November 23, 2018
CapitalPress.com
3
OSU to seek $30 million boost for
research, Extension, forest lab
Funding request
represents 25 percent
increase over current
biennium’s budget
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Oregon State University
will be seeking an additional
$30 million for agricultural
research, Extension and its
forest laboratory next year,
representing a 25 percent
boost over the current bien-
nium.
About $14.4 million would
be used to restore 15 positions
lost due to recession-era bud-
get cuts, while $15.6 million
would be dedicated to new
positions.
“We still have not ever
really rebuilt,” said Bill Bog-
gess, executive associate dean
of OSU’s College of Agricul-
tural Sciences.
It’s likely OSU’s Exten-
sion Service would receive
53.3 percent of the money, its
Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tions would receive 38.5 per-
cent and its Forest Research
Laboratory would receive 8.2
percent, which is the current
split among the institutions.
The university’s statewide
public service programs got a
$14 million budget increase
during the 2015-17 biennium,
but its $124.4 million budget
in the current biennium fell 3
percent short of keeping pace
with the rising cost of wages
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
From left: Bill Boggess, executive associate dean of Oregon State
University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, Alan Sams, OSU’s
dean of Agricultural Sciences and director of the Oregon Agricul-
tural Experiment Station, and Scott Reed, OSU’s vice provost and
director of its Extension Service.
and benefits.
University leaders are
optimistic about the state’s
positive revenue forecast
and note that Oregon’s seven
public universities — which
are funded separately from
research, Extension and the
forest lab — have also asked
for a 25 percent budget boost.
“We’re symmetric with
that increase,” Boggess said.
Exactly which positions
would be funded with the $30
million has yet to be decided,
with OSU seeking input from
commodity crop commissions
and others who benefit from
the statewide programs.
“We’re in active discus-
sions now with stakeholders,”
said Scott Reed, director of
OSU’s Extension Service.
Agricultural groups and
other supporters will likely
help OSU leaders lobby law-
makers to approve the siz-
able funding increase, which
is expected to be vetted by
the education or natural re-
sources subcommittees of the
Joint Committee on Ways and
Means during the 2019 legis-
lative session.
“The statewides enjoy a
very high level of confidence
statewide,” Reed said.
With many newly elected
lawmakers beginning their
terms next year, it’s impera-
tive to inform them about the
critical role that OSU’s ser-
vices perform in supporting
natural resource industries,
said Boggess.
“Educating new legislators
is a non-stop challenge,” he
said. “We’ve had good sup-
port from both sides of the
aisle. The bigger challenge is
there are a lot of new faces,
period.”
Warm winter best bet for Northwest
No strong signal for
precipitation
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
The El Nino brewing in the
Pacific Ocean has yet to exert
much influence on the weath-
er, but odds remain high that
winter will be warmer than
normal in California, Idaho,
Oregon and Washington, the
National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration re-
ported Thursday.
For the entire U.S., the
odds of a warm winter are
highest in the Alaska Panhan-
dle and Northwest, according
to NOAA’s Climate Predic-
tion Center
The chances are 50 to 60
percent that the four states
will have a warm December
through February. The odds of
temperatures averaging below
normal over the three-month
period are 6 to 16 percent.
The odds slightly favor
a wetter-than-normal winter
for most of California and
Courtesy NOAA
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
predicts Washington, Oregon,
Idaho and California will have a
warmer than normal December,
January and February.
the eastern half of Idaho. The
climate center sees no factor
strongly influencing precip-
itation — wet or dry — for
Washington, Oregon, western
Idaho and the northern tip of
California.
Sea-surface temperatures
along the equator were 0.5 to 1
degree Celsius above normal
in the past week, according to
the center. The temperatures
are in the range of a weak to
borderline moderate El Nino,
but the ocean conditions are
still considered neutral, nei-
ther warm nor cool.
The warmer temperatures
must persist to qualify as an
El Nino. “The atmospheric
conditions associated with
a developing El Nino event
remain modest at best,” ac-
cording to NOAA’s written
discussion on the three-month
outlook.
The sea-surface tempera-
ture in the central Pacific is
expected to peak in January at
about 1 degree Celsius above
normal, the threshold for a
moderate El Nino. NOAA
anticipated the ocean will
slowly cool back to neutral
conditions over the rest of the
winter and spring.
In El Nino winters, tem-
peratures typically are a few
degrees higher than normal.
Less snow accumulates in
the mountains to melt in the
spring for irrigation.
OR-7 trots past a trail camera carrying what a wildlife biologist said is an elk leg in the Southern
Oregon Cascades, April 14, 2017. Oregon’s famous wandering wolf formed the Rogue pack in
2014, which is responsible for a recent spate of livestock attacks in Jackson and Klamath counties.
Rogue pack kills another
cow in Southern Oregon
Latest depredation
makes five in
three weeks
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
The U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service is trying again to
place a GPS collar on at least
one wolf from the Rogue
pack in Southern Oregon fol-
lowing a recent spate of at-
tacks on livestock in Jackson
and Klamath counties.
State wildlife officials
confirmed the latest kill of an
11-month-old heifer at a ranch
northeast of Medford on Nov.
10. It is the fifth depredation
attributed to the Rogue pack
over the last three weeks.
Gray wolves in Oregon
west of highways 395, 78 and
95 are managed by the feder-
al government. John Stephen-
son, USFWS wildlife biol-
ogist and wolf coordinator,
said he is working to collar a
wolf from the Rogue pack to
keep closer tabs on their loca-
tion and movements.
“They move around a lot
at this time of year,” Stephen-
son said. “You just have to
put (traps) in one area and
wait them out.”
The Rogue pack was des-
ignated in 2014 when Or-
egon’s famous wandering
wolf, OR-7, settled in the area
with a mate and had their first
litter of pups. Today, the pack
is estimated at seven or eight
members.
A collar on OR-7 has not
worked since 2015. Agencies
successfully collared another
female wolf from the pack,
OR-54, last fall, though it
later dispersed into Northern
California.
Veril Nelson, wolf com-
mittee co-chairman for the
Oregon Cattlemen’s Associa-
tion, said collaring wolves is
a top priority for ranchers.
“We’d like to have a col-
lar on a wolf in every pack in
Oregon, so that ranchers can
be prepared when they’re in
the neighborhood,” Nelson
said. “That’s one of the things
we’d like to see in the next
five-year wolf plan.”
The Rogue pack has cer-
tainly been keeping ranchers
on their toes.
On Nov. 10, a produc-
er near Butte Falls reported
three dead cows in the same
50-acre private pasture. A bi-
ologist from the Oregon De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife
examined each carcass, deter-
mining that one of the heifers
was killed by wolves within
the past three days.
A second carcass had been
mostly eaten, leaving the
cause of death as “unknown,”
while the third showed no
signs of trauma or tooth
scrapes usually associated
with a predator attack. It was
ruled as “other.”
Just three weeks earlier,
the Rogue pack was respon-
sible for killing four cows in
rapid succession near Fort
Klamath in the Wood Riv-
er Valley at the eastern end
of the wolves’ territory. The
pack also killed three more
calves and a guard dog earlier
this year at Mill-Mar Ranch,
about 10 miles north of where
the most recent attack took
place in Jackson County.
Stephenson said it is dif-
ficult to know why livestock
predations are on the rise,
though it could be due in part
to the Rogue pack growing in
size. OR-7 is also nine years
old now, he said, and it is pos-
sible that as wolves get older
they spend more time around
ranches instead of up in the
woods where they should
be — as was the case with
OR-7’s father, OR-4, the al-
pha male of the Imnaha pack
in northeast Oregon.
“There definitely is a re-
lationship with bigger packs
tending to be involved with
depredations more frequent-
ly,” Stephenson said.
Wolves are a federally
endangered species in west-
ern Oregon, and Stephenson
said there are no plans to kill
wolves to curb livestock at-
tacks. Instead, he is helping
ranchers to put up non-lethal
deterrents like fladry fencing
and Foxlights.
“We’re trying to solve the
problem with non-lethal de-
terrents,” Stephenson said.
“They can be very effective.”
Nelson said he feels ranch-
ers are doing everything they
can with non-lethal tools to
protect livestock from wolves.
Having collars in every pack
would at least give ranchers a
heads-up when they are near-
by, he said, though he doubts
whether they can get that as-
surance from ODFW in the
next Wolf Conservation and
Management Plan.
“At the same time, they
don’t want us to go to lethal
take on these wolves,” Nel-
son said. “I don’t know what
the heck they expect ranchers
to do. I guess just suffer the
losses.”
Troubled loans increase for Farm Credit System
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
The Farm Credit System of
ag lenders has seen a spike in
troubled loans as many farmers
struggle with low prices, even
as profits have grown for the
banks themselves.
Non-performing
assets,
such as loans that are past due,
shot up about 20 percent during
the system’s first three quarters
of 2018, to $2.4 billion, while
the level of charged-off bad
debt more than doubled, from
$21 million to $53 million.
Even so, the system’s to-
tal loan volume rose nearly 2
percent in that time, to $263.6
billion, which helped to boost
its net income to $4 billion, up
from $3.7 billion at this point
last year.
The increase in non-per-
forming assets and charge-off is
not unexpected given financial
problems experienced among
producers of dairy, hogs and
soybeans, said Hal Johnson,
senior financial analyst for the
Farm Credit Administration,
which regulates the system.
“We recognize that certain
ag sectors have been under
stress for several years,” John-
son said.
Though the agency expects
the system to experience addi-
tional credit quality deteriora-
tion in the future, the network
as a whole is well-capitalized
and poised to handle risk, he
said.
“The system is financially
sound,” Johnson said.
With retaliatory tariffs con-
tinuing to be imposed on crops
and livestock products, com-
bined with overproduction of
certain commodities, many
U.S. farmers generally face a
challenging economic outlook,
he said.
“These will present head-
winds for the agricultural sec-
tor,” Johnson said.
47-1/106
Weekly
Fieldwork
Report
Presented by
®
Ore.
Item/description (Source: USDA, NASS; NOAA)
• Days suitable for fieldwork (As of Nov. 14)
6.5
• Topsoil moisture, surplus
0
• Topsoil moisture, percent short
63%
• Subsoil moisture, surplus
0
• Subsoil moisture, percent short
79%
• Precipitation probability
33-40% Above
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