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CapitalPress.com
July 14, 2017
California
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State collars wolf from new pack
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
Dale Kolke/Calif. Department of Water Resources
Water rushes into the diversion pool from a damaged Oroville Dam
spillway. Repairs of the spillways continue.
State to hold another round of
meetings on Oroville project
OROVILLE, Calif. —
The state Department of Wa-
ter Resources is sponsoring
another round of communi-
ty meetings to report on the
progress of the Oroville Dam
spillway reconstruction.
The meetings will be at the
following locations:
• July 17 at the Oroville
Municipal Auditorium, 1200
Myers St.
• July 19 in the Sierra Ne-
vada Room at the state De-
partment of Transportation’s
District 3 office, 703 B St.,
Marysville.
• July 24 at Boyd Hall,
1895 Lassen Blvd., Yuba City.
Each of the meetings will
begin at 6 p.m. and follow a
similar format. DWR leaders
and experts will give an up-
date on the Lake Oroville
spillway repair project and
take questions and com-
ments.
The meetings will be
similar to those held in April
and May. They come as
the DWR in April awarded
a $275.4 million contract
to the Omaha, Neb.-based
Kiewit Infrastructure Co. for
permanent repair work on
the spillways, which is ex-
pected to continue through
the summer.
The state wants to have
its system operating by Nov.
1, the start of the winter
rainy season.
Lake Oroville is the main
reservoir for the State Wa-
ter Project, which irrigates
more than 600,000 acres of
Central Valley farmland and
serves 20 million urban cus-
tomers in the San Francisco
Bay area and Southern Cal-
ifornia.
Spillway ruptures in Feb-
ruary led to the two-day
evacuation of about 188,000
area residents and threatened
a large portion of the Eastern
Sacramento Valley’s $1.5
billion agriculture industry,
including rice and tree crops
and several processors along
the Highway 99 corridor be-
tween Chico and Yuba City.
SUSANVILLE, Calif. —
Ranchers and a wolf advocate
are praising the state’s han-
dling of a newly discovered
pack in Lassen County.
Pamela Flick, the Califor-
nia representative for Defend-
ers of Wildlife, says she’s glad
the state Department of Fish
and Wildlife put a radio collar
on the alpha female of the Las-
sen Pack.
The pack’s presence was
confirmed last week. It is the
second wolfpack to settle in
California. The Shasta Pack
was identified near the Oregon
state line in 2015.
“The information gathered
by the collar can be shared
with ranchers running livestock
near the pack to help inform
management, including the use
of proactive strategies like in-
creasing human presence and
other tools to reduce conflicts
between wolves and livestock,”
Flick said in an email.
Such “coexistence strate-
gies” were the focus of a work-
shop held in Hat Creek, Calif.,
in mid-June, hosted by Flick
and state and federal wildlife
officials. At the workshop, top
DFW officials were grilled by
cattle producers who perceive
the agency as slow to notify
landowners of nearby wolf
sightings.
Several attendees, includ-
ing rancher and Shasta Coun-
ty Supervisor Mary Rickert,
urged the DFW to collar
wolves so producers could
learn more quickly that the
predators are in the area and
move their livestock out of
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Pamela Flick, right, of Defenders of Wildlife and Dennis Orthmeyer of USDA Wildlife Services demon-
strate how to install fladry to deter wolves from attacking grazing cattle. Flick praises state wildlife
officials for radio collaring a wolf in the newly discovered Lassen Pack.
danger, if possible.
“As long as the government
can be diligent about notifying
us, then it will work,” Rickert
said in an interview.
DFW wildlife manager
Karen Kovacs told the ranch-
ers that radio collars are “in
our plan.”
“One key point of discus-
sion at that event was that
many diverse stakeholders ...
all agree that it is critical to
collar at least one wolf from
each known wolf family in
order to track pack activities
and inform local landowners
and ranchers of nearby wolf
presence,” Flick said.
Several ranchers have
reported seeing wolf tracks
in Lassen County in recent
weeks. Rancher Joe Egen said
in an interview he had con-
sidered not turning his cattle
out on his summer range but
decided to do so with a heavy
human presence.
Biologists captured the
75-pound female gray wolf
on June 30 after 12 days of
trapping attempts, according
to a state news release. They
examined the wolf and fitted
her with a tracking collar.
She had given birth to pups
this spring, said Deana Clif-
ford, the DFW’s senior wild-
life veterinarian.
Trail cameras operated by
the U.S. Forest Service cap-
tured photos of the mother
and three pups. While much
of the pack’s activity has
been in Lassen County, tracks
have also been confirmed in
Plumas County, officials said.
The collar will keep track
of the mother’s activity, sur-
vival, reproduction and prey
preferences, the release ex-
plained. Officials say they
hope the collar will help min-
imize wolf-livestock conflicts
by providing information
about the pack’s location.
State and federal protec-
tions make it illegal to kill or
hunt gray wolves in Califor-
nia. Wolf advocates and state
officials have been promoting
nonlethal means of warding
off wolves, including using
guardian dogs, motion-sensor
lights, brightly colored flags
or range riders.
New almond plantings boost production as shipments soar
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Ex-
pectations for a record almond
crop this year continue to rise,
and shipments are keeping
pace with production.
Growers in California
should expect to harvest 2.25
billion meat pounds this year,
a more than 5 percent increase
from the 2016 production of
2.14 billion meat pounds, ac-
cording to the National Agri-
cultural Statistics Service.
The harvest will begin as
the industry caps off a big
shipping year at the end of
July. Domestic shipments and
exports are up 14 percent and
17 percent, respectively, for
the 2016-17 crop year that
finishes this month, according
to the Almond Board of Cali-
fornia. U.S. shipments in June
were up 22 percent from last
year, the board reported.
“We expect we’ll have a
record shipment year,” board
president and chief executive
officer Richard Waycott told
the Capital Press. “We’ll reach
the end of this month with
over 2 billion pounds shipped
for the first time in history. All
regions of the world have in-
creased their consumption.”
NASS’ latest production
estimate is more than 2 per-
cent higher than the agency’s
subjective forecast in May.
The apparent bumper crop is
fueled more by new plantings
rather than an abundance of
nuts on trees.
The average nut set per
tree this year is 5,714, down
7.2 percent from the 2016
crop, reports the NASS.
But bearing acreage is
expected to reach the 1 mil-
lion mark this year, up from
940,000 acres in 2016, ac-
cording to NASS.
“In general I would say
that the crop is pretty good,”
said Dani Lightle, a Universi-
ty of California Cooperative
Extension orchard systems
adviser in Orland. “There’s
certainly some orchards that
hit the weather wrong with
the bloom so they’re a little
lighter.”
The next task for growers
is to prevent damage from
heat, as Central Valley tem-
peratures have soared well
into the triple digits for a cou-
ple of stretches this summer.
But so far, “most orchards are
doing OK,” Lightle said.
Winter storms and cold
weather extended the bloom
in February and March, as
significant rains caused some
bee boxes to rest in standing
water and made spray appli-
cations more difficult.
Nonpareils — one of the
Tim Hearden/Capital Press File
Kevin Davies operates a tractor with a sweeper that picks up
almonds as a bankout driver follows during harvest in an orchard in
Gerber, Calif. Almond producers are expecting to harvest a record
2.25 billion meat pounds later this summer.
earliest and most popular va-
rieties — recorded all of 29
“bee hours,” Lightle said. But
that was apparently enough
to improve Nonpareils’ nut
set from last year. This year’s
average set is 5,717, up 2.4
percent from 2016, according
to NASS.
The growth comes as the
industry is still recovering
from a price slide that began
in late 2015, as prices fell
by nearly half from the more
than $4 a pound that was paid
for some almonds during the
2014 crop year.
However, almond produc-
tion has remained profitable
despite the slide, UCCE ad-
viser Roger Duncan has said.
Prices have stabilized in re-
cent months as global demand
remains healthy, growers say.
And the Almond Board wants
to keep it that way.
Chocolate milk off menu
at San Francisco schools
28-3/#4N
By TIM HEARDEN
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
— San Francisco school kids
who learned to live without
soda and candy will soon have
to give up chocolate milk, too.
The city’s school district
will ban chocolate milk in el-
ementary and middle schools
this fall and in high schools in
the spring, the San Francisco
Chronicle reported Monday.
The school district already
bans sodas in schools and
doesn’t allow cookies or other
sweets to be served with lunch.
One carton of chocolate
milk includes about 40 percent
of the recommended daily al-
lowance of sugar in a child’s
diet, supporters point out.
Officials in San Francisco
tested the ban in five schools
over the past school year and
found that in two, there was no
decrease in the number of milk
cartons kids consumed. There
was only a slight dip in the
other three schools.
“The kids grumbled about
it for a couple of days,” said
Libby Albert, executive di-
rector of the district’s Student
Nutrition Services. But for the
most part, they just switched to
white milk, she said.
Most elementary and mid-
dle school students attending
the summer session at George
Washington High School in-
terviewed during a recent
school lunch said they didn’t
care whether chocolate milk
was offered.
Sebastian Ong, 8, said
chocolate milk is “yummy and
delicious,” and the absence of
it at school would be “a bum-
mer, but whatever.”
But banning chocolate milk
might not be the best choice
for every school, said Marlene
Schwartz, director of the Uni-
versity of Connecticut Rudd
Center for Food Policy and
Obesity.
There are students who
strongly prefer flavored milk
and who might have nutrition-
al deficiencies, Schwartz said.
It might make more sense to
offer chocolate milk to such
children ensure they get the
calcium, vitamin D and potas-
sium they need, she said.
“You kind of have to know
your student body,” Schwartz
said. “Districts have to make
an informed decision.”