February 26, 2016
Oregon man who shot a radio-
collared wolf pleads guilty
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Ephrata, Wash., beekeeper Tim Hiatt carries jaws of honey Feb. 18
on the Capitol Campus in Olympia. He planned to present honey
to lawmakers who sponsored a bill calling on the Washington
State Noxious Weed Control Board to test planting pollen- and
nectar-rich plants. The bill passed the House 96-1 and now goes to
the Senate.
Washington looks
at modest bee
forage experiment
Beekeepers stung
by weed control
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — For the sake
of honeybees, Washington
may cautiously experiment
with introducing pollen-rich
plants on small pieces of pri-
vate land, testing whether
noxious weeds can be con-
trolled without killing every
blooming plant.
House Bill 2478, similar
to legislation that stalled last
year, would authorize the
State Noxious Weed Control
Board to supply landowners
with bee-friendly plants or
seeds.
Landowners would then
see over several years wheth-
er forage for pollinators could
supplant noxious weeds, re-
ducing herbicide spraying
that also eradicates plants that
bees feed on.
“That’s been a source of
frustration for many beekeep-
ers, that often weed control is
out of control and leaves noth-
ing for the bees to forage,”
said Ephrata commercial bee-
keeper Tim Hiatt, legislative
chairman of the Washington
State Beekeepers Association.
HB 2478 has been passed
96-1 by the House and has re-
ceived a favorable reception
from the Senate Agriculture
Committee. The Washington
Farm Bureau has indicated its
support.
A more ambitious and ex-
pensive bee-forage bill last
year would have directed the
weed control board to work
with state and federal land
managers to replace noxious
weeds with pollen- and nec-
tar-rich plants.
The bill passed the House,
but received 31 “no” votes
and never came to a vote in the
Senate. The bill encountered
opposition from legislators
concerned about the dangers
of inadvertently introducing
new invasive plants.
This year’s bill, intro-
duced by Rep. Strom Peter-
son, D-Edmonds, focuses on
working with private land-
owners on a modest scale.
The weed control board’s
executive secretary, Alison
Halpern, said that if the Senate
passes the bill, she envisions
about 100 landowners around
the state supplanting noxious
weeds with bee forage on one-
tenth of an acre plots.
“I think it’s a great bill,”
she said. “It allows us to do
more outreach to landowners
about long-term management,
not just weed control.”
The bill also encourages
state agencies to look at plant-
ing bee forage.
The bill does not dic-
tate any changes in current
weed-control efforts by land-
owners or counties. The state
would spend an estimated
$17,000 the irst year on
seeds, plants and printing up
information about the pilot
project.
A Washington State De-
partment of Agriculture study
group last year concluded that
5
CapitalPress.com
An Oregon man who shot
an endangered wolf while
hunting coyotes last fall
pleaded guilty Tuesday in
Grant County Justice Court.
As part of a negotiated
deal, Brennon D. Witty, 26,
of Baker City, pleaded guilty
to taking a threatened or en-
dangered species, a Class
A violation, Harney County
District Attorney Tim Colah-
an said in a news release.
A companion charge of
hunting with a centerire rile
with no big game tag was dis-
missed. Witty originally was
charged with two Class A
misdemeanors; the reduction
of one charge to a violation
and dismissal of the other was
part of the plea negotiation.
Witty was ined $1,000
and ordered to pay $1,000
restitution to Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife.
The rile he used, a Savage
.223 with a scope, was for-
Courtesy of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
OR-22, a male wolf that separated from the Umatilla River Pack
in February, is pictured walking through a Northeast Oregon forest
on Jan. 26. A Baker City, Ore., man who reported he shot the wolf
while hunting coyotes, has pleaded guilty in a related charge.
feited to the state.
The investigation began
Oct. 6, 2015, when Witty vol-
untarily notiied ODFW and
Oregon State Police that he’d
shot a wolf while hunting
coyotes on private property
south of Prairie City. Police
recovered the carcass of a ra-
dio-collared wolf, designated
OR-22, on the property.
The shooting happened in
Grant County but Colahan,
the prosecutor in neighbor-
ing Harney County, handled
it as a courtesy. The Grant
County district attorney was
acquainted with Witty’s fam-
ily and wanted to avoid the
appearance of a conlict of
interest.
The shooting happened
a month before Oregon re-
moved gray wolves from the
state endangered species list,
but that had no apparent bear-
ing on the case. The ODFW
Commission on Nov. 9 re-
moved wolves from the state
list, and they remain on the
federal endangered species
list in the western two-thirds
of the state.
The wolf was a male that
had worn a GPS tracking col-
lar since October 2013 and
dispersed from the Umatilla
Pack in February 2015. He
was in Malheur County for
awhile, then traveled into
Grant County.
Wildlife biologists don’t
believe he had a mate or
pups. Young or sub-domi-
nant wolves often leave their
home packs to establish their
own territory and ind mates.
lack of forage was a prime
reason for high bee mortality
rates. Among 147 plants des-
ignated by the state as noxious
weeks, at least 27 of them are
good sources of bee nutrition,
according to a legislative re-
port.
The pilot project would
have little immediate effect.
One hundred landowners
planting pollen-rich plants on
one-tenth acre plots equals 10
acres.
“This project wouldn’t cre-
ate acres and acres of forage
for bees, but it would create,
we hope, good guidelines for
landowners to go forward if
they’re interested in creating
forage when they remove
noxious weeds,” Hiatt said.
9-4/#14
Agricultural education teaches students about agriculture, food and natural
resources. Through these subjects, agricultural educators teach students a wide
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and technology.
Ag teachers never have the same day twice. One day they might be in a classroom
or laboratory, the next visiting students in the field, preparing teams for an FFA
Career Development Event, or leading a community service
activity with their FFA Chapter.
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• Share their passion for agriculture
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• Travel in state, nationally, and even
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educators at the secondary level. It is estimated that there will be
hundreds of unfilled positions across the United States this year, simply because not
enough students are choosing to be agricultural educators.
9-2/#13