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CapitalPress.com
Friday, January 18, 2019
People & Places
Nursery cultivates native specialty
Scholls Valley Native
Nursery values
genetic diversity
EMPOWERING PRODUCERS OF FOOD & FIBER
Established 1928
Board of Directors
Western
Innovator
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Many farmers wouldn’t
be thrilled about a beaver
dam flooding a portion of
their land, but George Kral
doesn’t see it as a problem.
Though Kral acknowl-
edges the beaver dam and
surrounding wetlands are a
significant sacrifice of prop-
erty at his Scholls Valley
Native Nursery, he said they
provide tangible benefits to
the land.
Before the beaver inhab-
ited the stream on Kral’s
nursery, it often consisted of
a trickle of water. Now, the
dam slows down and retains
water on the property, result-
ing in perennial flows and
perennial ponds.
“They push water into
places you’d never imag-
ine,” Kral said. “The whole
landscape is re-watered.”
Kral has dedicated more
than a third of the 60-acre
property near Gales Creek,
Ore., to a conservation ease-
ment, which limits his abil-
ity to fully use or develop
the land.
Returning that acreage to
a natural state does provide
a valuable resource to the
nursery in the form of seeds
and cuttings from native
plants, which are the compa-
ny’s specialty.
Scholls Valley Native
Nursery raises about 140
species of trees, shrubs and
herbaceous plants, including
sedges and rushes that are
adapted to wet meadows,
marshes and swamps.
While
conventional
farmers have generally bred
GEORGE KRAL
Occupation: Owner of
Scholls Valley Native
Nursery
Hometown: Gales Creek,
Ore.
Family: Wife, Sara, and five
grown children
Education: Bachelor of
Science in Forest Manage-
ment from Oregon State
University in 1988
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
George Kral, owner of Scholls Valley Native Nursery in Gales Creek, Ore., focuses on
genetic diversity to ensure native plants can thrive in a variety of conditions.
for consistency in crops —
such as ensuring uniform
ripening — Kral focuses on
producing plants for genetic
diversity, which is necessary
for them to survive challeng-
ing conditions.
“We grow plants to fend
for themselves,” he said.
The company collects
seeds that mature at differ-
ent times from a variety of
locations, then plants them
to directly grow nursery
stock or for cutting blocks
that will produce scions for
rooting.
This process can gener-
ate plants that would nor-
mally be considered runts,
but which can actually
be more durable in tough
circumstances.
For example, an acorn
may sprout a white oak
that grows 18 inches in a
year while its sibling may
achieve just six inches in
height, Kral said.
The taller tree would
normally be considered
superior, but its vigorous
growth may prove unsus-
tainable in thin soil that’s
adequate for the more com-
pact oak, he said. “It’s just
a more conservative growth
habit.”
Maintaining a diverse
genetic base will be increas-
ingly important as climate
change pushes up average
Northwest temperatures in
the coming decades, Kral
said.
According to data ana-
lyzed by Kral, the average
August temperature in Ore-
gon’s mid-Willamette Val-
ley is now roughly 5 degrees
Fahrenheit higher than in the
1940s.
At this point, the
mid-Willamette Valley has a
higher average temperature
in August than the Umpqua
Valley — a traditionally
warmer climate — more
than seven decades ago, he
said. “That’s a huge shift.”
The change is evident
with two native West Coast
species, white alder and red
alder, in experiments Kral
has conducted at several
elevations.
The white alder, a his-
torically northerly tree, is
dying at the warmer, low-el-
evation sites while con-
tinuing to survive at higher
elevations.
Meanwhile, the red alder,
a southerly species, is thriv-
ing on the Willamette Valley
floor.
For the Scholls Valley
Native Nursery, the prob-
lem isn’t just an abstraction:
Kral expects to start grow-
ing a different mix of native
species that will remain via-
ble in the climate of the
future.
He’s written an article
advising customers — often
government entities and
nonprofit institutions that
conduct habitat restoration
— they’ll need to be flexible
in their product selections as
temperatures rise.
“Managing natural resources
Age: 55
is inherently dynamic,” Kral
said. “You better be ready
to change course or you’re
going to hit a wall.”
Trained as a forester,
Kral’s early experience with
the nursery industry was as
a federal employee charged
with managing contracts for
purchasing trees needed for
reforestation.
Kral went on to work for
the City of Portland, helping
private landowners restore
riparian habitats, which
eventually led him to start
his own landscape man-
agement and reforestation
company.
The dearth of native
species available for com-
mercial sale at the time
convinced Kral to begin
growing his own, which
evolved into the nursery he
founded in 2003.
“I encountered the chal-
lenge of not finding the stuff
I wanted to work with,” he
said. “It’s like trying to build
a house and all you get is
bricks.”
Wildfires amplify concerns over forest management
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
ROSEBURG, Ore. —
Members of Communities
for Healthy Forests said at a
recent year-end meeting they
are making progress in get-
ting their message across
to governmental agencies
and the public regarding the
recovery of forest lands fol-
lowing wildfires.
Communities for Healthy
Forests is a nonprofit
group that was founded
15 years ago with a mis-
sion of “informing the pub-
lic and policy makers with
facts supporting the need to
restore forest lands after cat-
astrophic fires.”
“Absolutely.
We’re
reaching folks at all levels,
from the general public, the
downtown folks, all the way
up to the policy makers, the
agency heads,” said Javier
Goirigolzarri,
executive
director of the group.
Goirigolzarri said when
CHF members traveled
to Washington, D.C., in
2004, they could barely get
through office doors to talk
about the impact of cata-
strophic wildfires.
“Those we did talk to
said, ‘Sounds interesting …
good luck to you all,’” he
remembered. “Now there
is significant congressio-
nal level language about the
need to move forward with
management of forests after
fires.
“With more people dying,
more communities being
evacuated, more social and
economic impact, finally
people are talking about it,
wanting to do something
about these mega-fires,” he
added.
Doug Robertson, another
CHF member, said that in a
perverse way, the increase
nationally in catastrophic
fires has elevated the discus-
sion to a much higher level.
There have been numer-
ous multi-thousand acre
wildfires in several western
states in the past decade, the
most recent being the Camp
Fire in northern California
that burned and destroyed the
community of Paradise and
killed 85 residents.
“People are taking this
issue much more seriously
now,” Robertson said. “They
are looking in earnest at the
recovery of forests after cat-
astrophic fires and now are
also talking about making
forests more fire resilient.”
The Umpqua National
Forest, east of Roseburg in
Douglas County, Ore., has
suffered a few of these fires.
After touring one of the
burned areas in 2002 and
seeing the severity of stand-
ing and fallen dead trees and
soil erosion, Roseburg area
citizens formed Communi-
ties for Healthy Forests.
“We saw a jumble of dead
logs, all set up to be fuel for
the next fire,” said Lee Pat-
erson, president of the CHF.
“There was such tremendous
waste.”
That tour included some
areas that had already burned
a second time, causing even
more severe damage.
CHF represents rural com-
munities and not politically
polarized interest groups.
Members are from business,
education, utilities, and com-
munity and tribal agencies.
Funding is provided by busi-
nesses, utilities, tribes and
several Oregon counties.
“I see what is going on
in our western forests, I see
what is happening to the
beautiful forests we have,
that we had, and it makes
me want to cry,” said CHF
member Wes Melo who is a
24-year volunteer firefighter.
The group decided the
best way to accomplish its
mission to educate people
about mega-fires and the
lack of forest restoration after
the flames and smoke had
cleared was to produce vid-
eos with scientists and for-
esters presenting scientific
information on forest man-
agement. The videos include
“The Carbon Factor,” “After
The Fire Is Out,” “Smoke!”
and “Adding Fuel to the
Fire.” They’ve been widely
distributed and shown during
presentations to governmen-
tal agencies, conferences,
elected officials, to cham-
bers of commerce and ser-
vice clubs, and to the public.
CHF’s original mis-
sion focused on emphasiz-
ing recovery and restoration
after a fire, but in recent years
the group has also included
information on managing
forests to prevent mega-fires.
Members emphasize that
sustainably managed for-
ests are resilient forests that
are able to withstand both
the unexpected forces of
natural and human-caused
fires.
Goirigolzarri emphasized
CHF is not advocating for
clear cuts of burned areas,
but rather selective cutting on
these lands to salvage some
timber for its value, reduce
hazards, to clean up ground
fuels to create fire breaks
that will help prevent future
mega-fires and to replant to
help establish a new forest.
The same management tools
are being suggested for for-
ests that are suffering and
dying from insect infesta-
tions, resulting in more fuel
for the fire.
“We have an epidemic of
trees and a fuel problem,”
he said. “There’s not enough
logging and prescribed burn-
ing activity to reduce the fuel
loads. With appropriate thin-
ning and the reduction of fuel
loads to a manageable level,
the forests can withstand the
next lightning strike and not
burn so severely that we lose
an entire watershed.”
Another group, Sustain-
able Forest Action Coalition,
with a mission similar to that
of CHF, formed in North-
ern California several years
ago. The two groups work
together to get their educa-
tional information out.
“There’s work to be
done to get the message out
because there are those who
want to minimize any work
on these federal forest lands,”
said Goirigolzarri. “We’re
working to expand our effort,
connecting with other groups
of like mind, trying to gather
our voices into one common
cause. We need help from
Washington, D.C., to fix
this.”
Paterson said he hates to
hear others “pigeon hole us
as timber advocates.”
“We advocate for resto-
ration of burned over land
before it becomes an eco-
nomic wasteland,” he said.
“We are an environmental
community, an environmen-
tal protection group.”
CALENDAR
SATURDAY, JAN. 19
Cattlemen’s
Workshop:
8:45 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Blue Mountain
Conference Center, 404 12th St., La
Grande, Ore. The Cattlemen’s Work-
shop began in 2005 as the result of
contentious current issues high-
lighted by regional beef seedstock
producers, allied industry and uni-
versity research & extension per-
sonnel. Over the years, the Cattle-
men’s Workshop has continued to
highlight the most current and rel-
evant issues facing the U.S. beef
cattle industry. Kim McKague,
kim.mckague@oregonstate.edu,
541-562-5129. http://www.cattle-
mensworkshopnw.com.
THURSDAY, JAN. 24
Online Only Auction: 6 p.m.,
Miller & Co. Auctioneers, Portland.
Oliver 550 tractor, implements,
1959 Mercedes 190D, shop tools,
primitives, lapidary equipment,
lifetime collection of minerals, pet-
rified wood, thunder eggs, obsid-
ian, agates and items that can no
longer be collected or imported.
http://www.jmillerauctioneers.
com/awpcp/.
TUESDAY, JAN. 22
Management Matters for
Soil Health Workshop: 7:45 a.m.-
3:45 p.m., Banyans on the Ridge,
1260 Palouse Ridge Drive, Pullman,
Wash. The workshop will address
soil health issues related to soil acid-
ity. https://bit.ly/2TgJdtd.
2019 Annual Rice Grower
Meeting-Woodland:
8 a.m.-
11:05 p.m., Cracchiolo’s Market,
1320 E. Main St., Woodland. http://
cesutter.ucanr.edu.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 23
39th Annual EcoFarm Con-
ference: Asilomar Conference
Grounds, 800 Asilomar Ave., Pacific
Grove, Calif. http://www.eco-farm.
org/conference.
Washington-Oregon Potato
Conference:
7:30 a.m.-9 p.m.,
Three Rivers Convention Cen-
ter, 7016 W. Grandridge Blvd.,
Kennewick, Wash. Annual Wash-
ington-Oregon potato confer-
ence with industry and research
updates,
including
keynote
speaker Pablos Holman. Brandy
Tucker,
btucker@potatoes.com,
509-766-7123. https://www.pota-
toes.com/potatoconference.
Sudden Oak Death Workshop
for Citizen Scientists: 5-8 p.m.,
Curry County Extension Office,
29390 Ellensburg Ave., Gold Beach.
Learn about early detection of Sud-
den Oak Death Using Bucket and
Stream Baits in a workshop for citi-
zen scientists. To RSVP call Shawna
at 541-572-5263 ext 25292 or
shawna.horner@oregonstate.edu
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/
coos/.
THURSDAY, JAN. 24
39th Annual EcoFarm Con-
ference: Asilomar Conference
Grounds, 800 Asilomar Ave., Pacific
Grove, Calif. http://www.eco-farm.
org/conference.
Mapping the Course: Timber-
land, Forest Products Process-
ing and Fiber Issues for 2019:
8:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Heathman Lodge,
7801 NE Greenwood Drive, Vancou-
ver, Wash. Sponsored by the West-
ern Forestry and Conservation Asso-
ciation. https://bit.ly/2SNMCPJ.
SATURDAY, JAN. 26
39th Annual EcoFarm Con-
ference: Asilomar Conference
Grounds, 800 Asilomar Ave., Pacific
Grove, Calif. http://www.eco-farm.
org/conference.
Mike Forrester
Steve Forrester
Kathryn Brown
Susan Rana
Harrison Forrester
Mike Omeg
Cory Bollinger
Jeff Rogers
Corporate Officers
Heidi Wright
Chief Operating Officer
Rick Hansen
Chief Financial Officer
Capital Press Managers
Joe Beach ..................... Editor & Publisher
Elizabeth Yutzie Sell ... Advertising Director
Carl Sampson .................. Managing Editor
Jessica Boone ............ Production Manager
Samantha McLaren ....Circulation Manager
Entire contents copyright © 2019
EO Media Group
dba Capital Press
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WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30
Index
Cattlecon19: Ernest N. Morial
Convention Center, 900 Conven-
tion Center Blvd., New Orleans. This
is the annual convention of the cat-
tle industry and NCBA Trade Show.
https://bit.ly/2ycMLDW.
Dairy ........................................................9
Farm Bureau .............................................4
Livestock ..................................................9
Markets .................................................11
Opinion ...................................................6
THURSDAY, JAN. 31
Correction policy
Accuracy is important to Capital Press
staff and to our readers.
FRIDAY, JAN. 25
Cattlecon19: Ernest N. Morial
Convention Center, 900 Convention
Center Blvd., New Orleans. https://
bit.ly/2ycMLDW.
39th Annual EcoFarm Con-
ference: Asilomar Conference
Grounds, 800 Asilomar Ave., Pacific
Grove, Calif. http://www.eco-farm.
org/conference.
Cattlecon19: Ernest N. Morial
Convention Center, 900 Convention
Center Blvd., New Orleans. https://
bit.ly/2ycMLDW.
FRIDAY, FEB. 1
If you see a misstatement, omission or
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