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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (June 30, 2020)
16 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD GROUSE Continued from Page 14 She has worked as a consultant helping ranchers improve their prop- erties, so the sage grouse coordinator job, which has similar goals, was a natural for her. Hall Defrees said the coronavirus pandemic has affected the Baker County sage grouse project. Oregon Lottery revenue plum- meted this spring, mainly because bars, which have the most video poker games, were closed for more than 2 months. Hall Defrees said the state cut $350,000 from the $1.7 million grant for the current biennium. She said that reduction shouldn’t have a signifi cant effect on the project, and she’s optimistic that the county will receive its full allocation for the two succeeding bienniums. The full 6-year grant has been awarded, and the county does not need to reapply, she said. Although grant dollars can be used to improve habitat on public land, because most of the county’s sage grouse habitat is on private property that’s the focus for the project, Hall Defrees said. Private landowners can apply for fi nancial aid through the grant twice a year — in October and March. Landowners are eligible if their property is within an area that includes all of Baker County (except a sliver at the southwest corner) and a small part of southern Union Nick Myatt / Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife A male sage grouse seeking to attract hens at a “lek” — the areas where the birds gather during the spring mating season. County. The campaign is in its early stages, with the fi rst projects, mainly in the Keating Valley area about 15 miles east of Baker City, approved this spring, Hall Defrees said. The focus is on that geographic area because applications are given priority based on how close they are to what are known as “lek complex- es.” There are fi ve of these in Baker County, clustered in the Keating Valley area. A lek is a place, usually a clearing among sagebrush, where the birds gather each spring during the mat- ing season. Male sage grouse perform an elaborate ritual designed to attract hens. The males infl ate a pair of air sacs in their breast, producing a Baker City Keating Valley Grant County JUNE 2020 AGRI-BUSINESS Halfway Richland Idaho Malheur County The map is of Baker County and a small part of Union County at the upper left. The darker green shading is priority habitat for sage grouse, and the lighter green is general habitat. distinctive hollow thumping sound. They also fan their tail feathers. Projects underway Approved projects in the Keating area are intended to control me- dusahead and whitetop, the latter a noxious weed, on about 6,000 acres, and inventory those two weeds, as well as rush skeletonweed and yellow starthistle, on another 25,000 acres. The project includes $92,294 from the Oregon Watershed Enhance- ment Board sage grouse grant, as well as $121,264 from landowners and a federal agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “We’re just starting these treat- ments,” Hall Defrees said. “We’ll start seeing benefi ts in the next few years. Unfortunately there’s not a magic bullet to improve these systems really quickly. It requires diligence, and monitoring.” She said she has received many phone calls from landowners inter- ested in applying for grant aid. “It’s been really great to see how many landowners have contacted me,” Hall Defrees said. “Landowners are willing and receptive to improv- ing their land.” Some areas likely will be seeded with bunchgrasses once the weeds and invasive grasses have been culled. Hall Defrees said a fortuitous aspect of this effort is that changes thath improve sage grouse habitat are also benefi cial for cattle grazing, which is the main use of the land that’s the focus of the project. “What excites me about it is that what you need for ideal sage grouse habitat, all of those things are also good for grazing,” she said. In addition to dealing with invasive plants, the project can pay for fencing that allows ranchers to change grazing patterns to keep cattle out of areas that are being restored, Hall Defrees said. Michael Cook, a cattle rancher in the eastern part of the Keating Val- ley, is one of the fi rst participants in the multiyear project. Cook, who learned about the Lottery-funded grant through the Tri-County Cooperative Weed Man- agement Area, a La Grande-based group that deals with noxious weeds in Baker, Union and Wallowa coun- ties, said the grant is helping control an infestation of yellow starthistle on 425 acres of his cattle-grazing range north of Keating Valley. Cook said he had worked for many years to control that weed and had considerable success, in part through the release of insects that feed on the thistles. But Cook suspects the bugs were victims of the hard winter of 2016-17. And since then yellow starthistle has spread again. Cook said he’s grateful that the grant program has helped him renew his battle against the weed, which, because it’s not palatable to cattle, can reduce the value of his rangeland. Cook said that although there isn’t a large sage grouse population on his land, there is a group of birds that seems to live there year-round. He said he has strived over the years to improve his land, not only by controlling noxious weeds but by other means such as building fences along streams to keep cattle from trampling the banks and eating streamside trees that shade and cool the water. “All of these areas, public or private, need to have the weeds controlled to improve habitat for all wildlife, and sage grouse just happens to be one of those,” Cook said. “I’m all for protecting the sage grouse.” The Project WHAT IT IS The Baker sage grouse project is designed to improve habitat for the birds and reverse a signifi cant decline in their populations in the county over the past 15 or so years HOW IT HAPPENED A group of local, state and federal offi cials and landowners — the Baker Sage Grouse Local Implementation Team — applied for a multiyear grant through the Lottery-funded Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to improve sage grouse habitat, primarily on private land where most of the bird’s habitat is in Baker County. In January 2019 the Watershed Enhancement Board approved a 6-year, $6.1 million grant. HOW IT WORKS Private landowners can apply for fi nancial aid for projects on their property. The work can include removing invasive annual grasses and broadleaf weeds, planting native grasses, restoring streamside areas or wet meadows, reducing wildfi re risk, fencing to control cattle grazing, ranch management plans and inventorying noxious weeds. Applications are accepted two times per year, on March 15 and Oct. 15. MORE INFORMATION Contact Dallas Hall Defrees, the project coordinator, at 541-239-7016 or by email at ddefrees@bakercounty.org That said, Cook believes that the efforts on private land will be largely negated unless weeds are also treated on public land. He said his grazing land is all but surrounded by public ground, and if weeds proliferate on public land they’ll eventually spread to private ground.
