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CapitalPress.com
October 16, 2015
Almond heist points to cargo theft problem
Capital Press
Earlier this year, Ore-
gon-based snack manufac-
turer Bridgetown Natural
Foods didn’t receive a ship-
ment of almonds worth nearly
$184,000.
However,
the
42,000-pound shipment was
picked up as scheduled on
April 13 from SunnyGem
LLC, an almond supplier in
Wasco, Calif.
As it later turned out, the
almonds were presumed sto-
len and police had no luck
tracking down the truck.
“It usually boils down to
someone was stupid,” he said.
In reality, armed hijack-
ings of trucks are the least
common form of cargo theft,
accounting for 1 percent of
incidents — this type of rob-
bery carries steep penalties
and is generally the province
of “desperate criminals” who
aren’t part of an organized
scheme, according to Freight-
Watch International, which
tracks cargo theft incidents.
The vast majority of cargo
thefts, about 90 percent, occur
when trucks are left unattend-
ed at unsecured truck stops
and other parking areas with
minimal security, the organi-
zation has found.
Fictitious pickups make
up about 5 percent of cargo
thefts, but this kind of ruse
has seemed to gain in popu-
larity in recent years, accord-
ing to FreightWatch.
“It does appear there is
an uptick in insider activity
or organized activities that
are involved in these thefts,”
said Lance Reeve, risk man-
agement consultant for the
Nationwide insurance fi rm’s
agribusiness division.
Food shipments are an
attractive target for thieves
because they are diffi cult to
identify as stolen, easy to
resell and not as vigorously
investigated as thefts of high-
er-value items, said Reeve.
Last year, 19 percent of
cargo thefts involved food
and beverages, which was
higher than any other catego-
ry of products, according to
FreightWatch.
Companies are often very
sophisticated about protect-
ing their internal computer
data but then don’t pay as
much attention to activities at
the loading dock or security
Conservation district signs sage grouse plan
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
prevent smaller-scale thefts
that are diffi cult to detect, said
Reeve.
Such “pilferage” accounts
for 8 percent of cargo thefts,
Freightwatch found.
While some cargo thefts
are likely planned by compa-
ny insiders, such schemes are
often unnecessary for crim-
inals to get critical informa-
tion, said Hoffer.
When asking for truck
carriers for bids to move
shipments, companies often
divulge the pickup time, lo-
cation and type of load, which
can easily be exploited, he
said.
Criminals generally get re-
quests to steal certain types of
cargo and then plan their heists
accordingly, Hoffer said.
“It’s very rare that it’s hap-
hazard. There is a structure,”
he said. “This is organized
crime.”
Ranchers, environmentalists
spar over grazing’s impact
on Idaho’s Soda fi re
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
nests in the ground and may
include staying out of the
birds’ mating dance areas at
night. Plans could include
different types of tillage and
developing borders of native
vegetation around planted
fi elds.
The district will help land-
owners write the plans, which
will go to USFWS for approv-
al.
The plans enable ranchers
to receive Section 10 takings
permits, which means USF-
WS won’t hold them liable
and will defend them against
third-party lawsuits if they are
following their plans but acci-
dentally kill some of the spe-
cies or accidentally damage
their habitat, Merz said.
A farmer can still farm in
parts of habitat if it is in his
accepted plan. Farmers are
not liable for the number of a
species on their land but are
liable for the amount of hab-
itat, he said.
About 150 ranchers and
farmers in the county are ex-
pected to write individual
plans, Merz said. That’s the
majority of those in areas of
concern, he said.
“We made a deal and said
if you give us local control to
manage habitat the way we
know how, we will take care
of the problem,” Merz said.
“And they (USFWS) said
OK. The onus in on us.”
The district will celebrate
the signing of the general con-
servation plan at 9 a.m. Oct.
26 with a sage grouse habitat
tour followed by a noon lunch
at the North Central Wash-
ington Fair Grounds in Wa-
terville. A ceremony starts at
1 p.m. The public is welcome
and asked to RSVP at www.
fostercreekcd.org or at 509-
888-6372.
84
Ontario
52
Boise
Nampa
45
84
78
e R
i
r
Merz said.
He said he’s looked at all
habitat conservation plans on
record and that most are writ-
ten by companies and very
few by groups of individuals.
The agreement covers
879,000 acres of private ag-
ricultural land in Douglas
County where approximately
650 sage grouse live. Some of
the land is in the Conservation
Reserve Program.
The plan requires ranch-
es or farms to have Natural
Resources Conservation Ser-
vice plans and allows ranch-
ers and farmers to tailor their
own plans for protecting sage
grouse and the other three
species within the district’s
general conservation plan,
Merz said.
Individual plans will iden-
tify habitat areas and seek to
protect and improve them.
Plans will protect sage grouse
Area in
detail
ve
Dan Wheat/Capital Press File
Jon Merz, manager of the Foster Creek Conservation District, looks at sage brush habitat on state
Department of Fish and Wildlife land overlooking Jameson Lake in Douglas County, Wash., in this
2014 photo. Wittig Ranch, in the background, raises cattle, hay and wheat and is one of many ranches
that will benefi t from legal protection with a habitat conservation plan.
BOISE — Idaho ranch-
ers claim that better grazing
management would have re-
duced the size and severity
of the Soda fi re that scorched
279,000 acres of land in
Owyhee County and part of
Eastern Oregon in August.
Idaho-based Western Wa-
tersheds Project, however,
claims that livestock grazing
contributed to the severity of
the Soda fi re and other wild-
fi res that burned millions of
acres of land across the West
this year.
Ranchers affected by the
Soda fi re, which impacted 41
Bureau of Land Management
grazing allotments, reacted in-
credulously to WWP’s claim.
“I don’t know how they
can even say anything like that
and I don’t know how any-
one can be stupid enough to
believe it,” said Marsing area
rancher Ed Wilsey, who lost
70 head of cattle in the fi re and
all of his summer and spring
range.
Wilsey said several of his
neighbors also lost all their
summer and spring range and
some larger cattle operations
have had to travel as far as Wy-
oming to fi nd suitable pasture.
“It burned so hot it burned
(the range) down to nothing.
There are no fences. It’s just
dirt now,” said sheep rancher
Kim Mackenzie.
The fi re took a terrible toll
on ranchers and others in the
area and cattlemen bristle at
the claim that grazing con-
tributed to the size of the fi re,
Wilsey said.
If anything, he said, lim-
itations on grazing resulting
from lawsuits by groups like
WWP contributed to the se-
verity of the fi re by causing
k
Sna
WATERVILLE,
Wash.
— A conservation district in
Washington’s largest sage
grouse area has signed a gen-
eral conservation plan with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The Foster Creek Con-
servation District, in Central
Washington, is telling mem-
bers that it’s vital to carry out
the plan even though the fed-
eral agency recently decided
not to list the sage grouse as
threatened or endangered.
USFWS may still list the
sage grouse in fi ve years if
state and local entities don’t
do enough to protect it, said
Jonathan Merz, manager of
he district.
USFWS offi cials in Spo-
kane agreed.
Sage grouse are protected
by the state and are an import-
ant part of the state’s shrub
steppe habitat, said Russ
MacRae, USFWS fi eld super-
visor in Spokane.
“We’re excited that agri-
cultural people in Douglas
County are working to con-
serve species,” said Michelle
Eames, USFWS biologist in
Spokane and an author of the
plan.
The district covers Doug-
las County and is headquar-
tered in the county courthouse
in Waterville and has been
working toward a plan for
sage grouse and other species
since 1998.
On Sept. 18, the district
signed an agreement with US-
FWS that covers sage grouse,
federally endangered Colum-
bia Basin pygmy rabbits, the
sharp-tailed grouse and Wash-
ington ground squirrels.
“After many years and
with the help of many people,
the district is proud to be the
fi rst conservation district in
the nation to lead a complete
a general conservation plan,”
shack, said Hoffer.
These areas are often
manned by low-paid work-
ers who receive little security
training and are more likely to
be complacent about follow-
ing protocols, he said.
When the almonds were
stolen from SunnyGem, the
load was picked up by a dif-
ferent trucking company and
the trailer had a different
identifi cation number than
planned, according to the law-
suit. Other information appar-
ently matched.
Unless all the information
about the truck, trailer, driver
is correct, workers should not
release a shipment, said Hof-
fer. “If all the stars weren’t
in alignment, they shouldn’t
give it to them.”
Shippers should also fully
vet their truck carriers to en-
sure they’re reputable com-
panies and seal trailers to
Ore.
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Bridgetown Natural Foods
has now fi led a lawsuit against
SunnyGem and a freight man-
agement company, Left Coast
Logistics, seeking a declara-
tion that it owes nothing for
the shipment.
Experts say this almond
heist is an example of “fi c-
titious pickup,” one of sev-
eral types of cargo theft that
threatens the food industry.
Data about the impact of
cargo theft is imprecise, but
the Federal Bureau of Inves-
tigation has pegged the eco-
nomic losses at roughly $30
billion a year.
Despite the risk that com-
panies face from cargo theft,
many are cavalier about pro-
tecting their goods during
transport, said Erik Hoffer,
vice president of the Cargo
Security Alliance, which as-
sists businesses with safety
practices.
Idaho
Food and beverages
are the most
common
theft target
95
Soda Fire:
279,144 acres
67
N
20 miles
Capital Press graphic
fuel loads to increase.
He said there are numer-
ous examples where the fi re
stopped burning when it came
to land that had been grazed
recently and he sent the Cap-
ital Press photos of some of
these examples.
“Grazing isn’t going to
stop fi res 100 percent but it
sure as heck can cut down on
the fuel load,” Wilsey said.
In an editorial that ap-
peared in the Times-News,
WWP Executive Director
Travis Bruner said livestock
grazing in southwestern Idaho
and across the West “contrib-
uted signifi cantly to intensity,
severity and enormity of fi res
this summer. Despite the live-
stock industry’s claims to the
contrary, the Idaho fi res are
burning hotter and faster be-
cause of the impacts of cows
and sheep on our arid Western
lands.”
Bruner said livestock re-
moved the “native grasses
that burn at a lower intensity
than fi re-prone invasive spe-
cies that dominate many areas
of Owyhee County.”
Court rules fl oood control releases don’t count against stored water rights
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — A special court
master has ruled that fl ood
control releases from reser-
voirs on the Boise River sys-
tem should not count against
stored water rights.
The ruling by Theodore
Booth, a special master of the
Snake River Basin Adjudica-
tion court, sides with Treasure
Valley water users who have
a 62-year agreement with the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
that says fl ood control releases
aren’t counted against reser-
voir storage rights.
“It reaffi rms our irrigators’
belief that fl ood control re-
leases should not be counted
against the (reservoir) storage
rights of water right holders,”
said Roger Batt, executive di-
rector of the Treasure Valley
Water Users Association.
Water is typically released
from the Boise River system’s
three reservoirs in February
and March to prevent fl ooding
in the Boise valley.
The right to store water in
the reservoirs following fl ood
LEGAL
42-1/#4x
PUBLIC NOTICE
The Oregon Soil and Water
Conservation
Commission
(SWCC) will hold its regular
quarterly
meeting
on
Monday, November 2, 2015,
from 2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.,
at Valley River Inn, 1000
Valley River Way, Eugene, OR
97401. The meeting agenda
covers SWCC reports, advisor
reports, Soil and Water
Conservation District pro-
grams
and
funding,
Agriculture Water Quality
Management
Program
updates, and other agenda
items.
The Oregon Department of
Agriculture complies with the
Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA). If you need special
accommodations to partici-
pate in this meeting, please
contact Sandi Hiatt at (503)
986-4704, at least 72 hours
prior to the meeting.
42-1/#4
control releases
was challenged
recently by the
Idaho Depart-
ment of Water
Resources.
Counting
Roger Batt fl ood
control
releases against
stored water rights would
bring the Boise system into
compliance with state water
accounting law and not doing
so could result in the state sur-
rendering legal control over
the water to the federal gov-
ernment, IDWR offi cials have
said.
IDWR’s position on the
matter is supported by the
state attorney general’s offi ce.
IDWR offi cials did not imme-
diately return phone calls for
this story.
Batt said water released for
fl ood control can’t be counted
against reservoir storage rights
because water right holders
were never able to put it to
benefi cial use.
It is “patently absurd to us
that the state wants to charge
water users for water being
sent down river for fl ood con-
42-1/#T4D
trol purposes during a period
of time where that water can-
not be used by them,” Batt
stated in a TVWUA news re-
lease announcing Booth’s Oct.
9 ruling.
“This common sense de-
cision completely vindicates
our contention that the state
attorney general’s offi ce and
(IDWR) are completely out of
line in their efforts to change
long-standing water right man-
agement principles governing
the Boise River system,” Batt
stated in the news release.
The special master’s fi nd-
ings are a recommendation to
the SRBA judge and become
fi nal when and if the judge ap-
proves them.
According to the news re-
lease, because Booth ruled that
existing storage water rights
authorize the fi lling of the res-
ervoirs following fl ood con-
trol release, “his decision also
means the release of water for
fl ood control purposes does
not count against the storage
rights of Treasure Valley water
right holders.”
“It’s the result we expect-
ed but it’s nice to have it con-
fi rmed by a court that what we
believe on this issue is cor-
rect,” said TVWUA Chairman
Clinton Pline.