Friday, May 27, 2022
CapitalPress.com 7
Forecast calls for elevated risk of wildfi res
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — Continued hot
and dry weather is expected to ele-
vate the risk for large wildfi res this
summer across parts of the North-
west already dealing with severe
drought.
Fire offi cials in Oregon and
Washington gathered May 24 for an
open house at the Northwest Inter-
agency Coordination Center in Port-
land, which serves as the main hub
for deploying resources to battle
wildfi res throughout the region.
John Saltenberger, fi re weather
program manager for the center, pro-
vided an outlook for the 2022 fi re
season based on current conditions
and a three-month forecast from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
As of May 19, nearly 87% of
Oregon is in some stage of drought,
according to the U.S. Drought
Monitor. That includes about 13%
in “exceptional” drought in cen-
tral and southern Oregon, refl ect-
ing below-average precipitation,
warmer weather and inadequate
snowpack over the last three years.
In Washington, a little more than
Oregon Department of Forestry
A fi refi ghting tanker making a retardant drop over the Grandview Fire near Sisters on July 11, 2021.
Forecasters say drought will elevate the risk of severe wildfi res in parts of the Northwest this summer.
half of the state is listed in drought
east of the Cascades. According to
NOAA, the entire region will likely
see below-average precipitation in
June, July and August, while most of
Oregon and Eastern Washington are
likely to be warmer than usual.
“That’s about as grim a report as
I’ve seen NOAA put out,” Salten-
berger said.
Taking all factors into consider-
ation, Saltenberger said there will be
an above normal potential for signif-
icant wildfi res beginning in central
and south-central Oregon in June,
and will gradually spread north and
east into Washington by August.
The wildfi re potential in West-
ern Washington and Oregon’s Wil-
lamette Valley is normal this sum-
mer after the region benefi tted from
a cool and wet spring.
Already this year, more than 200
fi res have burned approximately
1,100 acres in the Northwest. While
the fi res are mostly small now, Salt-
enberger said the heat and drought
means they could grow into larger
blazes later in the year.
A “large” fi re is defi ned as being
100 or more acres in timber, and
300 or more acres in grass or range-
land. More than 2,700 Northwest
fi refi ghters have been assigned to
contain large fi res now burning in
the Southwest.
Angie Lane, wildfi re divi-
sion manager for the Washington
Department of Natural Resources,
said cooperation between state, fed-
eral and tribal agencies are key to
a successful wildfi re season, partic-
ularly as fi res are growing bigger,
hotter and more destructive.
“We know we can’t go it alone,”
Lane said. “If we’re not doing it
together, I don’t think we would be
as successful, for sure.”
Fire managers from the U.S. For-
est Service, Bureau of Land Man-
agement, Bureau of Indian Aff airs,
National Parks Service, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Oregon Department
of Forestry and Oregon State Fire
Marshal’s Offi ce also attended the
open house at the Northwest Inter-
agency Coordination Center.
Last year, there were 4,075 wild-
fi res reported in Oregon and Wash-
ington that burned more than 1.5
million acres. Those totals were
111% and 155% of the region’s
10-year average, respectively.
The Bootleg Fire in Southern Ore-
gon accounted for most of the burned
acres in 2021, at 413,717. The largest
fi re in Washington was the Schneider
Springs blaze northwest of Naches,
which burned 107,322 acres.
Oregon rail-to-barge facility wins
$2 million to expand capacity
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Sarah Bassing/University of Washington
Offi cials say northeast Washington wolf pack with a history of predation has renewed
its attacks on livestock.
Washington wolf pack
renews attacks on calves
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
A northeast Washington
wolf pack with a history of
attacking cattle has killed one
calf and wounded another in
the past week, the Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife
said Friday.
The Togo pack has been
designated for lethal con-
trol by Fish and Wildlife fi ve
times in the past four years
because of chronic attacks on
cattle.
The department has shot
one wolf in the fi ve tries.
Meanwhile, the pack has
grown and expanded its ter-
ritory in Ferry County.
In the latest predations,
wolves bit and clawed calves
in two private pastures. The
ranch checks the cattle sev-
eral times a day, according
to the department. Flashing
colored lights were in the
pasture where the calf was
injured.
The rancher and Fish and
Wildlife are working with
range-riders from two orga-
nizations, the Cattle Pro-
ducers of Washington and
the Northeast Washington
Wolf Cattle Collaborative, to
patrol the area.
Fish and Wildlife has now
documented fi ve attacks on
calves in the pack’s terri-
tory in the past 10 months.
Department policy calls for
considering lethal control
after four predations in 10
months. The previous three
were in August.
Fish and Wildlife staff
members were meeting to
make a recommendation to
department Director Kelly
Susewind, according to the
department.
According to the depart-
ment, a rancher found a
dead calf the evening of
May 16 in a pasture about
a half mile from the ranch’s
headquarters.
The next day, Fish and
Wildlife investigators saw
bites, cuts and holes on the
dead animal’s hamstrings
and hindquarters. They esti-
mated wolves killed the calf
one or two days earlier.
On May 18, the same
rancher found an injured calf
in a diff erent pasture. The
calf had been bitten, cut and
clawed. Fish and Wildlife
investigators estimated the
wounds were three or four
days old.
Even before the most
recent predations, the Togo
pack territory was the only
one that mets the depart-
ment’s defi nition of a “chron-
ic-confl ict” area because of
its multi-year history of pre-
dations. The area receives
special attention from depart-
ment in trying to prevent
wolf attacks.
Susewind has autho-
rized removing one or two
wolves in the Togo pack fi ve
times, beginning in 2018.
The department killed a
Togo wolf in 2018, but didn’t
remove a wolf the other four
times.
In response to a series of
predations by the pack last
summer, Susewind autho-
rized removing one or two
wolves.
He issued the order nine
days after the last attack. The
department stopped looking
for the pack four days later.
The department said that kill-
ing a wolf to change a pack’s
behavior is most eff ective
within 14 days of a predation.
The Togo pack had seven
wolves at the end of 2021, up
from three wolves at the end
of 2020, according to Fish
and Wildlife counts.
The pack last year
expanded its territory to
include most of an area pre-
viously occupied by another
pack in the Kettle River
Range.
A unique rail-to-barge
grain facility at Oregon’s
Port of Morrow is expanding
with help from a $2 million
grant recently approved by
state transportation offi cials.
The Morrow County
Grain Growers coopera-
tive has won approval from
the Oregon Transportation
Commission for funding
that will cover about two-
thirds of the $3 million proj-
ect’s cost.
“It’s worked great so far
and we hope it will give us
that much more capability,”
said Kevin Gray, the coop-
erative’s CEO, of the grain
handling operation.
Originally
completed
in 2019, the facility is the
only one of its kind along
the Columbia River that can
unload grain from rail cars
and then load it into barges
headed for downstream
export elevators.
“It’s a time saver just
because of the congestion on
the railroads,” Gray said.
The expansion proj-
ect will install a new
600,000-bushel grain bin
and associated conveyors
that will connect it to the
existing facility.
Six grain bins already
stood at the location when
the cooperative built the $7.5
million rail-to-barge system,
whose cost included installa-
tion of a seventh bin.
The project recently
approved for Connect Ore-
gon grant funding will bring
the number of bins to eight,
with room for fi ve more and
a grain bunker left at the site.
Gray said the additional
bin is meant to improve the
facility’s fl exibility, since
until now it’s occasionally
been forced to reject pro-
posed grain loads because
the existing bins were
in use.
Even if the bins have stor-
age capacity left, they’re still
limited to storing the type of
grain each one already con-
tains, he said. “You can’t put
corn in the same bin you put
wheat in.”
Grain shippers bene-
fi t from using the facil-
ity because their loads can
bypass backed-up rail traffi c
in Portland, Gray said.