12 CapitalPress.com
November 13, 2015
‘El Nino. I think that’s our biggest concern’
WATER from Page 1
The National Weather
Service forecasts the moist
and cool Pacifi c barrage will
continue next week. The U.S.
Climate Prediction Center
foresees weather wetter and
colder than usual in the West
through Nov. 24.
The change in the weather
came after the hottest Octo-
ber ever in Washington and
the second-hottest Octobers
on record in Oregon, Idaho
and California, according to
the National Oceanic and At-
mospheric Administration.
Irrigation mangers, hy-
drologists and climatologists
welcomed the rain and snow
after months of drought-deep-
ening weather. But they
mostly shrugged off the early
season storms as only mildly
encouraging.
“Any amount of above-av-
erage precipitation is certainly
going to help with recovery,”
said Melissa Webb, a hydrol-
ogist with the Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service
in Oregon. “But it doesn’t
have any particularly large
signifi cance as far as how the
season ends up.”
Water storage remains be-
low normal, by far in some
places. There’s a lot of catch-
ing up to do, and El Nino
isn’t expected to help most of
the West.
Southern and Central
California can anticipate a
wet winter, according to the
Climate Prediction Center.
But chances for above-nor-
mal precipitation in Northern
California, Western Oregon
and Western Washington are
no better than even, and it’s
likely those regions, including
the Cascades, will have warm
winters, keeping snowpacks
low.
Eastern Oregon, Eastern
Washington and Idaho are ex-
pected to be both warm and
dry.
“El Nino. I think that’s our
biggest concern,” said hydrol-
ogist David Hoekema of the
Idaho Department of Water
Resources. “At this point, the
precipitation we’re getting is
not of much signifi cance.”
Idaho’s reservoirs were
83 percent of normal levels
as of Nov. 1, according to
NRCS. Compared to other
states, Idaho enters the winter
in a better position. Oregon’s
reservoirs, for example, were
only 44 percent of normal
levels beginning the month.
But Idaho still needs an
above-average snowpack to
ensure an adequate summer
supply of water throughout
the state, Hoekema said.
An early November storm
dumped 10 to 30 inches of
snow across the Idaho-Nevada
border region. The storm in-
fl ated snowpack percentages.
The Owyee Basin snowpack,
for example, was 584 percent
of normal as of Wednesday.
“We just got a good dump in
the mountains, but (snowpack
percentages are) going to de-
crease,” said Ron Abramov-
ich, an NRCS water supply
specialist in Boise.
An early, moisture-laden
storm in California dropped
several inches of snow in
the Sierra Nevada. The U.S.
Drought Monitor reported that
after four years of drought in
California, the precipitation
“was just a start to moisten the
soils.”
Shasta Lake, the center-
piece of the federal Central
Valley Project, was 30 percent
full Tuesday, about half the
normal level. Lake Oroville,
the State Water Project’s main
reservoir, was 28 percent full,
46 percent of the normal level,
according to the California De-
partment of Water Resources.
Shasta and Oroville started
to decline in mid-April and ha-
ven’t bottomed out yet, water
resources spokesman Doug
Carlson said.
Storms passed through
Northern California this week,
dousing Redding, Sacramento
and other cities. “It’s going to
take a good amount of mois-
ture to seep into the soil, so at
fi rst it’s just going to get ab-
sorbed into the very dry soil,”
said Sheri Harral, a U.S. Bu-
reau of Reclamation spokes-
woman at Shasta Dam. “It will
defi nitely take some heavy
rains before we’ll start seeing
it turning around, and it starts
back up. For right now, we’ll
take every little inch and drop
we can get.”
Shasta Lake is actually 23.4
inches higher than it was last
year because more water was
held back to provide cold wa-
ter at key moments for chinook
salmon, Harral said.
Recent snow on Oregon’s
Mount Hood, which had been
bare since summer, caused
a stir in Portland, but most
of the talk was about skiing
and snowboarding. Farmers
are taking a wait-and-see ap-
proach.
“I’d call it a little prema-
ture,” said John Buckley, East
Fork Irrigation District man-
ager. The Hood River district
depends on runoff from Mount
Hood to water about 9,500
acres and serve 936 customers,
mostly orchardists.
FFA’s membership nationwide is at an all-time high
FFA from Page 1
FFA membership
nationwide
Today, she is the Oregon
FFA’s associate director of
programs, handling career de-
velopment, membership and
awards and helping out at the
state fair.
“I felt the need to give
back,” she said. “The organi-
zation had done so much for
me when I was in high school.
I really attribute all of my
success to FFA. … I really be-
lieve in everything FFA does
for students.”
As a student who was
drawn to FFA by its practical
hands-on activities, Kraxberg-
er is a testament to the growth
of the 87-year-old national or-
ganization formerly known as
Future Farmers of America.
Record membership
FFA’s membership nation-
wide is at an all-time high,
with 629,367 participants in the
2014-15 academic year com-
pared to 490,017 a decade ago,
according to Kristy Meyer, the
spokeswoman at the national
FFA headquarters in Indianap-
olis.
Participation in FFA has
been trending upward through-
out the West, too. In California,
there were 79,526 members in
2014-15, up from 64,201 a de-
cade earlier. Washington state’s
FFA ranks have increased from
5,802 in 2011-12 to 8,024 last
year. Membership has also
been increasing in Oregon and
Idaho.
Started for high school stu-
dents who wanted to be produc-
tion farmers, FFA has broad-
ened its focus in recent decades
to encourage students who
aspire to become teachers, vet-
erinarians, scientists and other
professionals who interact with
agricultural industries.
In addition to hands-on
farming, FFA members learn
“soft skills” such as public
speaking, marketing and inter-
viewing for jobs, Kraxberger
said.
“There’s something for
everyone in FFA,” she said.
“Something really cool that’s
been happening is that for peo-
ple in the city who don’t have
access to farms, maybe they’re
doing a science project related
to agriculture. … If it relates
to the environment or natural
resources, it’s very much FFA.”
Students and teachers say
this emphasis on building ca-
reer skills is a big reason for the
FFA’s burgeoning popularity.
The growth of agriculture ed-
ucation in schools, the contin-
629,267: Up
28.4% from
2004-05
(Thousands of members)
490
2004-05
523.3 540.4
495 500.8 507.8 506.2
’06-07
’08-09
Source: National FFA Organization
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Marshell Strubel (left) and Anthony Anderson (right), both students at West Valley High School near
Cottonwood, Calif., take part in a timed saw contest at an FFA meet Oct. 15 at Shasta College in
Redding, Calif. FFA’s membership nationwide is at a record high.
ued involvement of alumni and
youngsters’ desire to avert a
future global food shortage are
also factors, they say.
“I think FFA is just an amaz-
ing program that sets kids up
for success,” said Ally Rose
McDonald, a senior at Durham,
Calif., High School and the
California FFA’s Superior Re-
gion secretary. “It truly opens
doors. It gives you an opportu-
nity to see what kind of agricul-
tural fi elds you’d like to pursue.
“I think FFA gives you the
tools to be confi dent and suc-
cessful in talking to other peo-
ple,” she said. “Those are tools
that are going to be necessary
throughout your life.”
Bucking the trend
FFA’s growth has come
as participation in other youth
programs for high school stu-
dents has seen a decline.
For instance, Boy Scouts
of America membership fell
7 percent last year, continu-
ing a decade-long decline, and
the number of Girl Scouts and
adult volunteers dropped by 6
percent, The Associated Press
reported. There were about 3.4
million Boy Scouts and adult
volunteers and about 2.8 mil-
lion Girl Scouts and volunteers
last year.
Youth team sports partici-
pation has also declined in the
last fi ve years, according to a
report by the Sports and Fitness
Industry Association.
What makes FFA different is
its affi liation with high schools,
leaders say. A student might
start with an agriculture-related
class and become involved in
FFA’s extracurricular activities.
“I think we’re just ahead
of the curve,” said Katy Teix-
eira, an Anderson, Calif., high
school adviser who was an FFA
member. “It gives kids an op-
portunity to travel and to learn
and compete at the state, na-
tional and international level.”
Jack Klaiber, a freshman at
Anderson, Calif., High School,
is in his fi rst year of FFA.
“At fi rst it was just because
some of my friends were doing
it,” Klaiber said of his reason
for joining. “As I started to at-
tend the events, I realized this
is something I want to put my
time into and it will be a great
thing for me.”
While Klaiber isn’t neces-
sarily planning a career in ag-
riculture, “I’d still like it to be
a main part of my life,” he said.
Humble beginnings
Fostering farming careers
was the sole purpose when 33
students from 18 states gath-
ered at the American Royal
Livestock Show in Kansas
City to form Future Farm-
ers of America in 1928. The
group elected Leslie Apple-
gate of Freehold, N.J., as its
fi rst president and adopted its
national emblem.
The national FFA was or-
ganized two years after Walter
S. Newman, Virginia’s state
supervisor of agriculture edu-
cation, worked with other ag
educators to start the Future
Farmers of Virginia to address
concerns that boys were los-
ing interest and leaving the
farm,
FFA adopted its offi cial
creed in 1930 and introduced
its familiar blue corduroy
jackets three years later. In
1965, the FFA merged with a
similar organization for young
African Americans called New
Farmers of America, and girls
gained full membership priv-
ileges as voting delegates in
1969.
In 1988, Future Farmers of
America changed its name to
the National FFA Organization
to refl ect the growing diversi-
ty of the agriculture industry,
according to the organization’s
website.
“One of the reasons for (the
change) was that FFA wasn’t
strictly about farming, it was
about agriculture as a whole,”
said Meyer, the organization’s
spokeswoman. “It was help-
ing to encompass the idea that
agriculture is something we
embrace in every facet of our
life.”
Today, all 50 states and
two U.S. territories are charter
members of the national orga-
nization, representing 7,757
local chapters.
For each school chapter,
there are three components
— classroom instruction,
hands-on learning outside the
classroom and a leadership
structure with elected offi cers,
Meyer said.
Ag education push
In some states, FFA’s
membership ranks have been
helped by a push for more
ag education. In Idaho, state
FFA executive director Casey
Zufelt credits the legislature’s
agricultural education initia-
tive, passed in 2014, with get-
ting students involved.
In June, a record number
of students — more than 960
— competed in state career
development events at the
University of Idaho campus in
Moscow. Idaho FFA boasted
4,372 members during the last
school year, up from 3,965 in
2013-2014.
“In our state, we’ve had
a really neat energy going on
with the Ag Ed Initiative,”
which provides about $2 mil-
lion more in annual funding
for secondary ag education in
Idaho, Zufelt said. “It was a
grass-roots effort from teach-
ers a couple of years ago who
decided to take some action in
improving the quality of the
programs and bringing more
money to the program as well.
… That energy translates to
the students.”
In California, FFA execu-
tive director Jim Aschwanden
expects the state’s membership
to cross the 80,000 threshold
this year. One big reason for
the increased interest may be
that ag teachers have pushed
for recognition of their classes
as meeting entrance require-
ments for University of Cal-
ifornia and California State
University campuses, he said.
“About 45 percent of the
classes offered in our ag pro-
gram meet UC and CSU en-
trance requirements one way
or another,” said Aschwanden,
who is also executive director
of the California Agricultural
Teachers Association. “Our
integrated ag biology courses
are viewed as the equivalent
of regular biology by the UC
and CSU systems, so a student
can take ag and not have to
worry about their access into
college.”
Moreover, ag mechanics
classes are growing “by leaps
and bounds” because teachers
of other technical programs
are retiring and leaving school
shops empty, and ag instruc-
tors are teaching welding and
other facets of equipment
’10-11
557.3
579.7
’12-13
610.2
2014-15
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
maintenance to take up the
slack, Aschwanden said.
“We turn out 75 (ag) teach-
er candidates every year,” he
said. “The rest of the career
tech areas combined don’t
train that many.”
Teachers’ passion
Additionally, students are
captivated by the sheer en-
thusiasm of instructors, said
Abbie DeMeerleer, the Wash-
ington state FFA’s executive
director.
“I think they appeal to stu-
dents and thereby FFA mem-
bership increases because
those teachers really care,” she
said. “They became ag teach-
ers because it’s a passion for
them. They want to see agri-
culture succeed, and they want
to see the future of our food,
fi ber and natural resource pro-
fession strong and well-po-
sitioned. And they share that
passion with their students.”
McDonald, the Durham
High School student, agrees.
She said advisers get young-
sters excited about FFA.
“I think FFA is just an
amazing program that sets
kids up for success,” McDon-
ald said.
Finally, teenagers — partic-
ularly ones in urban chapters
— are interested in learning
about food production, the or-
ganization’s leaders say.
“I think, too, that this gen-
eration has a desire really to
help society, and they know
it’s really important to feed the
world,” Meyer said.
While FFA has expanded
from production agriculture to
include other career skills, the
organization will “stay true to
the farming aspect,” Oregon’s
Kraxberger said.
Meyer agrees: “I think
we’re going to continue down
the path we’re on and real-
ly encourage students to un-
derstand their key role in the
world today.”
Decision does not bring major changes to Oregon wolf management
WOLVES from Page 1
Conservation groups believe
Oregon’s wolf population is too
small and too fragile to delist.
They point out wolves occupy
only 12 percent of their potential
territory.
“There’s no other species we
would delist when it’s absent
from almost 90 percent of its
habitat,” Weiss said.
Oregon’s ranchers, who had
urged the ODFW commission
to follow the guidelines of the
wolf plan and the recommenda-
tions of the department’s biolo-
gists, cheered the decision.
“I’m relieved,” said Todd
Nash, wolf committee chairman
for the Oregon Cattlemen’s As-
sociation. “This sends a mes-
sage to cattle producers that the
ODFW Commission will stand
by its commitment.”
Nash said ranchers would
not have supported a partial del-
isting.
“When we were paying the
price (of livestock attacks) in
Eastern Oregon, we fully be-
lieved we were doing it for the
whole state,” Nash said. “And
we were proud to do it.”
The decision does not bring
major changes to the way Ore-
gon manages wolves, which mi-
grated to the northeast corner of
the state 15 years ago following
their reintroduction in Idaho and
Wyoming by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. Oregon’s fi rst
pack was confi rmed in Wallowa
County in 2008; the state now
has at least nine packs, defi ned
as four or more wolves traveling
together.
The state wolf management
plan remains in force with the
commission’s decision. It allows
ODFW-approved “controlled
take,” or killing, of wolves in
cases of chronic livestock at-
tacks or if wolves cause a de-
cline in prey populations, chief-
ly elk and deer. Ranchers, as
they can now, are able to shoot
wolves caught in the act of at-
tacking livestock or herd dogs.
None have been killed in that
manner.
Oregon’s wolf plan does not
allow sport hunting of wolves.
More than 150 people
packed the ODFW hearing
room and 106 signed up to testi-
fy. Activists opposed to delisting
wolves, many of them wearing
matching orange T-shirts, made
up a majority of the audience.
A sprinkling of men in cowboy
hats — Eastern Oregon cattle
ranchers who have borne the
stress and cost of wolf attacks
on livestock — clustered on one
side of the hearing room.
The testimony echoed the
arguments that have been made
since Oregon’s wolf population
reached the number of breeding
pairs that trigger consideration
of delisting under the manage-
ment plan.
Conservation groups and
their allied argue that the state’s
biological status report on
wolves was fl awed and should
have been peer-reviewed by
other scientists. ODFW staff
belatedly circulated the report
to biologists they knew, but con-
servationists said that was insuf-
fi cient.
“If this commission chooses
to delist it will make a very sad
and powerful statement about
who and what it serves,” said
Jonathan Jelen, development
director for the conservation
group Oregon Wild.
Livestock producers, how-
ever, argued they’d followed the
wolf plan in good faith and ex-
pected the ODFW Commission
to do the same.
“Oregon ranchers honored
their obligation to follow the
plan,” said Jerome Rosa, ex-
ecutive director of the Oregon
Cattlemen’s Association. “This
is one of the reasons wolves
multiplied in our state.”
Paul Henson, state supervi-
sor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service offi ce in Portland, was
invited by the commission to
testify. Henson said he’s “very
confi dent” wolves will continue
to recover, calling it “one of the
easier scientifi c questions” he’s
considered.