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CapitalPress.com
December 1, 2017
Editorials are written by or
approved by members of the
Capital Press Editorial Board.
All other commentary pieces are
the opinions of the authors but
not necessarily this newspaper.
Opinion
Editorial Board
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O ur V iew
Teen seeks to bridge rural-urban divide
O
ne of the wedges that
serves to create the
rural-urban divide is the
general lack of knowledge about
agriculture common in the city.
Even in rural areas, most
Americans are two or more
generations removed from the
farm. Our collective memory
on the subject is both woefully
outdated and uninformed.
Ag interest groups have been
asking for years how they can
bridge that information gap. It’s a
conundrum.
Not to Anna Peterson, 17, an
FFA member at Skyview High
School in Nampa, Idaho. If it’s a
question of education, she reasons,
why not teach it in school?
Peterson will propose a bill
during the 2018 Idaho legislative
session that would mandate high
school students to complete at
least two agriculture education
classes as a requirement to
graduate. As part of her effort
she’s already emailed every
member of the Idaho Legislature
to brief them on the plan.
Now, the naysayers will
quickly point out all the
predictable obstacles for such a
plan ever being instituted, even in
a state where so many legislators
are farmers or ranchers. It would
be expensive and school budgets
are already stretched thin. The
school day is too short to cover
all the material already required.
Who would set the
curriculum? That could mean the
difference between education and
indoctrination.
But just because it wouldn’t be
easy doesn’t mean it’s not a good
idea. It’s a great idea.
And whether or not Peterson’s
proposal ever gets a hearing she
still deserves a huge tip of the hat.
As we said, farm groups across
the country have been asking how
to bridge the rural-urban divide
for years. Peterson considered
the question, proposed an answer
and has taken it upon herself to
petition the Idaho Legislature to
make that proposal a reality.
We could all use that kind of
passion.
O ur V iew
A different look at ranchers’
attitude toward wolves
S
teve Pedery, conservation
director for the Portland-based
group Oregon Wild, told Capital
Press last week that a “shoot, shovel
and shut up” attitude toward wolves
has taken hold in rural Oregon.
We understand why wolf
advocates may feel a shifting of the
tide. We see the same facts but have a
different interpretation.
This year Oregon wildlife officials
sanctioned the killing of five wolves
because of depredation. This would
have been unthinkable in earlier
years of wolf management. Another
was accidentally poisoned and a
hunter shot a female wolf he said was
threatening him. A couple have been
found shot dead in apparent poaching
incidents.
We don’t think attitudes in
ranching country toward wolves
have changed all that much since the
predators migrated into the Northwest
and their numbers multiplied.
Ranchers were wary from the get-go.
Their frustration has understandably
grown as they’ve sustained increased
loses from depredation and increased
costs trying to prevent it.
“Shoot, shovel and shut up” has
long been a common refrain wherever
ranchers gather to talk about wolves.
But at best it’s a wishful boast, not an
operational wolf control strategy for
even the most radical opponents.
“Smoke a pack a day” is a catchy
slogan on a bumper sticker, but
nothing more.
The gallows humor comes from
being on the front line where wolf
conservation meets wolf depredation.
Ranchers have an economic interest
in protecting their herd from wolves
and other predators. They have skin in
the game where wolf activists do not.
A local shop owner robbed of
$1,200 worth of merchandise is seen
in town as a victim while a rancher
robbed by wolves of a $1,200 animal
is seen as a complainer.
Wolves are here to stay. A couple
of poachings and some ODFW-
sanctioned killings don’t endanger
them. Neither will giving ranchers
realistic options to control wolves that
are actively attacking their herds.
Steve Tool/EO Media Group
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist
Pat Matthews, left, uses shears on the carcass
of a Sept. 29 wolf depredation on private land
southeast of Joseph, Ore. Cowboys Wyatt
Warnock, center, and Clancy Warnock look on.
Readers’ views
Wolf shooting
should be further
investigated
The wolf shot and killed
near Starkey Experimental
Station Nov. 2 deserved a
thorough investigation be-
fore Union County’s dis-
trict attorney gave the story
any credence.
The hunter’s claim
of self defense goes
against all science re-
garding wolf behavior in
North America.
These facts should have
triggered serious skepti-
cism and a thorough inves-
tigation before conclusions
were drawn.
Giving this hunter what
appears to be a “pass” sends
the wrong message to ev-
eryone.
Little Red Riding Hood
and the Three Little Pigs
are wrong.
Now that wolves are be-
ing given a second chance
around the West there is a
need to educate the pub-
lic, not perpetuate false
fears.
The greatest danger to
human safety during hunt-
ing season is hunters them-
selves. There are numer-
ous incidents annually of
hunters killing or injuring
themselves or innocent by-
standers.
The Starkey wolf was
as innocent as the wom-
an in Maine shot and
killed Nov. 3 by a hunter
while walking on her own
property.
The hunter’s story about
being attacked by a wolf
has got to be rescinded and
replaced with factual, sci-
entific information about
wolf and human interac-
tions.
In nature, wolves do not
attack humans.
The wolf situation is
rough enough with ranch-
er issues about predation.
This shooting must be re-
addressed to bring some
truth and justice to this
tragic killing.
Mary McCracken
La Grande, Ore.
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
Anna Peterson, a high school senior in
Nampa, Idaho, has proposed that high
school students be required to com-
plete at least two agriculture education
classes to graduate.
Feds turn flood insurance
into a tool for land grabs
By DAMIEN SCHIFF
For the Capital Press
W
hen zoning and
planning decisions
are made for your
community, which level of
government should make
the call?
Traditionally, land use is
a local and regional respon-
sibility — for good reason.
We want a meaningful say
in policies that will shape
our communities, and that
means vesting them with
officials closest to the peo-
ple — city, county and state
governments.
Not insignificantly, this
tradition is consistent with
the Constitution, which
grants the federal govern-
ment only limited powers
and excludes it from intrud-
ing on concerns that are pri-
marily local.
However, local control
is under attack right now
in Oregon — by a federal
environmental bureaucracy
engaged in aggressive em-
pire building. The National
Marine Fisheries Service
— known as NMFS — is
tasked with regulating for
federally protected migrat-
ing fish. But it is moving
beyond that mission and
turning itself into a super
zoning board for much of
the state.
NMFS has assumed
power over a program far
outside its proper area of
oversight — the federal
flood insurance program —
and is manipulating this pro-
gram as a tool for a federal
takeover of land use.
By law, federal flood
insurance is available to
communities that are lo-
cated in floodplains if they
develop their own land use
policies to limit harms from
flooding. Scores of Oregon
communities depend on the
insurance to help foster re-
sponsible economic devel-
opment.
But access to the pro-
gram in Oregon now comes
with a big asterisk. NMFS is
insisting that communities
adopt federally dictated land
use restrictions in order to
be eligible for coverage.
NMFS says the restric-
tions are meant to help en-
dangered species like salm-
on and steelhead — and,
indeed, it issued them after
environmental groups won a
lawsuit calling for a review
of how flood insurance af-
fects those species.
Here’s the problem with
that rationale: As a matter of
law, neither the flood insur-
ance program nor FEMA,
which administers it, has
any impact on species what-
soever, because neither has
power over land use.
As Oregon Rep. Peter
DeFazio put it in a letter
protesting the new federal
land use regime: “FEMA
is not a land use regulatory
agency and has no authority
over privately funded devel-
opment on private lands by
private developers.”
What NMFS has done is
unilaterally transform the
very essence of the flood in-
surance program — from an
insurance provider for one
Guest
comment
Damien Schiff
type of natural disaster into
an instrument for federal
zoning in the name of spe-
cies protection. As an un-
elected bureaucracy, NMFS
has no authority to change
the program’s congressio-
nally enacted mission, or
use it as a means of issuing
land use commands to local
governments.
The restrictions that
NMFS is imposing can be
severe — creating a poten-
tial chilling effect on new
economic activity in target-
ed areas. Some of these ar-
eas are precisely where new
economic activity is needed
most.
Nearly all of downtown
Coos Bay, for example, is
covered. This has imperiled
one of the most promising
redevelopment projects in
years — the refurbishing of
an old mill facility that was
intended to provide a site for
16 businesses.
In an editorial last year,
the Eugene Register-Guard
noted that the restrictions
had the potential to “place
floodplains in 271 commu-
nities off-limits to develop-
ment, agriculture and for-
estry.” Affected regions, the
paper wrote, would include
not just significant munic-
ipal areas, but “swaths of
farm and forest land.”
Oregon
communities
have already enacted some
of the most demanding land
use regulations in the coun-
try, designed to protect the
environment while allowing
responsible economic devel-
opment. The heavy-handed
intrusion by NMFS puts
those carefully considered
policies at risk.
The federal bureaucrats’
aim is “to prohibit redevel-
opment in large areas of
Oregon, overriding our own
land use laws,” as Rep. De-
Fazio complained last year
in a meeting with planners
from Coos Bay and Spring-
field. “They can’t do that.”
So they can’t. Because
NMFS’ usurpation is not
just destructive but clearly
unlawful, the City of Coos
Bay recently challenged it
with a federal lawsuit. Rep-
resented free of charge by
Pacific Legal Foundation,
the city is fighting to reclaim
its own decision-making
and to protect communities
throughout the state from
this unjustified federal as-
sault.
Success in this law-
suit will also reverberate
nationwide, by deterring
NMFS from trying the
same scheme elsewhere,
in other areas where the
flood insurance program
operates.
The courts must make it
clear to all federal bureau-
cracies that they may not co-
erce local communities into
surrendering their rightful
powers of self-government.
Damien Schiff is a
senior attorney with Pacific
Legal Foundation.