November 13, 2015
CapitalPress.com
11
Washington
FFA chapters help in aftermath of Chelan wildfire
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
KENNEWICK, Wash. —
The Kennewick High School
FFA chapter had a $2,000
grant from the National FFA
Foundation for an alfalfa re-
search project.
“Then everything broke
loose up there and I asked the
foundation if we could switch
it to an environmental emer-
gency grant,” Kennewick FFA
advisor Dan White said of the
August Chelan wildfire.
“So now we’re taking 52
kids for the day on Nov. 14 to
help with cleanup and rebuild-
ing in Chelan,” he said.
The 52 FFA students from
Kennewick, Kamiakin, Co-
lumbia Burbank, Pasco and
New Horizons high schools
will join about 50 Lake Chelan
High School FFA members.
Among the jobs they’ll do
is repairing FFA livestock pens
at Chelan FFA adviser Rod
Cool’s house, which was de-
stroyed in the fire. There’s also
landscape and brush work to
be done there and at Jan Pier-
son’s house and orchard. Her
late husband, Walt, was Lake
Chelan High School FFA ad-
viser before Cool.
Cascadia Conservation Dis-
trict is also helping at her prop-
erty.
Another project for the day
will be helping Tom Ryan, a
longtime FFA supporter, re-
build corrals and deer fence
around his orchard in Antoine
Creek north of Chelan.
Cool is trying to line up
more projects. The owner of a
vineyard in Royal City is donat-
ing trellis posts for deer fencing.
RDO Equipment Co. of Pasco
is donating use of a tractor.
Half the $2,000 grant will
be used to bus the students
from the Tri-Cities to Chelan
and back. The other half, White
said, will buy fencing supplies.
“This is the best kind of
learning,” White said. “These
kids see something in their own
back yard and learn each and
every one of us can make a dif-
ference.”
The FFA state officers will
also participate, as they did
recently in a FFA service day
in Louiville, Ky., just before
the Oct. 28-31 national FFA
convention, said Abbie De-
Meerteer, executive director of
the Washington FFA in Pull-
man.
WDFW proposes shifting
crop loss expense to farmers
Farm Bureau stokes
opposition
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Patricia Talcott, WSU veterinary diagnostic toxicologist, answers
questions from Ronald Gross, Post Falls, Idaho, after her talk at
the Washington State Weed Association’s annual conference in
Wenatchee, Wash., Nov. 4.
Animal laboratory gets
more calls on toxic plant
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
WENATCHEE,
Wash.
— The Washington Animal
Disease Diagnostic Laborato-
ry received more phone calls
about a plant toxic to horses in
the past year than it has in the
previous 12 years combined.
People are probably recog-
nizing Hoary alyssum more
and it’s probably spreading,
said Patricia Talcott, a Wash-
ington State University associ-
ate professor and veterinary di-
agnostic toxicologist at the lab.
She spoke to some 500 peo-
ple attending the Washington
State Weed Association’s 65th
annual conference on Nov. 4.
The number of calls, now
dozens, may be increasing
“because a lot of us in the
plant world are talking about it
more,” Talcott said.
Hoary alyssum, listed as a
noxious weed in some states,
can be found in alfalfa and is
toxic to cattle and horses but is
more of a problem in horses,
she said.
At 10 percent of a horse’s
feed, it can increase foot tem-
perature, which causes swell-
ing from the knee down in one
or more legs and can turn into
laminitis, a crippling disease
for which there is no specific
treatment, Talcott said.
Detection and removal of
feed containing Hoary alys-
sum can lead to recovery but
laminitis can also lead to eu-
thanasia, she said.
The specific toxin is not
known, she said. The USDA
ARS Poisonous Plant Labo-
ratory in Logan, Utah, might
study it if it were more wide-
spread and a concern to people,
she said.
Talcott also talked about
several other weeds and a cou-
ple of pesticides harmful to
horses and cattle.
Yellow starthistle and Rus-
sian knapweed, in large quanti-
ties, impair the part of a horse’s
brain that controls swallowing
and can lead to euthanasia, she
said.
Both weeds are common in
the West.
“Usually we see it with
people who move in from oth-
er states. They buy a place and
think all the purple and yellow
flowers in the pastures are beau-
tiful and put horses out on it and
it kills them,” she said.
By far, the most common
toxicology problems involve
acute nitrate poisoning from
pigs weed and lambsquarters,
she said. A steady diet of tomato
vines can kill pigs and mustard
plants and false dandelion are
problematic, she said.
Paraquat and 2,4-D are
the two most common house-
hold and farm pesticides that if
spilled or used improperly can
be poisonous to dogs and other
animals, she said.
Fresh and spent hops are also
toxic to dogs, but poinsettias are
not to be feared, Talcott said.
“Of 22,000 calls about ex-
posure of poinsettias to cats and
dogs, 21,000 had no signs,” she
said. “The others had mild vom-
iting.”
Farmers who lose crops
to elk or deer would pay up
to $600 to file a claim under
a policy that the Washington
Fish and Wildlife Commis-
sion will consider Nov. 13.
According to written ad-
ministrative rules, the state
will pay for an adjuster to as-
sess damages. In actual prac-
tice, wildlife managers have
for several years required the
farmer to split the adjuster’s
fee with the state, with the
farmer’s share capped at $600,
WDFW’s game division man-
ager, Mick Cope, said.
The Fish and Wildlife
Commission voted two years
ago to bring the written code
in line with the department’s
practice. Cope said the change
was never made because of a
technical error.
Cope estimated 15 to 30
farmers were charged for ad-
juster services over the past
two years. WDFW will reim-
burse those people, he said.
The policy, though adopt-
ed in 2013, will come before
the commission again as part
of an overhaul of rules related
to compensating farmers and
ranchers for wildlife damage.
The Washington Farm Bu-
reau sent an email to members
Nov. 5 rallying opposition to
the adjuster-fee policy.
“The department might
argue that this $600 will not
actually be paid by the farmer
since it will be deducted from
the final damage claim check
issued by the state. But in very
real terms it is an automatic
$600 deduction off of each
reimbursement check a farm-
er receives,” according to the
farm bureau.
Cope said splitting the fee
discourages frivolous claims,
which could cut into the pot
of money WDFW has to pay
legitimate claims. The com-
pensation program has not
been running out of money,
he said.
Farm Bureau director of
government relations Tom
Davis said filing a claim is
a “hassle” for farmers, who
must provide tax records and
document yields in previous
years.
“To me, it’s an unneces-
sary slap to a farmer,” he said.
“It doesn’t hurt the program
Afghanistan ag minister touring West
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
Afghanistan’s minister of
agriculture is touring the West
to learn more about the U.S.
extension system and irriga-
tion practices.
Minister
Assadullah
Zamir’s tour included a Ritz-
ville, Wash., wheat farm; a
Pasco, Wash., potato process-
ing facility; Washington State
University’s Irrigation Re-
search Station in Prosser; the
Wheat Marketing Center in
Portland and the University
of California-Davis. Traveling
with him is his secretary, stra-
tegic communications adviser
and a senior adviser.
Last week they met with
officials from USDA, the U.S.
Agency for International De-
velopment and others in Wash-
ington, D.C. They return to
Afghanistan Nov. 13.
The tour was part of a proj-
ect involving WSU, UC-Da-
vis, Purdue University and
the University of Maryland to
build an extension service in
Afghanistan.
“There are a lot of similari-
ties between our state and prov-
inces in Afghanistan where we
work — the cropping systems,
rainfall and general climate,”
said Kim Castelin, project spe-
cialist for WSU’s International
Research and Agricultural De-
velopment office.
Castelin hoped to demon-
strate how to raise wheat in
low rainfall zones and the pro-
ductivity achieved in irrigated
agriculture.
Other Afghanistan govern-
ment employees have toured
the U.S., Castelin said, but
Zamir is the highest-ranking
official.
“Having him here in the
states to see the land-grant sys-
tem we have on the ground is
really important in understand-
ing the extension system we
are recommending and work-
ing on improving over there,”
she said.
Program demonstrations
have resulted in some yield
increases.
“Impact is kind of an inher-
ently tricky thing to measure,”
Castelin said. “Afghanistan is
a tough place to work, it’s a re-
ally hard place to collect data
from. It really depends on who
is measuring and how they’re
measuring.”
The tours help develop
partners willing to work with
the project, Castelin said.
The project is funded for
the next two years. Castelin
hopes to see Afghanistan’s
ministry and state-level of-
ficials start to take over ad-
ministration of the extension
services in that time.
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife proposes to split the cost of assessing crop damage
from deer and elk with farmers filing the claim. The state now pays for the assessment.
(for the state) to pay the full
cost of the assessment.”
Farmers who have signed
damage-prevention
agree-
ments or followed a WDFW
checklist for preventing crop
losses are eligible to apply for
up to $10,000 in compensa-
tion. The damage must be at
least $1,000.
The commission meeting
will begin at 8 a.m. Nov. 13
in the state’s Natural Resourc-
es Building, room 172, 1111
Washington St. S.E. in Olym-
pia. The commission is sched-
uled to take public comments
at 8:15 a.m. The commission
is scheduled to take up the
wildlife interaction rules at
10:30 a.m.
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