4
CapitalPress.com
May 5, 2017
Snowpack big enough
that glaciers may gain
National Park Service receives
120,000 comments on grizzlies
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
SEDRO
WOOLLEY,
Wash. — The National Park
Service has received more
than 120,000 public com-
ments on its plans to rein-
troduce grizzly bears in the
North Cascades.
A public comment period
began in early January and
was to end March 14 but was
extended to April 28 at the re-
quest of the public and local
officials.
More than 120,000 com-
ments were received, and it
will take three to six months
for NPS to process them, said
Denise Shultz, spokeswoman
at the North Cascades Nation-
al Park Service Complex in
Sedro Woolley.
An analysis of the com-
ments won’t include how
many were from out of state
or how many are for rein-
troduction, but will be more
along the lines of identify-
ing things or alternatives that
NPS and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service may have
missed that may need further
data or study, Shultz said.
The comments focus on
a draft environmental im-
pact statement that includes
a no-action alternative and
three alternatives to restore
a reproducing population of
about 200 bears by bringing
them in from other areas.
Restoring grizzlies would
Chris Morgan, Grizzly Bear Outreach Project
There are believed to be about 20 grizzly bears in the North Cas-
cades of Washington.
“enhance the probability of
longterm survival and con-
servation of grizzly bears in
the contiguous United States,
thereby contributing to over-
all grizzly bear recovery and
greater biodiversity of the
ecosystem,” the agencies
have said.
Grizzlies were listed as a
threatened species in the con-
tiguous U.S. in 1975. They
were listed as endangered in
Washington state in 1980.
A final environmental im-
pact statement may come late
this year or early next year,
with a decision a month or so
later, Shultz said.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse,
whose district includes part of
the North Cascades, sent a let-
ter to Karen Taylor-Goodrich,
superintendent of the North
Cascades National Park Ser-
vice Complex, March 17 ex-
pressing his “firm opposition”
to the plan.
The general consensus
of people attending a March
2015 forum in Okanogan on
the issue was “that their con-
cerns were not being taken
seriously by federal officials,”
Newhouse wrote.
He noted that the last con-
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
firmed sighting of a grizzly
in the North Cascades was in
1996 and that the agencies’
draft environmental impact
statement found it “highly
unlikely that the area contains
a viable grizzly bear popula-
tion.”
That raises questions about
the need for restoration, he
wrote.
On April 27, a Newhouse
aide said the congressman is
“continuing conversations”
on the issue with new Interior
Secretary Ryan Zinke, a for-
mer Montana congressman.
Okanogan County ranch-
ers already coping with coy-
otes, cougars and wolves say
they don’t need another apex
predator killing and harassing
their cattle.
“At the public meeting, it
was clear there’s a predeter-
mined outcome and that NPS
doesn’t care to hear from local
people who will be impacted.
The whole format of the meet-
ing was to stifle public input
and indoctrinate attendees on
the benefits of grizzly bear,”
said Nicole Kuchenbuch, an
Okanogan rancher and pres-
ident of the Okanogan Farm
Bureau.
“Congress needs to cut
the funding. I don’t know
the chances, but we do hold
out hope, the way the Trump
administration is rolling out
executive orders, that it might
save the day,” Kuchenbuch
said.
MOUNT VERNON, Wash.
— This could be one of those
rare years when glaciers in
Washington’s Cascade Range
gain a little.
Statewide mountain snow-
pack was 140 percent of nor-
mal on May 2, up from 121
percent of normal on April
3, which was up from 112
percent of normal on March
6, according to Scott Pattee,
water supply specialist of the
Washington Snow Survey Of-
fice of the USDA Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service
in Mount Vernon.
Overall snow below 4,500
feet elevation is gone but higher
elevation snowpack is melting
slower than normal because of
cool weather and has even been
gaining around Mount St. Hel-
ens and Mount Adams, Pattee
said.
It’s unusual enough that gla-
ciers that have been receding for
years might actually gain a little,
he said.
“Irrigation supply is going to
be excellent this year and rafting
on the Wenatchee River might
go another several weeks be-
yond July,” Pattee said.
Temperatures are increasing
this week but will be accompa-
nied by rain and then tempera-
tures will fall again, he said.
With daytime high temperatures
in the mountains still in the 30s,
snow is staying longer, he said.
“The weather guys all say
we will have a summer, but
I remember summers in the
near past in Western Washing-
ton when we really didn’t have
much summer,” he said.
The three-month outlook,
May through July, calls for
slightly above normal tem-
peratures and equal chances of
above or below normal on pre-
cipitation, he said. So it doesn’t
look like there will be any pro-
longed heat wave to accelerate
high mountain snowmelt, he
said.
Snow water equivalent
snowpack in the Spokane ba-
sin was 113 percent of normal
on May 2. The upper Columbia
(Okanogan and Methow rivers)
was 148 percent. The central
Columbia (Chelan, Entiat and
Wenatchee) was 130, the upper
Yakima was 105 and the lower
Yakima 129. The lower Snake
near Walla Walla was 125, Wal-
la Walla was 182, and lower
Columbia was 164. South Puget
Sound (from the lowlands to the
Cascade crest) was 129, central
Puget Sound was 133, north
Puget was 117, and the Olym-
pics 127. All of those readings
were up from a month ago.
Streamflow forecasts for
May 1 through September will
be near the same percentages of
normal as the snowpack read-
ings, Pattee said.
The five mountain reservoirs
serving 464,000 irrigated acres
(mostly farmland) in the Yaki-
ma Basin were at 72 percent of
their 1 million-acre-foot capaci-
ty on May 2 and are at 97.8 per-
cent of average storage for this
time of year, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Precipitation in the basin is
108 percent of average.
Blizzard worries western Kansas wheat farmers
As Vance Ehmke woke up
Monday morning, he thought
his wheat crop might survive
despite the spring blizzard that
buried it overnight.
But as he scouted his farm
near the tiny town of Dighton
in western Kansas, he mea-
sured 10 to 12 inches of heavy
LEGAL
NOTICE OF BEEF COUNCIL PUBLIC BUDGET HEARING
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that a public meeting will be held
pursuant to ORS 577, the Oregon Beef Council Statute, by
Conference Call on Thursday, May 18, 2017, at 8:00 am upon a
proposed budget for the operation of the Oregon Beef Council
during Fiscal Year July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.
At this meeting, any producer of beef in Oregon has the right
to be heard with respect to the proposed budget, a copy of
which is available for inspection, under reasonable circumstances
in the Oregon Beef Council office in Portland. Any producer of
beef in Oregon may join this conference call by calling toll free 1-
866-210-1669. Participant login number is 7980221.
For further information, contact the Oregon Beef Council office
at 1827 NE 44th Ave., Ste 315, Portland, Oregon 97213.
The meeting location is accessible to persons with disabilities. A
request for an interpreter for the hearing or for other
accommodations for persons with disabilities should be made at
least 48 hours before the meeting to the Oregon Beef Council at
503-274-2333.
Dated this 24th day of April, 2017
ATTESTED: Jason Chamberlain, Chairman
William N. Wise, CEO
18-1/#4
snow on top of his wheat,
which is five to six weeks from
harvest.
“We may have a problem,”
Ehmke told the Capital Press.
“I’m not nearly as confident
this afternoon as I was this
morning.”
Ehmke and other western
Kansas wheat farmers were
Press 9
l
a
t
i
Cap 882-678
-
1-800 a c e a n a d
to pl renew my
and ription!
subsc
blindsided by a weekend bliz-
zard that blanketed the region,
said Justin Gilpin, CEO of the
Kansas Wheat Commission in
Manhattan, Kan.
“This is something none of
us have ever seen before, snow
this late on a wheat crop like
this,” Gilpin said. “It started
snowing Friday night and just
continued all through Sunday.”
The heavy snow bent over
the wheat plants.
“Where those stems are
bent and broken, that wheat’s
probably going not going to
make it,” Gilpin said.
Kansas grows 7.5 mil-
lion acres of wheat, roughly
40 percent of which is in the
western third of the state, Gil-
pin said.
Farmers will assess the
damage in the next week to
10 days. The commission is
advising farmers to work with
their crop insurance adjusters.
Ehmke said he’ll have to
wait several weeks to deter-
mine the extent of the dam-
age.
“Just like everybody else
here in western Kansas, we’re
waiting as fast as we can to
see what the hell happened to
us,” he said.
Farther west, in Syracuse,
Kan., Jason Ochs estimated
he got 20-24 inches of snow
in 12 hours on his 4,000 acres
of wheat.
“I’m a very optimistic per-
son, but I’m not feeling very
optimistic at this point,” Ochs
said, noting he lost seven of
the 10 trees in his yard. “If
it’s doing that to trees, I can’t
imagine that a wheat plant’s
going to hold up at all.”
“Where commodity pric-
es are and the drought we’ve
been through, I just really
LEGAL
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 819
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold, for
cash to the highest bidder, on
5/08/2017. The sale will be held at
10:00am by
WILTSE’S TOWING
3120 CHERRY AVE. SE, SALEM, OR
2006 HARLEY DAV HERITAGE
VIN = 1HD1BWB146Y074151
Amount due on lien $800.00
Reputed owner(s)
JERRY LEE RUNDGREN
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 819
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold, for
cash to the highest bidder, on
5/9/2017. The sale will be held at
10:00am by
SKYLINE FORD
2510 COMMERCIAL ST SE, SALEM, OR
2006 FORD F350
VIN = 1FTWW31P36EA89659
Amount due on lien $19,169.17
Reputed owner(s)
TIMOTHY HAMMOND
SELCO Comm CU
legal-17-2-7/#4
Capital Press
legal-17-2-7/#4
By MATTHEW WEAVER
hope I can survive this,” he
said.
Dan Steiner, grain mer-
chant for Morrow County
Grain Growers in Boardman,
Ore., said the market is trying
to quantify the blizzard. He’s
heard damage estimates in
Kansas ranging from 50 mil-
lion to 150 million bushels —
up to half of the state’s crop.
The snowstorm will affect
the supply of high-quality
hard red winter wheat.
While cash prices in-
creased 5 cents a bushel,
wheat futures increased 25
cents a bushel.
Steiner said a farmer may
want to use the price rally
to market some of the 2017
wheat crop.
“I think the majority of the
rally, we probably have seen it
unless something further de-
velops and the damage is go-
ing to be way more extensive
than the market is thinking,”
Steiner said.
Ochs, the Kansas farmer,
said many farmers were look-
ing forward to a good crop
following a drought that has
dried out the region.
“When they thought we
were going to have a pretty
decent crop, they weren’t sure
they were going to survive
this year,” he said. “Now this
happened.”
WE SPECIALIZE IN BULK BAGS!
BAGS:
• Seed Bags
• Fertilizer Bags
• Feed Bags
• Potato Bags
• Printed Bags
• Plain Bags
• Bulk Bags
• Totes
• Woven Polypropylene
• Bopp
• Polyethylene
• Pocket Bags
• Roll Stock & More!
HAY PRESS SUPPORT:
• Hay Sleeves
• Strap
• Totes
• Printed or Plain
• Stretch Film
(ALL GAUGES)
WAREHOUSE
PACKAGING:
• Stretch Film
• Pallet Sheets
• Pallet Covers
LOCATIONS:
Albany, Oregon (MAIN OFFICE)
Ellensburg, Washington
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Phone: 855-928-3856
Fax: 541-497-6262
info@westernpackaging.com
.......................................................
CUSTOMER SERVICE
IS OUR TOP PRIORITY!
w w w. w e s t e r n p a c k a g i n g. c o m
rop-16-3-7/#5
18-2/#5