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February 6, 2015 CapitalPress.com 11 Oregon Offi cial: Nursery imports may pose pest threat By ERIC MORTENSON Capital Press PORTLAND — Wyatt Wil- liams, an invasive species spe- cialist with the Oregon Depart- ment of Forestry, said afterward he felt like he was entering the lion’s den. He was about to tell members of the Oregon Asso- ciation of Nurseries, the most valuable sector of state agricul- ture, about a problem that would “send ripples through your industry and my fi eld, forest health.” Specifi cally, the importation of live plants into Oregon and the U.S. is a primary pathway for invasive insects and patho- gens, some of which could cause severe damage to forests in particular. Williams, invited to speak during the Northwest Agricul- tural Show in Portland, was hired in 2012 as the state forestry Eric Mortenson/Capital Press Wyatt Williams has bad news for Oregon’s nursery industry: 70 percent of invasive insects and pathogens arrive by way of imported live plants. department’s fi rst invasive spe- cies specialist. He said there was a 500 percent increase in live plant imports to the U.S. from 1967 to 2009, and about 4 bil- lion plants arrive in the country each year. Federal monitoring is done at 18 stations with only 63 full-time inspectors, he said, and standard inspections may miss an estimated 72 percent of pests. “We’re missing stuff at the ports of entry,” Williams said. “Something’s broken there.” By backtracking invasives and comparing shipping re- cords, experts deduced that 69 percent of invasive insects and diseases arrived with live plants, he said. Oregon’s nursery industry offi cials say they’re well aware of the problem. The Oregon Association of Nurseries en- dorses a systems management approach detailed in a 106-page publication, “Safe Production and Procurement Manual.” The manual, available online at http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www. oan.org/resource/resmgr/im- ported/pdf/SafeProduction.pdf, lays out best practices for green- houses and nurseries to detect pests and diseases and respond NRCS gives farmers an option during drought By LACEY JARRELL For the Capital Press Instead of letting fi elds remain fallow, farmers can convert to dryland crops and produce forage in times of drought. “It’s better to do something with your ground — have it produce something — rather than noth- ing,” said rancher Ken Willard, of Chiloquin, Ore. With the help of a Natural Resources Con- servation Service dryland conversion program, last fall Willard converted 200 acres of his ranch to rye and triticale, a semi-beardless rye-wheat cross. The two cereal crops will ensure at least some of Willard’s 500-acre ranch stays in operation during years he doesn’t have any water. NRCS District Conservationist David Fergu- son said this particular competitive dryland grant program was designed specifi cally for Klamath County farmers facing water shortages, but sim- ilar Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funds are available throughout the state. “We’ve provided a program that lets farmers offset their production losses under a drought, and it helps them provide feed for animals by converting some of these drier, hard-to-irrigate pastures to a perennial mix that produces better, if not the same, than their irrigated crops,” Fer- guson said. The perennial mix will be something domes- tic like crested wheat or intermediate type grass- es, he added. According to Willard, the alfalfa he grew in the past requires at least four feet of water — rye and triticale require only a fraction of that. But Willard will only get one cutting from the dry- land crops — as opposed to alfalfa, which some- Lacey Jarrell/For the Capital Press Ken Willard inspects beardless triticale at his Chiloquin, Ore., ranch. The triticale was planted as part of a dryland conversion program meant to help farmers produce crops during water shortages. times produces up to four cuttings. Ferguson noted that without fi rst prepping the soil with cover crops for a couple of years, estab- lishing perennial grasses in old pasture sod can be challenging. He said the Klamath program helps farmers prepare soil for permanent native or do- mestic grass mixes by fi rst planting cover crops, such as cereal rye, for at least two years. “We’re having better success seeding it heavy and giving it some time for the cover crops and triticale to produce the feed,” Ferguson said. Dryland cover crops also help stabilize the soil and prevent noxious weeds from taking hold, according to Willard. “Taking pastures out into a cereal crop is a good thing because it gets rid of the weeds. We plant it so thick, it doesn’t let the thistles survive. They can’t compete against a cereal crop,” Wil- lard said. quickly if they appear. Regarding plant imports, the manual recommends checking to see if the material is already available in the U.S. If so, pro- ducers can save time and money while reducing risk. If it must be imported, the handbook recommends grow- ers fi nd an offi cially accredited nursery in the exporting country and have the material grown out for at least one year or one grow- ing season. It also should be in- spected, tested and evaluated in the source country before ship- ment, or evaluated at an accred- ited facility in the U.S. prior to commercial increase, according to the manual. Jeff Stone, OAN executive director, said in an email that the manual is an industry standard and has been used as a model elsewhere. It also helped shape USDA policy governing inter- state shipment of plant material. The Oregon Department of Agriculture also collaborates with the industry to keep pests and diseases out of Oregon, said Helmuth Rogg, the depart- ment’s Plant Program director. “We are all in the same boat,” Rogg said in a prepared state- ment. “We want to protect our industry, and our state, for that matter, from dangerous plant pests that could be associated with live plant material coming into Oregon.” The department has regu- lations in place and uses quar- antines to keep pests out of the state, he said. The department also sets thousands of traps to monitor for pests, he said. Williams, with the state for- estry department, said cross-de- partment and industry collabo- ration is key to keeping invasive insects and diseases under con- trol. The biggest threat on the horizon is the emerald ash borer, which hasn’t made it to Oregon yet but has killed an estimated 100 million trees in 24 states since it was detected in 2002, Williams said. Oregon ash grows in wetlands that provide habitat for “all kinds of animals,” he said. An infesta- tion that wiped out Oregon ash could pose any number of prob- lems, he said. The city of Denver, where ash make up 15 percent of the city trees, estimated it would cost $1 billion to remove and re- place every ash, Williams said. Portland has an estimated 72,000 ash trees in public places, he add- ed. Williams said he’s placed traps in Oregon ash groves and moni- tors them for presence of the em- erald ash borer. Other diseases and bugs of concern include gypsy moth, the azalea lace bug, sudden oak death and thousand cankers dis- ease, William said. Surface fl ow reduces power costs for growers By CRAIG REED For the Capital Press MALIN, Ore. — As the power bill for his irrigation pumps steadily increased, Da- vid King began considering other options to water his hay fi elds. He decided to return to fl ood irrigation, also known as surface fl ow in more updated terms. King said the transition in irrigation methods began four years ago. The power con- tract that provided discounted electrical rates to farmers in the Klamath Basin project ex- pired seven years ago. “I’d spend $6 to $10 an acre for sprinkler irrigation before the power rate went up,” King said. “Now it’s up to $70 an acre.” King is the owner of King Farms, a 2,500-acre forage production operation. In the last four years, about 800 of those acres have been laser leveled, the sprinklers moved and the fi elds have been irri- gated by a series of ditches, pipes and head gates. King said the cost of leveling rang- es from $150 to $200 an acre, but the transition of those 800 acres has saved $50,000 annu- ally in power payments. “I can recover my leveling expense in three years easily by using no power to irri- gate,” the farmer said. Other Klamath Basin farm- ers who work fl at ground have also been making the change. “The simplist, easiest, least cost way to irrigation is sur- face fl ow, but the system has to be designed properly and maintained properly,” Steve Cheyne said. “Gravity is still free. From that standpoint, I’m not surprised to see peo- ple going back to fl ood irriga- tion.” Cheyne, a semi-retired farmer in the Klamath area, has expertise in irrigation management after evaluating several hundred irrigation systems in Southern Ore- gon and Northern California during his extension service career. “In the right places, the right surface, the right person doing the irrigation, it can be the most effi cient system in some of the fi elds we have here,” Cheyne said of surface fl ow. “We need to rethink the old idea that surface irriga- tion is wasteful. It can be, but those were the old days. We don’t have those days any- more.” When the Klamath Project was developed in the early 1900s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to turn rangeland into farmland, fl ood irrigation was the method used to spread water over the ground. Sprin- klers became more visible in the project in the mid-1960s, allowing hillside fi elds that weren’t conducive to fl ood ir- rigation to be established and productive. Environmentalists protest ‘test case’ logging project BLM defends project as improving forest resilience Sutherlin N. Um p qua i ve r 138 Roseburg UMPQUA NAT’L FOR. 42 Ri r ve PORTLAND — Environ- mentalists want to stop an Or- egon timber project they claim is a “test case” for clear-cutting trees on the verge of becoming “old growth” stands. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved logging on 187 acres near Myrtle Creek, Ore., as part of the “White Cas- tle” pilot project, which the non- profi ts Oregon Wild and Casca- dia Wildlands believe will set a precedent for harvesting mature forests. The groups claim the White Castle project is a “politically driven” attempt to increase log- ging on BLM property in West- ern Oregon to buttress “strug- gling timber-based economies” that should be enjoined by a federal judge. The BLM has departed from its risk-averse strategy of thin- ning younger trees to instead fo- cus on harvesting mature stands about to develop old growth characteristics, they said in a lawsuit. The experiment is meant to test whether the public will tol- erate clear-cutting older trees under the guise of improving forest health, the plaintiffs claim. “BLM pays a lot of lip ser- vice to ecological restoration. None of the allegations hold Area in detail R Capital Press 5 138 pqua Um By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI ORE. Myrtle Creek Site of White Castle harvest area 5 227 N 10 miles 62 Shady Cove Capital Press graphic water,” said Jennifer Schwartz, attorney for the environmental- ists, during oral arguments in Portland on Jan. 22. The agency’s stated goal of increasing the age diversity of forest stands isn’t reasonable in light of the young trees on private lands that surround the project, she said. Trees within project bound- aries regenerated naturally around the turn of the 20th century after wildfi res swept through the previously unlogged area, Schwartz said. By failing to explain why it’s necessary to log these older trees rather than thin younger stands, the BLM has violated its requirement to take a “hard look” at impacts and explore a “range of alternatives” under the National Environmental Policy Act, she said. “The BLM did not meet that burden here.” Brian Collins, attorney for the government, countered that the project was designed with the help of highly respected for- estry professors — Norm John- son of Oregon State University and Jerry Franklin of the Uni- versity of Oregon — who have throughly studied how such log- ging will affect the forest. “It is not experimental,” Col- lins said. Harvesting trees will return parts of the project area to “ear- ly seral” habitat that must be distinguished from the young stands of trees on private lands managed for maximum timber production, he said. The logging project is meant to improve the forest’s resiliency and support biodiversity rather than trying to recapture “historic con- ditions” that may or may not have existed in the area, Collins said. The plaintiffs are confl ating stand age with ecosystem com- plexity, he said. Plans for the White Castle project call for harvested areas to remain open to sunlight for a longer period of time, permitting the growth of shrubs and “un- derstory” plants that benefi t spe- cies preyed upon by threatened spotted owls, he said. This approach is much dif- ferent than clear-cutting on private lands, where managers encourage quick reforestation and a “closed canopy” of trees that suppresses plant diversity, Collins said. “You’re using herbicides to keep that understory growth out,” he said. ROP-6-2-5/#4N