10 CapitalPress.com
April 10, 2015
Oregon
States adopt sage grouse protection plans New OSU ag admins
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
If greater sage grouse are
listed as threatened or endan-
gered later this year, it won’t be
for lack of expensive conserva-
tion efforts in the 11 Western
states where the bird lives.
Since 2010, the USDA’s
Natural Resources Conser-
vation Service alone has
spent nearly $300 million and
worked with private landown-
ers to conserve sage grouse
habitat on 4.4 million acres.
A total of 1,129 ranches have
signed on through the NRCS’s
Sage Grouse Initiative.
Other public agencies and
private partners have spent an
additional $128 million in that
time, according to an NRCS
report, and the 2014 Farm Bill
contains $200 million more to
continue the work into 2018.
All across the West, landowners
and management agencies are
cutting intrusive conifer trees,
marking fences to prevent in-
fl ight collisions and doing other
work to protect a bird whose po-
tential Endangered Species Act
listing has been described as the
“spotted owl on steroids.”
In fact, it was the bitter
northern spotted owl legacy
of lawsuits, timber sale pro-
tests, mill closures and steep
reduction in federal timber
harvests that prodded private
and public collaboration re-
garding sage grouse.
Tim Griffi ths, national co-
ordinator of the NRCS Sage
Grouse Initiative in Bozeman,
Mont., said the intent is to
achieve non-regulatory wildlife
conservation while sustaining a
working landscape. He said the
public-private collaboration has
been “nothing short of historic.”
Whether it staves off an ESA
listing, however, is an open ques-
tion. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service concluded in 2010 that
greater sage grouse warranted
ESA protection, but held off im-
plementation because other spe-
cies needed more immediate at-
tention. The service will decide
by September 2015 whether to
list sage grouse as threatened or
endangered.
Western partners must be
able to tell USFWS what has
changed since it made its ini-
tial conclusion, Griffi ths said.
A March report from the Sage
Grouse Initiative documents the
work that’s been done: http://
www.sagegrouseinitiative.com/
usda-report-demonstrates-pos-
itive-impact-300-million-in-
vestment-sage-grouse-conser-
vation-working-lands-west/
Oregon, where voluntary
conservation agreements on pri-
vate and public land now cover
nearly all critical sage grouse
habitat in the state, is seen as
a model of inter-agency and
landowner cooperation. Ranch-
ers represented by soil and wa-
ter conservation districts have
signed Candidate Conservation
Agreements with Assurances, or
CCAA, with the Fish and Wild-
life Service. In return for taking
basic steps to improve or pre-
serve sage grouse habitat, land-
owners get 30 years of protec-
tion from additional regulation
even if the bird is listed.
Meanwhile, the Sage Grouse
Initiative has spent $18.4 mil-
lion helping Oregon landown-
ers remove western junipers
assess department
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
AP Photo/Rawlins Daily Times, Jerret Raffety, File
This fi le photo shows a male sage grouse performing his “strut”
near Rawlins, Wyo. States have been formulating plans to help
recovery of the bird across its range.
and other early-stage conifers,
which crowd out sage and grass-
es, suck up water and provide
perches for predators. More than
405,000 acres in the West have
been reclaimed by cutting juni-
per, with nearly half in Oregon.
The work has cleared conifers
from an estimated 68 percent of
the grouse nesting, brood-rear-
ing and winter habitat on private
land, according to the SGI.
Griffi ths, the SGI coordina-
tor, said voluntary acceptance
by ranchers was crucial.
“That would almost be the
understatement of the century,”
he said. “The ranching commu-
nity not only opened up their
gates and their kitchen tables
for us to sit down and discuss
this, they opened their pockets
and brought their neighbors
over,” he said.
One of the early signers,
rancher Tom Sharp of South-
east Oregon’s Harney County,
coined an expression for the
agreements: “What’s good for
the bird is good for the herd.”
Harney County spent three
years drawing up conservation
agreements on private land,
Sharp said. After they’d been
approved, seven other Oregon
counties adopted similar plans
within three months. Secretary
of the Interior Sally Jewell and
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown pre-
sided over a celebration of the
agreements last month in Bend.
Marty Suter Goold, director
of the county’s Soil and Water
Conservation District, was in-
vited to Denver in March to ex-
plain the county’s work to offi -
cials from the 11 Western states
where greater sage grouse live.
“Irregardless of what hap-
pens with the listing decision,
I feel landowners wanted to
demonstrate their dedication to
these kind of habitat improve-
ments on private lands,” she
said. “We’re pioneering a way
of the future that can be mod-
eled to any kind of species.”
Goold said a timber own-
er who’d been through the
endangered species wars told
her ranchers were far more or-
ganized than the timber indus-
try was when the spotted owl
listing hit.
AURORA, Ore. — One of the
first tasks Oregon State Universi-
ty’s two new agricultural college
administrators set for themselves
was a tour of research and exten-
sion stations. Associate Dean Dan
Edge and Sam Angima, assistant
dean for outreach and engagement,
wanted to hear from OSU staff and
the producers who rely on the state-
wide network of stations for advice
and information.
“You don’t want to come
into a new offi ce and assume
everything’s fi ne,” Angima
said during a stop April 1 at the
North Willamette Research and
Extension Center in Aurora.
Edge and Angima visited
OSU’s Mid-Columbia station in
Hood River and the Food Inno-
vation Center in Portland before
stopping at North Willamette.
The center, about 20 miles south
of Portland, is a key contact
point for berry farmers, nursery
operators, hazelnut orchardists
and Christmas tree growers,
among others.
Angima said OSU staff
quickly made one thing very
clear: “They are spread too
thin,” he said.
“There are huge demands
across all our units,” Edge agreed.
The statewides, as they’re
called, haven’t regained full staff-
ing from cuts imposed during the
recession, but OSU offi cials be-
lieve they’ve now got the Legis-
lature’s attention and may receive
budget help. Edge, noting OSU’s
ag and forestry programs were
ranked seventh best in the world,
Eric Mortenson/Capital Press
OSU College of Ag Assistant
Dean Sam Angima, left, and Asso-
ciate Dean Dan Edge are touring
extension and research centers.
said the university provides the
best “pound for pound” return on
the state’s investment.
Edge was head of OSU’s De-
partment of Fisheries and Wild-
life Science before moving to
the associate dean position Feb.
1. Angima was regional admin-
istrator of OSU Extension on the
North Coast, based in Newport.
He moved to the Corvallis cam-
pus job March 1.
Angima said one of his
goals is to break down barriers
between the College of Ag and
other departments. In some cas-
es, researchers from other OSU
departments do fi eld outreach
that the Extension program can
help with. “We can’t sit in an
ivory tower and expect things to
happen,” he said.
A group meeting with An-
gima and Edge offered some
thoughts on their interaction with
the North Willamette and other
extension and research centers.
One of them, Bill Sabol of
Arbor Grove Nursery in St.
Paul, said on-line advice and in-
formation has its place, but per-
sonal interaction with Extension
experts is more valuable. With-
out it, “You lose contact with
your customers,” he said.
Controversy over federal land transfer potentially moot
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — The prospect of
transferring federal land to state
ownership roused sharply dif-
fering opinions in the Oregon
Capitol recently, but the contro-
versy may be legally moot.
Concerns over federal mis-
management of forest and
range lands in Oregon serve
as the impetus for House Bill
3444, which would require the
U.S. government to cede most
of its public lands to the state.
Oregon lawmakers are also
considering House Bill 3240,
which would form a task force
on the subject, as well as House
Joint Memorial 13, which would
urge the U.S. President and Con-
gress to make such a transfer.
However, legal experts say
that Oregon and other states
Federal land by state
Land area by percent of state
0-10%
11-30%
Mont.
31-50%
51-80%
> 80%
N.H.
Idaho
Wyo.
Nev.
Calif.
Utah
Ariz.
Colo.
N.M.
Alaska
Hawaii
likely face insurmountable
challenges in trying to gain
ownership of federal property.
Such proposals generally
refl ect dissatisfaction with fed-
D.C.
Source:
Congressional
Research
Service
Fla. Alan Kenaga/
Capital Press
eral agencies but don’t have
solid legal footing, said Rob-
ert Keiter, a law professor and
director of the University of
Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center
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of Land, Resources and the En-
vironment.
“My guess is it has much
more political salience given
antipathy toward the federal
government rather than any se-
rious legal credibility,” he said.
During an April 2 hearing
on the legislation, Sen. Doug
Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls,
blasted the U.S. Forest Service
and Bureau of Land Manage-
ment for sequestering employ-
ees in cubicles while forests
grow overstocked and weeds
overtake the landscape.
“The bloated bureaucracies
that control these lands seem
incapable of change,” Whit-
sett testifi ed before the House
Committee on Rural Commu-
nities, Land Use and Water.
Supporters of the bills
claimed that the U.S. govern-
ment’s ownership of more than
half of Oregon’s land mass
effectively starves county gov-
ernments of property tax rev-
enues, leading to insuffi cient
funds for law enforcement and
other crucial services.
Federal agencies are also
hindered by environmental
laws that prevent logging and
other practices that generate
revenues and mitigate fi re risks,
proponents said.
“Rather than focusing on
the symptoms, we should
be concentrating on the root
of the problem,” said Tootie
Smith, a Clackamas County
commissioner.
Environmental groups testi-
fi ed against the legislation, ar-
guing that federal management
is necessary to protect species
and water quality.
Federal lands belong to the
public and should be valued for
wildlife habitat and recreation-
al opportunities, not just “ex-
tractive purposes” such as log-
ging, mining and grazing, said
Rhett Lawrence, conservation
director for the Oregon Chapter
Sierra Club.
If federal land were trans-
ferred to state ownership, the
property would still be subject
to the Endangered Species Act,
Clean Water Act and Clean Air
Act, Lawrence said.
The National Environmen-
tal Policy Act would no longer
apply to the lands, however,
which would shut out the pub-
lic from decisions on how it’s
managed, he said.
NEPA requires federal agen-
cies to study the environmental
consequences of their actions
and is frequently the basis for
lawsuits seeking to block graz-
ing and logging.
Representatives of Trout
Unlimited and the Native Fish
Society also spoke against
the bills, arguing that the state
would face a huge burden in
maintaining the ecological
work that’s currently done by
federal scientists.
The committee hearing fo-
cused on the merits of the leg-
islation, but the state’s authority
to require the transfer of federal
land likely poses a major obsta-
cle for supporters.
Lawmakers in Utah suc-
cessfully passed similar legis-
lation in 2012, but the state’s
own legislative attorneys came
to the conclusion that it has a
“high probability of being de-
clared unconstitutional.”
Under legal precedent es-
tablished by the U.S. Supreme
Court, the federal government
has broad authority to retain
ownership of public lands, said
Keiter of the University of Utah.
Land transfer proponents
rely on language in state en-
abling laws that refer to the
disposal of federal lands, but
these provisions are taken
out of context since the U.S.
government retains discretion
whether to actually sell prop-
erty, he said.
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