Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2018)
4 CapitalPress.com July 6, 2018 Washington farmers: Seals thwart salmon recovery Pinnipeds, killer whales eat fish By DON JENKINS Capital Press A Washington farm advo- cacy group wants harbor seals in the Salish Sea to get the same notoriety as the Califor- nia sea lions eating salmon in the Lower Columbia River. Harbor seals eat an es- timated 23 million young salmon each year in the sea, a network of coastal waterways that include Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca. The take dwarfs the number of salmon eaten by sea lions near Bonneville Dam. The U.S. House on Tuesday passed over to the Senate a bill to revise the 1972 Marine Mam- mal Protection Act to let states and tribes euthanize more sea lions in the river. Save Family Farming says the bill should extend to harbor seals in the Salish Sea. The seals are scupper- ing salmon recovery, which ratchets up pressure in north- west Washington to downsize agriculture to give fish more habitat and water, according to the group. “Everyone is getting so pinched to give back habitat, and it’s a little hard to under- stand how habitat is the only problem,” said Skagit County farmer Zachary Barborinas. “I think this is one more large factor that has to be consid- ered.” A recent study led by Na- tional Ocean and Atmospheric Administration scientists esti- mated that harbor seals, Cali- fornia sea lions, Steller sea li- ons and killer whales ate 31.5 million chinook salmon in coastal waters between Cali- fornia and Alaska in 2015, a sixfold increase since 1975. Some 86 percent of those salmon were consumed by the Salish Sea’s 77,800 harbor seals, up from 8,600 in 1975. The consumption of salm- on by the protected mammals “could be masking the suc- cess of coastwide salmon re- covery,” according to the study, posted online in November by Scientific Reports. Save Family Farming direc- tor Gerald Baron said the group will wage a social media cam- paign to publicize how harbor seals are affecting salmon. “They (the public) hear talk about habitat, in-stream flows and culverts,” he said. “Farm- ers are not saying those things are not important, but we’re saying that unless you address the foundational issue, they will be counterproductive.” Baron acknowledged the difficulty of targeting a cute mammal on social media. “That’s going to be one of our greatest concerns,” he said. Killer whales eat the most salmon by weight, but harbor seals eat the most individu- al fish. Harbor seals ate 6.5 percent of the total coastwide smolt production, according to the study. “There’s no doubt there are a lot of salmon that get eaten by predators,” the study’s co-lead- er, NOAA research scientist Brandon Chasco, said Thurs- day. Researchers didn’t project how reducing the number of harbor seals would affect salm- on survival. “What we don’t know is, if the salmon had not been eaten by harbor seals whether they simply would have been consumed by anoth- er predator,” Chasco said. He said it was reasonable to bring up the study in discussing fishing, water and land poli- cies, but the study itself doesn’t make recommendations. “I certainly wasn’t in it to change policy,” Chasco said. According to the NOAA study, the sea’s killer whales, which number about 80, eat 190,000 to 260,000 adult chi- nook salmon annually. Gov. Jay Inslee signed an executive or- der in March appointing a task force to study how to increase the killer whale population. The Columbia River In- ter-Tribal Fish Commission estimates that California sea lions ate more than 8,900 salmon near Bonneville Dam in 2016. With NOAA approv- al, almost 200 sea lions have been euthanized in the river since 2008, the Oregon De- partment of Fish and Wildlife reports. Prescribed fire clears under story, fine fuels By BRAD CARLSON Capital Press Fire crews continued this week to control the U.S. Forest Service’s prescribed Lodgepole Fire, which spread slowly into adjacent unburned areas with help from recent warmer weather. Higher temperatures quickly dried needle litter and heavier fuels, allowing the fire to spread and prompting local reports of smoke visible along the Middle Fork Payette River and into the town of Crouch north of Boise. The fire re- mains within its designated project area about 14 miles north of Crouch on National Forest System Road 671. The immediate area offers limited opportunity for farm- ing or grazing given its steep terrain, but the prescribed fire could benefit timber operators by burning out under-story vegetation and brush, helping larger trees, Boise National Forest spokesman Michael Williamson said. Following a prescribed burn or mechanical thinning, the remaining trees are health- ier because they have less LEGAL 26-2/999 PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 819 Notice is hereby given that the following vehicle will be sold, for cash to the highest bidder, on 7/13/2018. The sale will be held at 10:00am by RANDY’S TOWING 925 WILCO RD, STAYTON, OR 2016 GMC CANYON CW VIN = 1GTG6DE31G1137282 Amount due on lien $3,934.00 Reputed owner(s): JERRY LEE RUNDGREN Boise National Forest The Lodgepole prescribed fire north of Crouch, Idaho, spread this week as higher temperatures made more types of fuels available. competition, more in-ground nutrients available and great- er capacity to fight insects and disease, he said. Thinning also can raise the tree canopy, in effect keeping fire close to the ground and less likely to become large and catastrophic. Crews have been putting in a fire line to reduce the blaze’s spread, and putting out flames found in heavy fu- els. The 1,250-acre prescribed fire was started in late April in the largely south-facing area partly to improve wildlife habitat. Williamson on Monday said the previous weekend’s approximately 60-person crew made significant prog- ress and was expected to downsize to about 20 over the next couple of days. He said closures of two short spur roads near the base of the fire, which starts at the river and moves higher, are officially in effect until Au- gust but will be re-evaluated continuously. This will help crews monitor and control any rollout — loose material moving down from above af- ter fire moves through. The fire first burned vege- tation as well as heavier dead and down fuels. Williamson said higher temperatures sub- sequently dried finer fuels and enabled the fire to creep into previously unburned areas, producing smoke as it found larger fuels such as small pockets of unburned timber or stumps. Fire lines create fuel breaks to stop the fire from spreading, though it can con- tinue to creep within contain- ment boundaries, he said. The Crouch area includes homes and recreation desti- nations. H-B SYSTEM 2000 HORIZONTAL BALE CUTTING SAW The heavy duty, hydraulically powered horizontal Bale Reclaim system, with “Vertical cut positioning” SALVAGE D BALES CONTAMINATE QUICKLY AND VELY COST-EFFECTI Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press A helicopter demonstrates aerial spraying at Western Helicopter Services in Newberg, Ore. Workshop examines aerial spraying By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press NEWBERG, Ore. — Last year, Western Helicopter Ser- vices could only spray herbi- cides about a third of the time that was scheduled. The rest of the time, they were waiting for the weather to improve and become suit- able for spraying. “We don’t go out and spray willy-nilly,” said Rick Krohn, president of Western Helicopter Services of New- berg, Ore. Due to the speed and ef- ficiency of spraying by air, though, the company was able to make the best use of the time windows that be- came available, Krohn said. “If we were trying to get that done by ground, (we’d) never get it done.” The realities of aerial her- bicide spraying in forestry were discussed during a June 22 workshop organized by the Oregon Forest Resourc- es Institute, an educational organization that examines controversial issues in timber management. “You don’t get much tougher than herbicides right now,” Mike Cloughesy, OFRI’s director of forestry, said of the issues facing the industry. In recent years, two Or- egon aerial applicators have faced regulatory penalties for spray violations, and one of them was sued over alleged trespass damages by rural res- idents. Several bills have also been proposed in the Legisla- ture to restrict aerial spraying, and voters in Lincoln County banned the practice under an ordinance that’s now being challenged in court. Speakers at the workshop explained why aerial spray- ing is a commonly used tool in the timber industry. Aerial spraying plays a role in the “vegetation man- agement” phase of forestry, preventing weeds from dom- inating young trees, said Jay Walters, field coordinator at the Oregon Department of Forestry. Under the Oregon Forest Practices Act, timber clear cuts must be replanted within two years and trees must be “free to grow” unencumbered by vegetation or other serious problems within six years. The chemicals must be mixed and loaded more than 100 feet from streams that bear fish or that are used for domestic water, and aerial ap- plicators must spray at least 60 feet from waterways and standing water with a sur- face area larger than a quar- ter-acre, said Walters. Under a law passed in 2015, aerial applicators must also main- tain a 60-foot buffer around inhabited dwellings and school campuses. A year ago, digital sub- scriptions to the ODF’s “Forest Activity Electronic Reporting and Notification System,” or FERNS, were made available to members of the public who wanted to learn about upcoming timber operations. The number of subscrip- tions has grown to nearly 600, up from about 400 under the agency’s earlier paper no- tification system, Walters said. Even so, the Oregon De- partment of Agriculture and Oregon Department of Forest- ry haven’t noticed an increase in complaints about herbicides since the digital subscriptions went live. “People who had con- cerns were getting through to Forestry and us,” said Mike Odenthal, ODA’s lead pesti- cide investigator. Notifications must usually be submitted to ODF at least 15 days before a spray opera- tion but they remain valid for a year. Because there have been examples of malfeasance among applicators, people should be notified of spray operations to make arrange- ments, such as keeping an- imals and children indoors, said Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland. Dembrow, chair- man of the Senate Environ- ment and Natural Resources Committee, was among sev- eral elected officials at the workshop. “I think there’s a need for us to build on the FERNS sys- tem to be a more real-time no- tification system,” Dembrow said. Economists: Trade threats weigh on dairy markets By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press Slowing milk production and strong exports should be painting a positive picture for U.S. dairy, but talk of trade wars with Mexico and China seem to be weighing on dairy markets, according to econo- mists at the University of Wis- consin. U.S. milk production is staying below a 1 percent in- crease year over year, which is going to help tighten supply, Mark Stephenson, the univer- sity’s director of dairy policy analysis, said in the latest Dairy Situation and Outlook podcast. “... We’re still carrying his- torically high inventories of product, but I don’t think it’s alarmingly large,” he said. Fellow economist Bob Cropp agreed: “There’s plen- ty there but at least it’s not a growing problem.” On the export side, the latest data show record ship- ments, with milk powders up 37 percent and cheese up 22 percent. April exports repre- sented 18 percent of U.S. milk production. “That’s pretty significant,” Cropp said. University of Wisconsin Bob Cropp, left, and Mark Stephenson That’s a big number, but there are concerns, Stephen- son said. “We’ve been rattling the saber pretty hard with trade, and we’ve gotten some blow- back back into dairy,” he said. U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Mex- ico drew threats of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese of up to 25 percent. U.S. tariffs on a number of imports from China also resulted in threats of counter-tariffs on a slew of U.S. products, Cropp said. The tariffs have not yet taken effect, but dairy futures have deteriorated in what he thinks is an overreaction to the announcements, he said. Stephenson also thinks the markets have overreacted. “But I didn’t expect them not to react at all,” he said. USDA is still forecasting pretty robust export markets this year. But product prices have dropped since the first of June, and Class III milk fu- tures are in the $15s per hun- dredweight. In May, October futures were about $17, Cropp said. “So everything has really reacted downward,” he said. Absent any of the trade war discussions, most of the fundamentals would have supported the $17 milk price, Stephenson said. “We haven’t actually had anything take place. We ha- ven’t had products that have been rebuffed or anything else from high tariffs. This is just in anticipation that it could happen,” he said. Domestic sales have been pretty good. Stocks aren’t bur- densome and will come down. Exports are record high, and milk production is only in- creasing slightly. World prices are holding, and U.S. products are competitive, Cropp said. LEGAL OREGON TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING (OTAC) WHEN: July 11, 2018 @12:30pm-4:30pm • The HB System 2000 comes complete with hydraulic cylinder and controls for powered cut depth adjustment through the cut. • Automatic bar oiler system is a standard feature on this unit. • This saw splits bales using an L-M DE-68 inch saw bar running .404 pitch chain designed for parallel cutting through any type of hay or straw. ROP-13-40-3/102 .COM P.O. Box 905 • Sandy, OR 97055 1-800-228-0793 Leasing available • Call for video 27-2/103 Phone (503) 235-3146 - Fax (503) 235-3916 MFG OF BRUSH MULCHERS | STUMP GRINDERS | DRAINAGE PLOWS BOOM MOWERS | PTO GENERATORS | AUGER BITS & DRIVES TRENCHERS | TREE SPADES | TREE SAWS | LIMB SHEARS AND MORE ELLIS EQUIPMENT 800-949-2336 WHERE: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife 4034 Fairview Industrial Dr. SE Salem, OR 97310 For more information, or to arrange special accommoda- tions for meeting attendees, please contact Julie MacSwain at 503-414-3250 or julie.macswain@or.usda.gov. 26-2/999
