June 10, 2016
CapitalPress.com
13
Groups spar over field burning changes
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — Farm groups
and public health advocates
have a ways to go before
reaching an agreement on
proposed changes to Idaho’s
crop residue burning pro-
gram.
The changes are being
proposed by the Idaho De-
partment of Environmental
Quality as a way to avoid a
large reduction in the num-
ber of allowable burn days
for farmers.
Based on public com-
ments submitted to the DEQ,
the two sides are drifting far-
ther apart on the proposal.
Farmers in Idaho burn
between 40,000 and 50,000
acres most years and use
field burning as a tool to
eradicate and prevent pests
and diseases and decrease
chemical and diesel use and
Submitted photo
A farm field in Idaho is burned to eradicate and control pests and
diseases in this undated Idaho Department of Environmental
Quality file photo. DEQ has proposed changes to the state’s crop
residue burning program to avoid a scenario where allowable burn
days in Idaho could be reduced by a third to half.
soil erosion.
DEQ officials can grant
farmers permission to burn
their fields only if ozone and
small particulate matter levels
aren’t expected to exceed 75
percent of the national stan-
dard for those air pollutants
during the burn day.
Because the federal ozone
standard was tightened Oct.
1, the number of allowable
burn days in Idaho could be
reduced by a third to half, ac-
cording to DEQ.
DEQ has proposed raising
Idaho’s ozone standard to 90
percent of the federal standard
to avoid that scenario. The de-
partment has also proposed
lowering the state standard
for small particulate matter —
PM 2.5 — to 65 percent of the
national standard.
DEQ officials say loosen-
ing the state’s ozone standard
while tightening the PM 2.5
standard will ensure public
health is protected while con-
tinuing to allow farmers to
burn their fields.
But environmental groups
and public health advocates
have asked DEQ to consid-
er tightening the state’s PM
2.5 standard even further, to
60 percent of the national
level.
Farm groups oppose that
and some disagree with tighten-
ing the PM 2.5 standard at all.
In comments submitted to
DEQ, Justin McLeod, presi-
dent of the Nezperce Prairie
Grass Growers Association,
said his group has great con-
cern over the proposal to
tighten the state’s PM 2.5
standard.
The EPA has begun a re-
view of the federal PM stan-
dard “and our concern lies
primarily with the likelihood
that this standard will” be
tightened, he stated.
Public health advocates
and environmental groups are
pushing for an “equal” change
in the state’s PM and ozone
standards.
PM 2.5 has been shown to
have a greater effect on health
than ozone, said Patti Go-
ra-McRavin, who represents
safe air advocates.
If the state’s ozone stan-
dard is loosened by 15 per-
centage points, then the PM
2.5 standard should be tight-
ened by that same amount to
protect public health, she said.
“We’re asking for an eq-
uitable give on growers’ end
for the ‘get’ that they would
receive from this proposal by
DEQ,” she said.
Stacey Katseanes Satter-
lee, executive director of the
Idaho Grain Producers Asso-
ciation, said the proposal to
lower Idaho’s PM 2.5 stan-
dard to 65 percent of the na-
tional standard is a reasonable
trade-off for increasing the
ozone standard.
But IGPA opposes lower-
ing it further because of con-
cern the federal standard for
that pollutant will be tight-
ened in the near future.
“The variable here is the
federal government,” she
said. “They have shown a
trend over time that they tight-
en those federal standards, not
loosen them.”
WDFW’s new policy on WDFW puzzles over which pack killed heifer
shooting wolves assigns Steps taken to stop
second depredation
field staff key role
By DON JENKINS
Ranchers expected to
consult with state
Capital Press
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Washington’s new wolf-con-
trol policy entrusts frontline
state wildlife managers with de-
ciding whether ranchers are do-
ing enough to stop depredations.
“They are the agency ex-
perts,” state Department of Fish
and Wildlife wolf policy coor-
dinator Donny Martorello said
Monday. “I think the protocol
really (recognizes) that exper-
tise.”
To protect livestock, WDFW
shot wolves in 2012 and 2014
under a policy that the depart-
ment acknowledged was not
well understood and lacked pop-
ular support.
The revamped policy caps
a yearlong effort by the depart-
ment’s Wolf Advisory Group,
which includes ranchers and en-
vironmentalists. The 17-mem-
ber group last month agreed to
a new policy, which WDFW
officials have now fleshed out in
a five-page document.
The decision to shoot wolves
will remain with WDFW Di-
rector Jim Unsworth. But the
new protocol for pushing the
issue up to Unsworth includes
giving WDFW wildlife conflict
specialists around the state “full
discretion” to oversee non-lethal
means of stopping depredations.
Washington Cattlemen’s As-
sociation Executive Vice Pres-
ident Jack Field, an advisory
group member, said he support-
ed relying on the judgment of
WDFW field employees.
“They know far better than
Olympia what’s going on and
what needs to happen,” he said.
The policy applies to the
eastern one-third of the state.
Wolves are federally protect-
ed in the western two-thirds of
Washington and immune from
lethal removal.
The new protocol retains or
elaborates on some of the main
features of the old policy.
Four depredations in a year
or six over two years qualifies
members of a pack for lethal
removal, but only if ranch-
ers tried to keep away wolves
with measures such as lights,
alarms, ribbons, dogs and
cowboys.
Martorello said the depart-
ment wants to collaborate with
rather than dictate to ranchers.
“We want to have a relation-
ship with producers,” he said.
At a minimum, ranchers
will be expected to remove or
Courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Washington Department of
Fish and Wildlife has an-
nounced its new policy for de-
ciding when to kill wolves that
have been attacking livestock.
bury cattle or sheep carcasses
and bones to keep from attract-
ing wolves, plus use one other
deterrence measure with the
concurrence of a WDFW wild-
life conflict specialist.
If a depredation occurs, the
new policy calls for all other
feasible preventive measures to
be employed. WDFW’s policy
had been to re-evaluate preven-
tive measures after each depre-
dation, a source of frustration for
some ranchers.
So far this year, WDFW has
confirmed that wolves killed
a 8- to 9-month-old Holstein
heifer in Stevens County in
northeastern Washington and a
calf in Asotin County in south-
eastern Washington. In some
cases, ranchers suspect wolves
of killing livestock, but WDFW
investigators find the evidence
inconclusive.
Stevens County rancher
Scott Nielsen, vice president of
the Cattle Producers of Wash-
ington, said ranchers already
protect their livestock from
predators without the state’s in-
volvement.
“I don’t think the game de-
partment should be making
operating decisions for me,”
he said. “If I had an issue (with
wolves), I would bring in the
sheriff. If the sheriff chose to
collaborate with the department,
so be it.”
Most of the state’s wolves
are in northeastern Washington.
Nielsen said withholding le-
thal removal because a rancher
didn’t collaborate with the state
would be unpopular. “I think
that won’t fly in this area,” he
said.
Center for Biological Di-
versity wolf organizer Ama-
roq Weiss said the new policy
doesn’t confront whether shoot-
ing wolves actually deters dep-
redations.
Washington wildlife man-
agers are trying to identi-
fy which wolf pack killed a
heifer in northeastern Wash-
ington, hoping to keep an
accurate tally that could lead
to lethal removal if there are
three more depredations, the
state’s wolf policy coordina-
tor, Donny Martorello, said
Tuesday.
The Department of Fish
and Wildlife confirmed May
30 that the 8- to 9-month-old
Holstein had been killed by
wolves in a fenced field on
private property in southern
Stevens County.
The Huckleberry and
Stranger packs overlap where
the attack occurred. WDFW
investigators hope the packs’
future movements will reveal
which one killed the heifer,
Martorello said.
WDFW will consider
shooting members of a pack
responsible for four attacks
on livestock or guard dogs in
a year.
Whichever pack is held
responsible, it will be only
the first strike.
The Huckleberry pack
mauled a sheep guard dog
last year and killed at least
26 sheep in 2014, but has not
yet been blamed for a depre-
dation this year. One female
member of the pack was shot
in 2014 to deter the attacks
on sheep. The shooting was
the last time WDFW used le-
thal control to stop wolf dep-
redations.
Courtesy of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife has refined its policy on when it will consider shooting
wolves to protect livestock. However, in northeastern Washington, there are so many packs that man-
agers sometimes have a hard time identifying which is responsible for a depredation.
The Stranger pack formed
last year when two wolves
split from the Huckleberry
pack.
The attack on the heifer is
the first test of WDFW’s re-
vamped policy on reacting to
wolf depredations.
The owner moved the sur-
viving 18 cows to a fenced
field within sight of his home,
Martorello said.
WDFW also supplied the
landowner with eight flash-
ing lights and the services of
a range rider, he said.
The measures represent
everything WDFW and the
producer will do to stop a
second depredation, Mar-
torello said.
In previous years, WD-
FW’s policy called for
non-lethal deterrence mea-
sures to be re-evaluated after
every depredation.
WDFW acknowledged the
protocol was confusing and
frustrating to ranchers and
wolf advocates, leading to
uncertainty about the depart-
ment’s next move.
“We’ve already done the
ramp-up in its entirety, after
the first depredation,” Mar-
torello said. “We’re doing the
best we can to prevent anoth-
er depredation.”
WDFW recently adopted
the new lethal-removal pro-
tocol, which was agreed to
by the department’s Wolf Ad-
visory Group.
Conservationists in the
group embraced the policy
because it will require live-
stock owners to work with
WDFW on preventing dep-
redations. Representatives of
producers hope the protocol
will lead WDFW to being
consistent about when it will
use lethal control.
“If we get to that situa-
tion, we have to demonstrate
that consistency,” Martorello
said.
Oregon mulls change to noxious weed strategy
Legislative concept
adds $3.3 million
to fight weeds
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
JOHN DAY, Ore. — Ore-
gon’s farm regulators want to
overhaul their noxious weed
control strategy to focus on
invasives that haven’t yet
gained a strong foothold in
the state.
The current weed control
program at the Oregon De-
partment of Agriculture ob-
tains about 40 percent of its
funding from federal agencies
and thus focuses much of its
attention on public lands.
This approach means that
ODA’s highly trained weed
specialists are
often battling
lower-priority
“B list” weeds
that are already
abundant
in
some regions,
Helmuth
rather than “A
Rogg
list”
weeds
that can still
be eradicated, said Helmuth
Rogg, director of the agency’s
plant program area.
The agency would pre-
fer to put more emphasis on
an “early detection rapid re-
sponse” approach to economi-
cally damaging “A list” weeds
while delegating the fight
against “B list” weeds on pub-
lic land to counties, Rogg said
at the June 6 Oregon Board of
Agriculture meeting.
“We’re trying to figure out
how to best use the limited
resources of state and federal
funding,” he said.
To make this change, ODA
is contemplating a “legisla-
tive concept” to bring before
Oregon lawmakers in 2017
that would increase funding
for state and county noxious
weed control programs by
$3.3 million.
ODA’s current noxious
weed budget of about $2.2
million in the 2015-17 bienni-
um would be increased by $1.5
million, which would strength-
en its “early detection rapid re-
sponse” and biological control
efforts, among other activities,
and create a new aquatic weed
specialist position.
The Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board is spend-
ing millions of dollars to im-
prove water quality across
the state but invasive weeds
can undermine those projects,
Rogg said.
Weeds like flowering rush,
newly discovered in Oregon
in 2014, also pose a risk to ir-
rigation canals, so an aquatic
weed specialist is needed to
concentrate on such threats,
he said. “We need to save that
investment.”
Only 23 of Oregon’s 36
counties have weed control
districts dedicated to fighting
invasives, so under the “leg-
islative concept” $1.8 million
would fund such programs
across the state.
Federal funding of $1.2
million is needed to “keep the
lights on” for the state nox-
ious weed program, but under
the ODA’s proposal, some of
that money would be sub-con-
tracted to county programs as
necessary, Rogg said.
Oregon farmers win radish seed crop ownership lawsuit
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Oregon farmers have pre-
vailed in a legal dispute with
a bank over the ownership of
radish seed they’d grown but
hadn’t been paid for.
Multiple farms in Oregon’s
Willamette Valley grew the
radish seed in 2014 for Cover
Crop Solutions, a Pennsylva-
nia company that became in-
solvent before taking delivery
of the crop.
Last year, the company’s
creditor — Northwest Bank of
Warren, Pa. — filed a lawsuit
against the growers, claiming
to own the radish seed they’d
produced because it served as
collateral for a $7 million loan.
U.S. District Judge Michael
Mosman has now dismissed
Northwest Bank’s arguments
that growers relinquished
ownership of the seed when
they delivered it to a cleaner.
The June 6 ruling effective-
ly means they can sell the crop
rather than turn it over to the
bank.
“It was a total victory,” said
Paul Conable, attorney for the
farms.
James Ray Streinz, attorney
for Northwest Bank, said his
client did not wish to comment
on the ruling.
The bank had claimed that
several seed cleaners effective-
ly acted as “agents” of Cover
Crop Solutions, so the radish
seed they were storing was that
company’s inventory.
When Cover Crops Solu-
tions became insolvent, the
inventory became the bank’s
collateral because its liens on
the crop were of a higher pri-
ority than liens taken out by
farmers, according to North-
west Bank’s attorneys.
Conable said Mosman’s re-
jection of this claim shows he
understands the functioning of
the seed industry.
“It would have changed
the seed business if by turn-
ing over seed to the clean-
er to get cleaned, you were
turning it over to the purchas-
er without getting paid,” he
said.
Before reaching a decision
on the question of whether
seed cleaners were “agents” of
Cover Crop Solutions, Mos-
man dismissed the bank’s law-
suit against several growers
who had retained possession
of the seed.
In May, the CHS cooper-
ative announced it would li-
cense the radish seed variety in
question now that Cover Crop
Solutions is being liquidated or
dissolved.