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March 27, 2015
CapitalPress.com
5
Bill to help in Wood River Valley call
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
BELLEVUE, Idaho — A
bill in the Idaho Legislature
would put Blaine County
groundwater irrigators in a
better fi nancial position to re-
spond to a recent water deliv-
ery call.
Groundwater districts are
allowed to borrow up to $1
per irrigated acre from lend-
ers against their future assess-
ments to organize, fi nance
mitigation plans or tend to
other district business.
The pending bill, S1169,
which passed out of the Sen-
ate Resource and Environ-
ment Committee March 23
and was headed for a vote
by the full Senate, would in-
crease the borrowing limit to
$3 per irrigated acre.
The noncontroversial stat-
ute change would help about
190 Blaine County ground-
water irrigators, representing
25,000 farm acres, cover ini-
tial costs of the water call, as
well as the expense of hosting
a county election to form a
groundwater district.
Attorney Al Barker, who
represents some of the well
users, said Blaine County has
estimated the election cost at
$10,000 and required a bond
for twice the amount.
The water call was fi led
in late February by 63 sur-
face irrigators, drawing from
the lower Little Wood Riv-
er system and the Big Wood
River system below Magic
Reservoir. The senior irriga-
tors claim surface fl ows have
diminished, as well use has
reduced spring levels.
“Looking at what it was
going to take to respond to the
call, they felt the dollar per
acre limit was going to put a
crimp on what they were go-
ing to be able to do,” Barker
said.
Barker said the bulk of the
funding will be needed to hire
a hydrology expert before the
end of this year.
The Idaho Department
of Water Resources has sent
roughly 500 potentially af-
fected groundwater users no-
tice of a May 4 status confer-
ence in Shoshone.
The agricultural ground-
water irrigators, who farm in
the south county, plan a May
election to form a ground-
water district. The rest of the
affected irrigators, mostly res-
idential users and municipal-
ities, will organize a separate
groundwater district and are
planning a November elec-
tion.
A groundwater model for
the Big Wood River Valley
aquifer is in development
and should assist in analysis
for the call. IDWR expects
to complete the model by the
end of this year.
Kevin Lakey, watermas-
ter for Water District 37,
which includes both surface
and groundwater users, said
a challenge to calibrating the
model is the lack of historic
records on the aquifer, where
many wells were fi tted with
their fi rst water gages in 2013
and 2014.
IDWR hydrology section
manager Sean Vincent said his
department’s three groundwa-
ter modelers are collaborating
with two modelers from the
U.S. Geological Survey on
the project, estimated to cost
about $400,000 to complete.
They’ve formed a technical
advisory committee, with rep-
resentatives from the various
stakeholders, to offer input on
model development.
In addition to the call, Vin-
cent said the model will be
utilized for longterm planning
by the Idaho Water Resource
Board.
“We have an initial model,
and we’re in the calibration
process,” Vincent said. “The
one thing about the Wood
River Valley is it’s a smaller
area, but we don’t have a lot
of data.”
Action on wolves can’t wait Study examines what happens
when wolves, cougars collide
until 2017, senator says
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
WDFW offi cial says
agency trying to
improve
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — A Senate
hearing Thursday on a bill
that might change Washing-
ton wolf policy in two years
turned to a more immediate
issue — the upcoming graz-
ing season.
Sen. Brian Dansel pressed
the state’s wolf policy coordi-
nator, Dave Ware, on whether
the Department of Fish and
Wildlife was content to wait
until 2017 to do more to pro-
tect livestock from wolves.
“Are we good to wait two
years to do anything?” asked
Dansel, a Republican who
represents northeast Washing-
ton.
“No, not at all,” Ware said.
The House and Senate
have both voted to reconsid-
er the state’s wolf recovery
plan, but the Fish and Wild-
life Commission would have
until June 30, 2017, to make
changes.
At a hearing of the Nat-
ural Resources and Parks
Committee, Dansel said he’s
concerned that wolves will
infl ict heavy fi nancial losses
on ranchers in his corner of
the state unless the state does
more on the “lethal deterrence
side.”
Dansel called reopening
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Okanogan County, Wash., rancher Scott Vejraska suspects wolves
are fi nding his grazing cattle. He testifi ed March 19 in front of a
state Senate committee in Olympia.
the wolf plan a “great bill,”
but also said he was worried
the legislation would disarm
attempts to manage wolves
more effectively now.
“My concern is we get
this and then everybody goes,
‘OK, we’re done with wolves.
We have a wolf bill. It’s work-
able. Everything’s great.’ I
don’t think on the ground
that’s going to be the case,”
Dansel said.
Ware said WDFW has
been working with produc-
ers on “localized deterrence
plans” to more effectively
protect livestock.
“We’re trying to get these
deterrence plans up and run-
ning before the grazing sea-
son starts,” he said.
In an interview, Ware said
WDFW has tried to learn
from past predations. The
agency has talked with ranch-
ers over the winter informally
about how to prevent wolves
from ever getting the taste for
their livestock.
The number of wolves and
their range are growing, how-
ever, he said. “Can we expect
additional depredations? Ab-
solutely,” he said.
Okanogan County rancher
Scott Vejraska, who testifi ed
in support of reopening the
wolf plan, said he sent out 700
cows to graze and eight didn’t
come back, an unusually high
number. He suspects wolves.
He said it’s unrealistic to
think his cows can be guarded
as they spend months grazing
on 300,000 acres. “You turn
the cows out and hope for the
best,” he said.
Three of Oregon’s grow-
ing wolf packs, perhaps 20
wolves in all, now use parts
of the Mount Emily Wildlife
Management Unit between
Pendleton and La Grande.
The same area is home and
hunting range for an estimat-
ed 100 cougars.
A study underway by an
Oregon State University grad-
uate student takes a look at
what happens when two of the
West’s iconic predators com-
pete for food and habitat.
“Certainly from a science
perspective, it’s a really cool
study,” said Katie Dugger, an
associate professor at OSU
who is overseeing the re-
search. Graduate student Eliz-
abeth Orning is conducting the
study as her Ph.D. dissertation.
As part of the work, re-
searchers have placed GPS
or radio collars on eight cou-
gars and on at least one wolf
each from the Mount Emily,
Meacham and Umatilla River
packs that frequent the area.
On her research website,
Orning said increasing popula-
AP photo by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
This May 25, 2014, photo shows OR-26, a 100-pound adult male, af-
ter he was fi tted with a GPS tracking collar outside La Grande, Ore.
Online
https: //sites.google.com/site/
mtemilywolfcougarstudy/
tions of large North American
carnivores provide an oppor-
tunity to study two that share
habitat, home ranges and prey.
The steady growth of Or-
egon’s gray wolf population,
which has increased from 14
to 77 confi rmed wolves since
the end of 2009, made interac-
tion with cougars inevitable.
“We could kind of see this
was going to happen,” said
Dugger, of OSU.
Although larger than
wolves, cougars are likely to
fare worse in the competition
because they are solitary ani-
mals. Wolves travel in packs
and can kill adult cougars,
compete for deer and elk,
chase cougars off carcasses
they’ve been feeding on and
force them into steeper, brush-
ier terrain, Dugger said.
“We do expect wolves to
change the way cougars use
the landscape,” Dugger said.
Judge overturns ‘test case’ logging project
White Castle timber
sale opposed by
environmentalists
Sutherlin
N. Um p qua
i ve r
138
Roseburg
UMPQUA
NAT’L
FOR.
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R i v
e r
A federal judge has over-
turned the approval of a timber
project that environmental-
ists claim is a “test case” for
increased logging of mature
forests.
The White Castle project
calls for harvesting trees up
to 110 years old on 187 acres
of U.S. Bureau of Land Man-
agement property near Myrtle
Creek, Ore.
The BLM intended for the
project to demonstrate the
“variable retention” model, in
which patches of trees are har-
vested to recreate “early suc-
cessional” habitat consisting
of shrubs and other plant life.
While the agency argued
the technique will improve
the forest’s diversity and resil-
ience, Oregon Wild and Casca-
dia Wildlands equated it with a
return to clear-cutting federal
forests and fi led a lawsuit to
stop the timber sale.
U.S. District Judge Ann
Aiken has now agreed with
the environmental groups that
BLM violated the National
Environmental Policy Act by
not conducting an in-depth
scientifi c review of the project,
known as an environmental
impact statement or EIS.
“The project may be rela-
tively small in size but it will
adversely affect the northern
spotted owl. Moreover, it rep-
resents a pilot test with effects
that are likely to be highly
controversial, highly uncertain
and infl uential on future proj-
ect planning,” Aiken said.
Area in
detail
R
Capital Press
5
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pqua
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By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
ORE.
Myrtle
Creek
Site of
White
Castle
harvest
area
5
227
N
10 miles
62
Shady Cove
Capital Press graphic
The judge has vacated
BLM’s approval of the proj-
ect, which means logging
cannot proceed until the agen-
cy completes the EIS and cor-
rects other shortcomings she
identifi ed.
In the agency’s existing
environmental analysis, BLM
failed to consider enough alter-
natives to removing trees older
than 80 years old, Aiken said,
BLM should also have con-
ducted a more extensive EIS
because the project was sub-
ject to “scientifi c controversy”
since its inception about possi-
ble effects on the spotted owl,
a federally protected threat-
ened species, she said.
Aside from the project’s
uncertainties, Aiken also cited
its precedential effect as a rea-
son for further study.
While the BLM would
not be required to follow the
White Castle project’s exam-
ple, the case was intended to
test a more aggressive harvest
approach that could replace the
agency’s current risk-averse
focus on thinning, she said.
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