks, Ore.

“(The Steam-Up) goes along with our mission to educate people about how agriculture has changed and how machinery has fielded that change,” Duchateau said.

The Steam-Up offers visitors a chance to witness the sights and sounds of the past through many types of antique steam-powered equipment, a blacksmith shop, a unique steam-powered lumber mill and even and old-time electricity-powered trolley. Each day the highlight is the Parade of Power, during which the tractors and machinery drive past grandstands filled with people while an announcer tells the history of each piece.

Tim Ruffing has attended the Steam-Up for decades and now brings his 1911 steam tractor to the event.

“I have been coming here since about 1970, back when this was just an open field,” he said.

“This engine, supposedly … they used it as a road engine,” Ruffing said, adding that the tractor was used to pull a road grader.

Ruffing started out bringing stationary steam engines but eventually worked his way up to a steam tractor.

He thinks that teaching people to run the engine is important, and he usually has other people operate the engine for the Parade of Power.

First held on the current grounds in 1970, the Steam-Up’s roots go back farther, Duchateau said.

“It started as a threshing bee,” she said.

Farmers would get done with their harvests and want to do something fun, so they would hold the threshing bee, Duchateau said. As the event grew they ran out of space on the farm property they were using. They eventually gained use of the current location from another group and purchased it later.

The park is now home to 15 heritage museums, including a truck museum, an antique Caterpillar museum and a blacksmith shop.

One of them is the Oregon Vintage Machinery Museum featuring John Deere. Vickey Winn and her husband, John, have participated in the Steam-Up for 30 years. She is the president of the John Deere museum. While the museum opened in 2013, the John Deere club at Powerland has been around a lot longer, she said.

The Winns and a friend, Joel Messer, have long appreciated John Deere equipment.

“We had John Deeres on the farm,” John Winn said, adding that there was a Deere dealer down the road from his family’s house when he was young and they found the brand reliable.

Messer’s story was similar, he said as he motioned to a yellow John Deere tractor and said he had driven one just like it.

For all three, being a part of the Steam-Up each year and being members of the museum allow them to preserve the heritage of farming for the next generation.

“This is history,” John said.

The three spoke of the old machine shop across the way from the museum and mentioned there is an importance to showing younger generations how things used to be done.

That’s why the museums and Powerland exist, Vickey Winn said.

Powerland Heritage Park is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Sunday from April through September and periodically hosts other events. It is closed Aug. 18.

Online

www.antiquepowerland.com

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — The state Department of Forestry says a complex of wildfires burning since mid-July in southwestern Oregon is now more than 80 percent contained.

The agency said in a news release Monday that crews using infrared scanners to detect pockets of heat near containment lines are finding fewer hot spots. Extinguishing the remaining ones is at the top of the agenda for crews on Monday.

No hot spots pose a threat to the fire’s control lines.

The fires known as the Garner complex are expected to be fully contained by week’s end. The lightning-sparked blazes have cost more than $40 million to fight.

Pairing satellite imagery with technology to track cattle movement on the range and field estimates of forage could give ranchers and land managers a new tool in grazing management.

That’s the goal of researchers at the University of Idaho College of Natural Resources who just won a $661,118 matching grant for the project from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The three-year project, Deploying CERT (Climate Engine Rangeland Tool), will kick off in January, Jason Karl, associate professor at the college and project leader, said.

The project will track cattle and measure forage on large rangeland landscapes and calibrate that information with satellite imagery in the CERT system — being developed by University of Idaho associate professors Crystal Kolden with the College of Natural Resources and John Abatzoglou with the Department of Geography.

The research team will outfit 300 to 400 cows with GPS collars developed by Karl and deploy them on the university’s Rock Creek Ranch, private ranches and Bureau of Land Management land in southern Idaho and on the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve in northeast Oregon.

“The whole idea is to see how we can do a better job at getting more timely information on how much forage is available and how much is being consumed,” Karl said.

Currently, only rough estimates or field observations are available to inform grazing-management decisions. The challenge on large landscapes is observing conditions across the expanse, which can lead to inaccurate estimates of available forage, he said.

The GPS data will be used to more effectively link on-the-ground observations of forage utilization with remote sensing techniques for mapping forage availability and change developed by Vincent Jason, a doctoral candidate at the university.

The resulting maps and forage utilization data will be built into CERT, an online tool to analyze and visualize information on how much forage the cattle consume.

Satellite imagery allows for monitoring landscape changes over time but it doesn’t provide information on what caused the change. The research will use the field measurements to inform the satellite imagery and give it greater content, he said.

“The (GPS) collars are the links that tie these two data sets together,” he said.

The collars will give on-the-ground verification where forage is being consumed by livestock, he said.

Ranchers and land managers will be able to access maps of forage availability through CERT, look at how the range and forage availability are changing over the growing season and decide when it’s time to move cattle, he said.

In some cases researchers will be able to distinguish livestock utilization from forage changes due to other events — such as insects and fires, which have distinctive patterns. The challenging types of events to distinguish solely from satellite imagery are forage utilization from wild horses or wildlife, he said.

“This is why the field observations will always be a necessary part of a system like CERT (and) rancher input is central to the CERT project. Without those field observations, the satellite forage maps have limited utility,” he said.

The long-term goal of the research, once the system is developed and demonstrated, is to expand it and deploy it in other areas, Karl said.

Matching funding for the project will come from the University of Idaho, The Nature Conservancy and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Tuesdays

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Air quality in the Rogue Valley of southwestern Oregon worsened this weekend after a change in wind direction pushed more wildfire smoke into the area.

The Mail Tribune reports Medford’s air quality fell to a “hazardous” level and Ashland’s was almost at that level. National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Weygard says the smoke is coming from the Taylor and Klondike fires in Josephine County. Those fires have combined to scorch more than 100 square miles.

Though winds are forecast to be lighter on Monday, they are expected to continue blowing in the same direction.

Weygard says a cold front is expected to move into the area at the end of the week. Until then, expect hot temperatures and more smoke.

He says the silver lining is there are no fire-igniting thunderstorms in the forecast.

Five environmental groups are suing the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife after the agency declined to “uplist” the marbled murrelet from threatened to endangered under the state Endangered Species Act.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission initially voted to reclassify the seabird as endangered in February, which would have required adopting a management plan and survival guidelines for the species on state land.

However, in a move that stirred controversy, the commission reversed its decision four months later at a meeting in Baker City, opting against providing endangered protections for marbled murrelets.

The commission did approve voluntary survival guidelines Aug. 3 for loggers and landowners to avoid harming the birds. The rules, in part, define “suitable habitat” for marbled murrelets as “old-growth, coniferous forest stands that include platform trees, and occur within 35 miles of the Pacific Coast.”

But conservationists say more is needed to prevent the species from potentially going extinct.

Cascadia Wildlands, Defenders of Wildlife, Oregon Wild, the Center for Biological Diversity and Audubon Society of Portland filed a lawsuit Aug. 2 — one day before the commission took action on voluntary survival guidelines.

“The commission’s reversal of its decision to uplist the marbled murrelet just four months earlier ignored science, the law and ODFW’s mission to protect Oregon’s imperiled wildlife,” said Nick Cady, legal director for Cascadia Wildlands, based in Eugene.

ODFW listed the marbled murrelet as a threatened species in 1995. Groups petitioned to list the birds as endangered in 2016, claiming the population has declined by as much as 50 percent near the central Oregon coast.

Marbled murrelets nest in old-growth forests along the Coast Range, where according to ODFW’s own status review, highly suitable habitat declined by an estimated 78,600 acres, or nearly 10 percent, between 1993 and 2012.

“The science is clear and overwhelming,” said Joe Liebezeit, staff scientist at the Audubon Society of Portland. “The June Commission decision unfortunately perpetuates an approach at ODFW that has spanned nearly three decades of the state turning its back on the murrelet and ignoring the science that shows that logging of our older coastal forests under the purview of the state of Oregon is a primary factor in driving this species toward extinction.”

Timber companies disputed the evidence, and worried uplisting would lead to onerous new logging restrictions on state-owned forests.

Sara Duncan, spokeswoman for the Oregon Forest and Industries Council, pointed to a 2017 report by the Northwest Forest Plan Interagency Regional Monitoring Program, which indicated murrelet populations experienced a 1.8 percent annual growth in Oregon from 2001 to 2016.

“The ODFW Commission made the correct decision — they weighed the empirical evidence and stuck to the science,” Duncan said.

Nick Smith, executive director of Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities, added the Legislature has provided additional funding for a 10-year murrelet study through Oregon State University, which will provide new clues on the bird’s nesting and flight patterns.

“The commission is signaling they may wait until real scientific data becomes available, and that is encouraging,” Smith said. “At this moment, we are hopeful the process will work the way it should. But we will continue to ask the commission to make informed decisions that are based in science, not politics.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Two of the first states to broadly legalize marijuana took different approaches to regulation that left Oregon with a vast oversupply and Colorado with a well-balanced market. But in both states prices for bud have plummeted.

A new Oregon report by law enforcement found nearly 70 percent of the legal recreational marijuana grown goes unsold, while an unrelated state-commissioned Colorado study found most growers there are planting less than half of their legal allotment — and still meeting demand.

The Oregon study released by the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area — a coalition of local, state and federal agencies — includes the medical and general-use markets and the illegal market, despite gaps in data on illicit marijuana grows.

The Colorado study, released Thursday, focuses on the legal, general-use market, and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s business school and a Denver consulting firm had access to state tracking data to produce the first-of-its-kind analysis.

The law enforcement study noted Oregon still has a serious problem with out-of-state trafficking and black market grows — and the top federal law enforcement officer in Oregon demanded more cooperation from state and local officials Thursday in a strident statement.

“What is often lost in this discussion is the link between marijuana and serious, interstate criminal activity. Overproduction is rampant, and the illegal transport of product out-of-state — a violation of both state and federal law — continues unchecked,” said Billy Williams, U.S. Attorney for Oregon. “It’s time for the state to wake up, slow down and address these issues in a responsible and thoughtful manner.”

The tandem reports nevertheless offer different case studies for California and other pot-friendly states as they ramp up their legal pot industries. They also underscore some key differences in how broad legalization was handled that have helped shape differently evolving markets in each state.

Colorado sales of broadly legalized marijuana began in 2014, roughly two years before Oregon allowed marijuana to be sold at non-medical retail stores. And from the beginning, Colorado had stricter regulations for its growers than Oregon did.

Colorado gave existing medical marijuana growers the right of first refusal for licenses, cutting down right away on a potential source of black market production. The state also requires growers to show they have sold 85 percent of their output before allowing them to expand their growing operation, said Beau Whitney, senior economist at national cannabis analytics firm New Frontier Data.

“That was the right approach, and we’ve made that recommendation to other state regulators to do that because if you exclude the medical folks from entering the market, then there could be propensity for diversion” to the black market, he said.

“Colorado has done a good job in sizing the market. In Oregon, it’s going to take a while for that balance to be established.”

Oregon didn’t give existing medical marijuana growers priority over new applicants as Colorado did, and it also didn’t cap licenses. That created a perfect storm of endless licenses for all comers paired with less incentive for medical growers to enter the new industry.

In June, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees general-use marijuana, did put a pause on issuing new grow licenses to work through a monthslong backlog of applicants. The Legislature will likely consider steps to get a handle on oversupply in the 2019 session.

The Pacific Northwest state also had to contend with a long-entrenched culture of illegal marijuana cultivation along its border with California, where there are near-perfect outdoor growing conditions. That tradition of illicit marijuana has created a nightmare for law enforcement agencies in rural, heavily forested counties already stretched thin by budget cuts.

The Oregon report, for example, noted nearly 15,000 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $48 million has been seized heading to 37 other states. That doesn’t include illegal pot snagged at Portland International Airport.

“I know a lot of the legal industry in Oregon has been asking for stepped-up enforcement to combat illegal operations, but there doesn’t appear in those conversations a clear owner of the law enforcement,” Whitney said.

Although Colorado has been more successful in finding a balance between supply and demand, retail prices for bud, or marijuana flower, have plummeted in both states about 50 percent since 2015.

That statistic could be deceiving, however, because most growers are now cultivating their crop for conversion into the increasingly popular oil extracts that wind up in everything from soaps to vape pens to edible gummies to salves. It takes 10 times more dried flower to make an oil extract and much of the dried flower is going to that market, Whitney said.

“What the report demonstrates to us is that our licensed operators are operating responsibly,” said Mike Hartman, executive director of the Department of Revenue, which oversees marijuana regulation. “They’re not overproducing the amount of product they’re putting in the marketplace. They are operating to maximize product but also ... emphasizing public health and safety.”

At Green Dot Labs in Boulder, CEO Alana Malone estimated the company grows about 1,600 of its allotted 1,800 plants that are used to produce cannabis oil products.

As one of Colorado’s oldest companies focused on producing extracts from marijuana plants, Malone said decisions about how much to plant are based on expected demand — and consumers’ interest in the type of concentrate products that Green Dot Labs produces is growing.

Malone said she was pleased that the Colorado study found about 32 metric tons of marijuana flower left in inventory by the end of 2017.

“That’s not even close to some of the figures you see from others states,” Malone said. “So I’m a little bit proud of that.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A memorial service has been scheduled for a farmer who died while fighting the Substation fire in July.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the service for 64-year-old John Ruby is at 11:30 a.m. Saturday in Dufur.

Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege says county buildings will fly flags at half-staff that day to honor Ruby, his sacrifice and his family.

Ruby lived in Mosier but died while working on a farm near Dufur, 15 miles south of The Dalles. He was cutting a fire line for a neighbor’s property when the fire overtook him.

Since 125 square miles burned in the Substation fire, The Long Hollow fire and the South Valley fire have raged near Dufur.

Hege says it’s a difficult time for people around the north-central Oregon county along the Columbia River.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Conservation groups sued the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission on Thursday for failing to strengthen protections for the marbled murrelet, tiny seabirds that venture inland to raise their young and depend on old-growth forests for nesting.

The groups petitioned the commission in 2016 to reclassify the bird’s status from threatened to endangered under the state Endangered Species Act. A listing as endangered would require the state to develop a management plan and survival guidelines for the birds that are about 9 inches long and weigh 7 to 8 ounces.

The commission denied the petition in June by a 4-2 vote, after hearing testimony from officials in timber-rich coastal counties who worried about the economic impact of restricting logging to save the birds. Commissioners opposed to reclassification said researchers from Oregon State University are in the early stages of a 10-year study about the seabird, and they wanted to wait for results.

The defeat was tough for conservationists because the commission in February had accepted a recommendation to grant the petition.

The marbled murrelet was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1992 and the Oregon Endangered Species Act in 1995. The species is state-endangered in Washington and California.

In 2015, there were believed to be about 11,000 marbled murrelets in Oregon, but survey numbers are uncertain because the birds have only been counted at sea and are extremely elusive in the forest. Experts believe the population has declined by more than 50 percent from historic highs.

Though the population has been stable since 2000, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife strategy species coordinator Christina Donehower told the board in February the bird has about an 80 percent chance of going extinct by the 22nd Century.

Among its claims, the lawsuit asserts the commission failed to base its decision on verifiable science and didn’t adequately explain its decision to reverse course.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission will meet Friday to consider survival guidelines that encourage — but not require — certain actions from timber companies to protect the seabird on state-owned or leased lands. Such guidelines could include additional survey work ahead of logging to determine where the birds are nesting and restrictions on when during the year timber companies would cut.

But since those moves would be non-binding, “they wouldn’t have any teeth,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the five groups that filed the lawsuit.

Rep. Greg Walden is the latest among several high-ranking Oregon politicians to request federal aid for farmers and ranchers suffering through a particularly intense wildfire season across the state.

Walden’s district includes Wasco and Sherman counties, where yet another large blaze ignited Wednesday, torching 20,000 acres and counting of prime wheat and cattle country near the Deschutes River.

The South Valley fire started near Dufur, Ore., and was likely human-caused. It is the region’s third large grass fire in as many weeks, coming on the heels of the Substation and Long Hollow fires, which burned a combined 111,875 acres, or 175 square miles.

On Thursday, Walden — Oregon’s only Republican congressman — wrote to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, asking for assistance to help producers who lost some or all of their crops and rangeland. The Substation fire alone has affected an estimated 31,000 acres of cropland over 86 farms in Wasco and Sherman counties, including 18,500 acres of standing wheat.

“Oregon’s farmers, ranchers and foresters are facing significant challenges during this fire season,” Walden wrote. “I appreciate your prompt attention to these important issues so that Oregon’s rural communities can better navigate through the disasters they have faced.”

Perdue is no stranger to the area, having previously joined Walden at Martin Farms in Rufus, Ore., on July 3 as part of a four-day, four-state tour visiting with local farmers.

“Sadly, the very wheat farm we visited in Sherman County, and many of their neighbors, recently lost some or all of their crops to fire,” Walden wrote. “Many of the wheat farms in the area affected by fire are also livestock producers and have lost pasture to the fire.”

In his letter, Walden urged Perdue to approve Oregon’s request for a USDA disaster designation, and also requested additional flexibility from the Risk Management Agency allowing farmers hurt by fires to prevent soil erosion by planting cover crops.

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has already offered assistance to plant cover crops through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP. But since dryland wheat farmers in Eastern Oregon plant in a summer fallow rotation, Walden said they are worried that adding cover crops will put them in a “continuous production” category under their crop insurance.

Clinton Whitten, the acting district conservationist for the NRCS in Wasco County, recently acknowledged that concern, and said they are working on a waiver for growers affected by fires.

In addition, Walden said ranchers who lost rangeland should have access to emergency grazing on grasslands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. The 100,000-acre Boxcar fire near Maupin and 15,000-acre Jack Knife fire near Grass Valley took an especially heavy toll on rangeland in June.

Walden is not the only political figure to request federal fire aid in Oregon. Gov. Kate Brown and U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, all Democrats, wrote Perdue on July 27 asking for a cut of the $12 billion in emergency aid for farmers hit by tariffs in the Trump administration’s trade war with China and other countries.

Regardless of the president’s trade strategy, they said the USDA must act to assist farmers enduring disaster now.

The Oregon Department of State Lands erred when it sold a portion of the Elliott State Forest to a private timber company four years ago, according to a ruling Aug. 1 by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The court’s decision overturns the sale of the 788-acre East Hakki Ridge tract to Seneca Jones Timber Company in 2014, after environmental groups sued to keep the land in public ownership.

Josh Laughlin, executive director of Cascadia Wildlands based in Eugene, Ore., cheered the ruling as a victory for public lands.

“There’s a growing movement afoot in our country to privatize public lands,” Laughlin said. “We really want to buck that movement to keep our public lands public, for the incredible values they offer us.”

The Elliott State Forest in southwest Oregon was created in 1930, with revenue generated from timber sales to support the Common School Fund. In 2012, environmentalists successfully sued to prevent logging old-growth trees that provide nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet, a threatened species of seabird found along the Oregon Coast.

Instead, the State Land Board — composed of the governor, secretary of state and treasurer — opted to sell several parcels of the state forest to private timber companies, including the East Hakki Ridge tract, located just south of the lower Umpqua River.

Cascadia Wildlands, along with the Audubon Society of Portland and the Center for Biological Diversity, sued again to block the sale, citing a law from 1957 that prohibits selling any portion of the Elliott that used to be part of the Siuslaw National Forest.

A circuit court in Eugene initially dismissed the case, though the Court of Appeals has now ruled the sale was, in fact, illegal.

“Privatizing public land would have been a disaster for imperiled salmon and wildlife that rely on clean water and old forests to survive,” said Laughlin, who was also an individual plaintiff in the case.

A spokeswoman for the Department of State Lands said the agency is reviewing the ruling. The State Land Board voted unanimously in May 2017 to scuttle a planned sale of the entire 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest to Lone Rock Resources, of Roseburg, Ore., and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The 2017 Legislature approved $100 million in state bonds to compensate the Common School Fund.

Todd Payne, CEO of Seneca Jones Timber, said he was disappointed in the court’s ruling, adding the Elliott State Forest was set up to be managed for sustainable timber harvest and provide funding for schools into perpetuity.

“The Elliott has gone from a revenue generating asset worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a liability for the state,” Payne said. “It’s unfortunate, as the financial benefits would have accrued to students of this state. A state that currently ranks 48th in graduation rates.”

Nick Smith, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities, said the state is failing in its responsibility to manage the Elliott, provide for schools and economic development in rural Oregon.

“With wildfires devastating our forests, and with toxic smoke threatening the health of our citizens, it would be a grave mistake for the state to continue to replicate the federal government’s failed approach to ‘hands-off’ forest management,” Smith said.

About 58,689 acres of crops planted in Wasco and Sherman Counties were within the perimeter of the Substation Fire. 

While its unclear how much of those crops were harvested before the land east of The Dalles was engulfed in flames, the numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture represent the first itemized estimate of the potential loss to Oregon’s wheat country.

Crops make up more than half of the area engulfed in the Substation fire, which burned 78,425 acres. Initial estimates from the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services calculated that nearly half of the crop of Wasco County may be lost as a result of the fire. The new numbers, which represent crops planted in both Wasco and Sherman counties, mean the loss could be even greater.

Still, it’s too soon to say whether all planted crops were lost to the fire; the USDA doesn’t know how much of those crops were saved before the area erupted in flames. 

“Unfortunately, we do not know how many acres were harvested,” said Kent Willett, Oregon state specialist with the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

The numbers, calculated using geographic information system (GIS) analysis of the fire area, are based on farmers’ reports to the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, which maintains records of what was planted. They paint a clearer picture of what was at stake in the fire. Wheat, grass and fallow made up the vast majority of crops. About 23,551 acres of grazing grass were within the fire’s perimeter.

The fire hit wheat farmers hard. Roughly 100 farms grow wheat in Wasco County, where wheat made up more than 12,000 acres of planted crops within the Substation Fire perimeter. Wheat makes up more than 90 percent of farmland in the area and harvest season was just beginning when the fire erupted.

“Every single neighbor lost something in this fire,” Cynthia Kortge, a Wasco County resident, told OPB. “Every single one.”

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A new blaze in a wildfire-plagued area of Oregon nearly tripled in size overnight.

The fire near the town of Dufur in north-central Oregon spread to more than 23 square miles by Thursday morning.

The Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office says dozens of structures are threatened — some have burned — and at least 400 people have been told to evacuate.

The fire caused by humans rather than lightning began Wednesday afternoon. By nightfall, Gov. Kate Brown declared it a conflagration, which authorizes the Oregon fire marshal to mobilize resources from around the state to protect homes.

It’s the third major wildfire to the hit the area this summer. One scorched 125 square miles and killed a tractor operator.

After an unusually warm July, firefighters caught a break with cooler temperatures Thursday.

VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — A bill that would make it easier to kill sea lions that gobble endangered salmon in the Columbia River has cleared a key committee in the U.S. Senate.

The measure allows the federal government to issue permits to Washington, Idaho and Oregon, and several Pacific Northwest tribes, allowing up to 100 sea lions to be killed a year.

Supporters including the governors of those three states, fishing groups and tribes. They say the bill is needed to protect declining runs of salmon and steelhead.

Critics say it’s won’t solve the problem of declining salmon.

The measure is co-sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, and James Risch, an Idaho Republican. It awaits a vote by the full Senate.

It’s similar to legislation the House passed last month. That was sponsored by Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington Republican, and Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Democrat.

Fridays

Nov. 15, 1919 – July 22, 2018

Nov. 15, 1919 – July 22, 2018