OREGON
A6 — THE OBSERVER
SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2022
Should drone use in state parks be regulated?
Drones club
Oregon Parks and
Recreation considering
input from drone
advocates and critics
before setting rules
By COLE SINANIAN
Columbia Insight
SALEM — It may soon be
illegal to launch and land recre-
ational and commercial drones in
some areas of Oregon state parks.
After issuing a draft pro-
posal earlier this year, the Oregon
Parks and Recreation Depart-
ment is convening a work group
to decide where fl ying drones
should be prohibited, where it
should be allowed and where it
would require a permit. Parks offi -
cials hope to have a draft proposal
ready by next spring.
OPRD received approval from
the state Legislature to regulate
drone use in 2021 through Senate
Bill 109, after which it convened
a rule advisory committee that
began meeting late last year.
The committee — which
largely consisted of state parks
offi cials and lacked representation
from external wildlife biologists
— ultimately settled on a proposal
that would allow drones to take
off anywhere unless otherwise
specifi ed.
The proposal was panned by
conservation groups like the Port-
land Audubon Society and the
Oregon Ocean Policy Advisory
Council, who criticized its failure
to consider sensitive coastal hab-
itats, and generated hundreds of
confl icting public comments.
“It was meant to be a transition
point from where we are now,”
says associate director of Oregon
Parks and Recreation Department
Chris Havel. “But it’s clear that
we need more time to fi gure out
the drone issue. The rules need to
be specifi c enough for everyone to
feel comfortable.”
After the backlash, state parks
paused the rulemaking process in
April and is in the process of con-
vening another work group with
broader representation. By next
spring, park offi cials hope to draft
a proposal that uses scientifi c
input to designate specifi c areas
where drones can fl y.
David Rodriguez Martin/Contributed Photo
After issuing a draft proposal earlier this year, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is convening a work group to
decide where fl ying drones should be prohibited, where it should be allowed and where it would require a permit. Parks
offi cials hope to have a draft proposal ready by next spring.
Aerial disturbance
Much of Oregon’s coastal hab-
itat is regulated by the state park
system, so conservationists are
concerned that allowing drones
to fl y within its limits could dis-
rupt the coast’s 1.3 million nesting
seabirds.
Drone interactions with sea-
birds are well documented.
In May 2021, a drone crash
in the Bolsa Chica Ecological
Reserve in Huntington Beach,
California, caused an entire fl ock
of elegant terns to abandon their
nests, leaving behind as many as
2,000 eggs, the Orange County
Register reported.
The birds never returned,
meaning an entire season’s worth
of the near-threatened tern was
lost.
According to Portland
Audubon staff scientist Joe Liebe-
zeit, seabirds on the Oregon coast
are highly territorial when nesting
and will chase moving objects
they perceive as living.
Drones — typically small,
lightweight, multi-propellered
craft equipped with high-
resolution cameras — appear as
predators to birds, prompting
them to either fi ght the aircraft or
fl ee. Repeated disturbances can
leave nests vulnerable to predators
and the elements, aff ecting the
cohort’s long-term survival,
Liebezeit says.
“If the birds are fl ushed from
the nest repeatedly over time,
they’re not able to incubate their
eggs or take care of their young,”
he says. “Then there’s an entire
cohort of young, not able to be
born and raised, and the adults
lose a year of breeding.”
Portland Audubon monitors
coastal populations of the black
oystercatcher — a soot-col-
ored bird with a bright orange
beak that nests on rocky coast-
lines and is known to be highly
territorial.
Trained volunteers go out in
shifts at monitoring stations along
the Oregon coast, where they
count the eggs and watch the nests
from a distance, documenting
disturbances from humans and
predators.
According to Liebezeit, recent
data shows that volunteers record
an average of three drone distur-
bances a week.
“And that’s only a small sam-
pling of the entire lifetime of the
nest,” Liebezeit says. “At a min-
imum, we’d want to have a sea-
sonal closure.”
Parks for all
The role of state parks among
Oregon’s public lands makes
drone regulation a particularly
contentious issue, Havel says.
Unlike national parks and
wildlife refuges — which pro-
hibit drones entirely — state
parks must balance confl icting
interests and attempt to accom-
modate all forms of recreation,
so long as they aren’t detri-
mental to the park’s longevity.
State parks are not meant to
be wilderness areas, Havel says,
so all types of recreation are
welcome in Oregon state parks.
Activities are banned only
once they’ve been shown to
infringe on other park visitors’
right to recreate or cause signifi -
cant damage to natural resources
that negatively aff ects the park.
“Every form of recreation
is consumptive,” Havel says.
“Every human presence wears
and tears at the park a little and
requires management. The con-
cern is whether drones are going
to add something new to the dis-
ruption people always cause.”
In the coming months, the
work group will develop maps
for all 259 of Oregon’s state
parks, detailing specifi c areas
where drones can take off and
land. Some parks may be com-
pletely off limits to drones,
while others — like those on the
coast — may restrict entire sec-
tions of beach during nesting
seasons.
“It’s not about sacrifi cing nat-
ural resources versus limiting
recreation,” Havel says. “There’s
a lot of space in between.”
Because drones are governed
by the Federal Aviation Admin-
istration while in the air, the
state can only regulate them on
the ground.
Havel says that regardless
of park rules, pilots can still
launch their drones from outside
park limits and fly them inside,
so directing them to areas where
they can fly is likely to be more
effective than telling them
where they can’t.
“If you simply say no drones
at all, people are going to give
you the finger,” says recre-
ational drone flyer and policy
advocate Kenji Sugahara.
“But if you point them in the
right direction, you’re going
to get a much higher level of
compliance.”
Havel invited Sugahara — an
attorney who sits on the FAA’s
drone advisory committee and
the Oregon Department of Avi-
ation board — to sit on the state
parks’ initial rule advisory com-
mittee in 2021.
Sugahara is the president of
the Drone Service Providers
Alliance, an advocacy group for
commercial drone users.
He also works as free-
lance commercial drone pilot,
shooting footage for car com-
panies like Cadillac and Nissan
up and down the Oregon coast.
He says that allowing drones in
state parks would not only ben-
efit recreators, but businesses
as well.
“There’s a lot of economic
value that’s created for Oregon
coastal communities in drones,”
he says. “Drones have become
integral to the production of
commercials and movies and
such. So if production compa-
nies are unable to access those
areas, they’ll simply go some-
where else.”
To address the conflict with
nesting seabirds, Sugahara pro-
poses a three-tiered permitting
system, with different sections
of the park requiring a different
drone-flying permit.
More ecologically sensi-
tive areas would require a more
restrictive permit with more
training, while permits for other
areas would be relatively easy
to get. Nesting grounds should
remain off limits, Sugahara says.
New map classifi es wildfi re danger across Oregon
By CASSANDRA PROFITA and
BRADLEY W. PARKS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Oregon’s
new wildfi re risk map was
taking a long time to load
on Thursday, June 30, as
people across the state
searched their addresses
to fi nd out whether their
homes were in the red.
The Oregon Wildfi re
Risk Explorer places every
single tax lot in Oregon in a
risk category ranging from
zero to extreme.
Large stretches of Cen-
tral, Eastern and Southern
Oregon landed in the red
“extreme” wildfi re risk cat-
egory based on weather, cli-
mate topography, vegetation
and nearby buildings.
About half of the 1.8 mil-
lion tax lots in the state are
now categorized as being
part of the “wildland-urban
interface,” also known as
WUI. It’s a designation for
homes and communities
that are more vulnerable to
wildfi re because they are
intermingled with forestland
and wilderness areas.
Jackson County Fire
Chief Bob Horton said the
map will be helpful for
identifying where to focus
fi re prevention work in
Southern Oregon, where fi re
risk is very high in a lot of
communities.
“The new map gives
us granularity to explore
the risk levels at neighbor-
hood levels, at parcel levels,
where prior to this we didn’t
have the scientifi c backing
to it,” Horton said. “We
had hunches on where we
thought the higher risk areas
were.”
The map also could have
expensive consequences for
some property owners and
developers because the state
is also crafting new building
codes and zoning require-
ments to help protect homes
in high fi re risk areas.
The new rules are still
in the works and won’t be
approved until later this
year, but they will apply to
about 120,000 properties
— about 8% of all tax lots
statewide — that are both
inside the wildland-urban
interface and labeled as
having high or extreme fi re
risk. There is an appeal pro-
cess for property owners
who want to challenge the
state’s wildfi re risk classifi -
cation of their tax lot.
The mapping process
stems from a sweeping wild-
fi re preparedness package
lawmakers passed last year
in response to the wildfi res
that burned 4,000 homes and
more than a million acres of
Oregon in 2020.
Defensible space
State Sen. Jeff Golden,
D-Ashland, who led the
eff ort to pass that legis-
lation, said there is state
funding to help property
owners comply with new
requirements to clear defen-
sible space around homes in
high fi re risk areas and use
fi re-resistant materials for
new construction.
“I really understand
that people would be anx-
ious about this,” he said.
“We now have to live dif-
ferently with wildfi re. We
were shown really clearly
what the future looks like in
the last couple of years and
… lot of people were badly
hurt, but we survived.”
Now, he said, the
state has a chance to pre-
pare for future fi res and
better protect homes and
communities.
“A whole lot of the most
important work is relatively
easy and relatively inexpen-
sive,” he said.
Some of the protective
measures that experts rec-
ommend are cleaning out
gutters, cutting lower limbs
off trees and removing inva-
sive species from around
the home, like blackberry
bushes.
The Oregon State Fire
Marshal and the Oregon
Department of Consumer
and Business Services
are developing rules for
clearing defensible space
around homes and applying
wildfi re hazard building
code standards. The new
wildfi re risk map will deter-
mine where the upcoming
rules will apply.
Brian Mulhollen, a prop-
erty owner in Gold Hill in
Southern Oregon, said he
expected his home to be in
the “extreme risk” category.
He’s seen several wildfi res
near his property in recent
years.
“Most of Southern
Oregon, especially the
Rogue Valley, is extreme,”
he said.
As a former battalion
chief for a fi refi ghting unit
and current manager of a
helicopter company that
helps fi ght fi res, Mulhollen
said he knew his home
needs at least 100 feet of
defensible space around it
that is cleared of fl ammable
vegetation.
But he worries about
other homeowners who sud-
denly fi nd themselves in the
extreme fi re risk category
on the map.
“Most property owners
don’t know what to do with
that,” he said.
Mulhollen had help pre-
paring his property for fi re
season from the Wildfi re
Protection Corps, a youth
training group that has been
deployed to limb trees and
remove brush that could
spread wildfi res to people’s
homes.
He said the state needed
the push from Legislature
to help property owners
prepare.
“Oregon is way behind on
wildfi re risk analysis com-
pared with other fi re-prone
Western states,” he said.
Insurance costs
Some property owners
worried that the new
risk assessment would
aff ect their homeowner’s
insurance.
Last month, Portland res-
ident Dwayne Canfi eld got
a letter from the insurance
company that had been cov-
ering his vacation rental
house in Sisters.
“They sent us a non-re-
newal notice saying we
decided not to renew this
policy because of the wild-
fi re risk in the area,” he said.
“I was shocked. We have
seen fi res within a mile and
a half of here, but I didn’t
see it as a huge risk. We’re
four blocks from the city
center.”
Canfi eld was able to fi nd
another insurance provider
without spending more
money on a policy, but he
expects to see more home-
owners in the same situation
he faced now that the state
has put every property into
a risk category.
Kenton Brine, president
of the Northwest Insur-
ance Council, said insur-
ance companies across the
region are already doing
their own wildfi re risk
mapping, so a risk map
from the state of Oregon
won’t necessarily make
a big diff erence in their
policy decisions.
“It won’t come as a sur-
prise to insurance compa-
nies that there is wildfi re
risk in those red areas,” he
said.
As wildfi re risk is
growing in the region, Brine
said some insurance com-
panies are changing their
approach.
“We have seen insurers
who have changed their risk
appetite — even prior to the
massive Labor Day fi res in
Oregon,” he said.
Brine said most home-
owners should have no
problem fi nding some insur-
ance for their homes even in
extreme fi re risk areas.
Golden said he and offi -
cials with the Oregon
Department of Forestry
have been talking with
Oregon Insurance Commis-
sioner Andrew Stolfi about
the eff ects wildfi re risk
mapping could have on peo-
ple’s insurance policies.
“That is a real thing.
We’re going to have to be
looking at that,” he said.
“The wildfi res in the West,
all over the West, not just
Oregon have become a
hazard. That really turns
the insurance market upside
down.”
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