2A Wednesday, November 1, 2017 Appeal Tribune
Not worried about the competition
Trees
Even as shortages affect the Pacific Northwest,
competitors in North Carolina don’t keep Schaefer up
at night.
For starters, cross-country freight prices tend to
keep the competition at bay. “I won’t say it’s prohibitive,
but it pretty much prices their product out of the realm
of reason for the consumer in most cases,” he said.
Barr, the North Carolina wholesaler, agrees. With
freight costs, “it’s getting pricey to go to Denver,” he
said.
There's also a rule of thumb among Christmas tree
farmers: West Coast trees remain west of the Mississip-
pi, and East Coast trees stay east of the river. Scattered
exceptions crop up, such as when wholesalers compete
for Lone Star State customers.
“We kind of bash heads in Texas,” Schaefer said.
Continued from Page 1A
south to California.
Rising prices
Wholesale growers estimate they’re raising prices
at least 10 percent year-over-year. Growers don’t ex-
pect normal harvest levels for Christmas trees to re-
turn until at least 2021 or 2025.
Like Hupp Farms in Oregon, Barr Evergreens in
North Carolina can fulfill wholesale orders for its exist-
ing customers but has to turn away new ones, said own-
er Rusty Barr.
Barr expects to raise prices $2 to $3 for pre-cut Fra-
ser fir trees at his retail outfit. That’s on top of the $60 to
$80 they’ve sold for in the past, depending on size.
North Carolina harvested an estimated 3.5 million
trees in 2016, according to the Pacific Northwest
Christmas Tree Association. The state was followed by
Michigan (3 million), Pennsylvania (2.3 million) and
Washington (1.5 million).
By contrast, Oregon cut down approximately 5.2
million trees.
For Oregon growers, popular Noble firs are espe-
cially lucrative — but they only grow so fast, often
spending nine years in the ground to grow to 6 feet in
the Pacific Northwest.
“That’s the Cadillac of the industry," said Bob
Schaefer, general manager of Noble Mountain Tree
Farm. The Salem, Oregon, area wholesaler is massive,
usually harvesting about half a million trees a year
from the more than 4,000 acres the company grows on
in the Willamette Valley.
One of the factors driving the shortage was a practi-
cally nonexistent crop of Noble fir cones for 15 years,
with a good crop finally returning in 2016, Schaefer
said. Without cones, there’re no seedlings and no trees.
Limited supplies of the Noble fir seedlings led Noble
Mountain to fill production holes with Douglas firs, as-
suming customers would still want a Christmas tree of
some sort. But some buyers aren't eager to branch out.
Opioids
Continued from Page 1A
"He was your neighbor," she said. "He was my neigh-
bor."
He was prescribed Vicodin after getting into a car
crash and became addicted to the painkiller. When his
doctor cut him off, he began robbing pharmacies.
"That was how I knew that we had an opioid problem
in Marion County," she said.
Story all too common
Marion County Sheriff Jason Myers said 15 years
ago, he would rarely see heroin in the community.
"Now, I could tell you of pastors, of student-athletes,
of next-door neighbors who ended up in the same place
as this Grandpa Bandit," he said.
Clarkson and Myers spoke before a crowd at the Sa-
lem City Club Friday. The event, titled "America's Opi-
ate Epidemic: Is it in Salem and what's being done about
it?", proved to be timely.
Only a day earlier, President Donald Trump declared
the opioid epidemic a public health emergency.
The epidemic claimed 64,000 American lives in 2016,
hitting both rural and urban areas, killing the rich and
the poor, Trump said.
Fending off fake trees
A helicopter piloted by Terry Harchenko with Industrial
Aviation Services, Inc., drops off a bundle of Christmas trees
during a harvest at Hupp Farms.
MOLLY J. SMITH / STATESMAN JOURNAL
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand for Noble fir that,
you know, probably, to some extent, won’t be met this
year,” Schaefer said.
He expects Noble fir harvest levels to return to nor-
mal in 2025 or 2026.
California is Noble Mountain’s biggest customer, but
the company sends trees elsewhere in the U.S., and
even down to Mexico, where the market is hot for its
abundance of Douglas firs.
“This year, we’re shipping more to Mexico than
we’ve ever shipped before,” Schaefer said.
bulance crews in New Jersey struggling to keep up with
overdose calls.
"This is a cautionary tale for us," she said.
The once rare heroin-related calls now have become
more commonplace in Marion County.
Clarkson said they are seeing more overdoses, more
prescription medicine abuse and more reports of fenta-
nyl-laced drugs.
"We know it's coming," she said. "We know the pat-
terns are there."
It is up to leaders, law enforcement and the commu-
nity to decide how to fight the epidemic, Clarkson add-
ed.
Spikes in violent crimes like homicide and robbery
tend to follow spikes in drug addiction, as do increases
in property crimes. Myers said addicts will often com-
mit identity theft, burglaries and theft to fund their
drug habits.
"We know this could bring a criminal crisis," Clark-
son said.
In the past, the tough-on-crime "War on Drugs" ap-
proach would often lead to jail time and felony convic-
tions for those struggling with addictions.
She said using the criminal justice system to treat a
public health problem like addiction has proven to be
expensive and ineffective.
"What we've learned — and it's taken us a little bit of
time in law enforcement — is that we can't arrest our
way out of homelessness, we can't arrest our way out of
mental illness and we can't arrest our way out of addic-
tion," Myers said.
Related spikes in crime
Shortages and rising prices are fueling concerns
among growers that customers will turn to artificial
trees, whose shelf lives long outlast those of their natu-
ral competitors.
Oregon growers sold 4.7 million real trees in 2015,
falling more than a quarter from sales five years earli-
er, according to the United States Department of Agri-
culture.
Artificial trees accounted for nearly 81 million of
Christmas trees displayed in the U.S. in 2016, while
nearly 19 million were real, according to estimates
from the nonprofit American Christmas Tree Associa-
tion.
With a dramatic shortage that's not expected to re-
verse for another six or eight years — if not longer —
Hupp, in Oregon, is worried customers will buy artifi-
cial because they can't find the real thing.
"Their families will get used to that being the norm,"
he said.
Reach reporter Jonathan Bach by email at
jbach@statesmanjournal.com or by phone at 503-399-
6714. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanMBach and
Facebook at www.facebook.com/jonathanbachjournal-
ist.
people accountable.
Sometimes, however, convicting people struggling
with a public health issue like addiction can worsen the
problem, Clarkson said. Convictions and incarceration
can be a barrier to housing, employment and keeping
families together.
"As law enforcement officials, we really need to
question ourselves and ask: Do we need to convict that
person to solve the problem?" Clarkson said.
Or, she asked, are there other resources, like hous-
ing and treatment, that could be used to actually ad-
dress the root of the problem.
Instead of being a barrier, law enforcement can
serve as a bridge to these resources, Myers said.
They can catch people "upstream" and get them into
treatment before they fall too deeply into addiction, as
well as working with health services to help chronic,
"downstream" addicts.
This different approach will be costly, Clarkson said.
Funding is sorely needed for transitional housing, Nal-
oxone for overdoses, public education, treatment and a
sobering center, which the greater Salem area does not
have.
But by keeping people out of jail, away from the
cumbersome criminal justice system and involved in
the community, the measures could ultimately be cost-
saving, Clarkson said.
"This is a community effort," Myers said.
"It takes all us working together. At the end of the
day... we probably all know somebody in our family that
either suffers from a mental health condition or an ad-
diction."
A new approach
For years, prosecutors and officers in Oregon heard
horror stories from their East Coast colleagues, Clark-
son said. They learned about cities in Pennsylvania re-
porting 35 drug-related deaths in one week and of am-
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Officials: Sea lion disease
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their dogs away from dead or stranded sea lions, which
have been washing up in increasing numbers due to a
leptospirosis outbreak.
“Over the past few months, we have been getting
calls for multiple sick or dead sea lions daily, which is
higher than normal,” said Jim Rice, a researcher at
Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute.
At least eight cases of leptospirosis have been con-
firmed through OSU’s Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic
Laboratory since the outbreak began in late September,
mostly on beaches in Lincoln, Tillamook and Clatsop
counties.
The disease also has struck sea lions in California.
Leptospirosis occurs worldwide, but outbreaks oc-
cur only sporadically in marine mammals. The last Ore-
gon outbreak was in 2010.
The disease can spread through contact with urine
or other bodily fluids of an infected animal.
There is a small risk of transmission to people, but
dogs are most at risk of coming into contact with body
fluid from sick or dead sea lions. The bacteria can also
sicken livestock and other wildlife.
Leptospirosis can cause severe disease in dogs,
State Veterinarian Emilio DeBess said. Symptoms in-
clude kidney failure, fever, weakness and muscle pain.
“If your dog becomes ill after being exposed to sick
or dead sea lions, contact your veterinarian immediate-
ly,” DeBess said. A vaccine for dogs also is available.
Officials are asking people who observe sick sea li-
ons or other marine mammals on the beach should to at
least 50 feet away and report them to the Oregon State
Police at 1-800-452-7888.
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At least eight cases of leptospirosis in sea lions have been
confirmed through OSU’s Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic
Laboratory since the outbreak’s start in late September.
ANNA REED/STATESMAN JOURNAL