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Friday, June 3, 2022
Volume 95, Number 23
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GORDON CLARK’S SECOND LIFE
From surfi ng icon
to rancher on
historic Oregon farm
Gordon Clark in front of a
crumbling wooden home
on his property that once
belonged to one of the
early settlers.
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
M
ADRAS, Ore. — Gordon Clark likes to say he’s had two
lives.
In the fi rst life, Clark was a California surfi ng icon and
owner of the world’s leading surfboard blank manufacturing
company. Surfer magazine once placed him at No. 2 on its list
of “25 Most Powerful People in Surfi ng.”
In his second life, Clark, 89, is a farmer who has raised thousands of
cattle and sheep at Hay Creek Ranch in Central Oregon, one of the
state’s oldest and largest ranch holdings, spanning 52,500 contigu-
ous acres.
Clark says the common thread between his two lives is that both
surfboard manufacturing and farming require strategy, curiosity
and hard work.
“I’m a nuts-and-bolts guy,” said Clark. “I love solving prob-
lems and working with my hands.”
Because Clark wasn’t raised on a ranch, locals say he
learned how to farm “by asking a lot of questions and reading
a lot.” Often, Clark has copied ranchers around him, trying
to emulate their success. At times, however, he has pushed
the boundaries: using drones to manage his cattle, applying
variable-rate fertilizer to his crops, installing inventive sys-
tems to stretch water during drought and using DNA pro-
fi les to improve his herd’s genetics.
Reed Anderson, a fourth-generation farmer and owner
of Anderson Ranches who met Clark through the Ore-
gon Sheep Growers Association, said Clark isn’t afraid
to try new things.
“There’s a lot of people that have success in other
businesses and they have a kind of romanticism
about owning a ranch — you know, ‘Gunsmoke,’
See Clark, Page 10
Oregon private forestland deal wins acclaim, though doubts remain
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signs legisla-
tion at a May 18 ceremony in Portland
that imposes new regulations on private
forestland.
PORTLAND — Regulations that reduce
Oregon’s harvestable timber acreage by
roughly 10% aren’t a development that
would normally be embraced by timber
industry representatives.
Yet new rules that increase no-logging
buff ers around streams and impose other
restrictions were celebrated May 18 by exec-
utives of forest product companies alongside
Gov. Kate Brown and environmental advo-
cates at an event in Portland.
The signing ceremony memorialized
the Private Forest Accord, a compromise
deal over forestry regulations struck by
timber and environmental representatives.
The agreement was enshrined in legisla-
tion passed earlier this year and signed by
Brown.
“You all set aside your diff erences to
do what is best for everyone,” Brown said.
“Both sides recognized the old way of doing
things wasn’t working.”
Any decrease in the state’s log supply is
a hard pill for lumber and plywood man-
ufacturers to swallow but the segment of
the industry that supports Senate Bill 1501
believes it’s a calculated risk: The new
restrictions are meant to forestall ballot ini-
tiatives or other unpredictable disruptions to
logging rules.
“There are no certainties in life, but we
have a negotiated agreement that’s sup-
ported by all sides,” said Eric Geyer, strate-
gic business development director for Rose-
burg Forest Products. “I’m confi dent we will
have regulatory certainty for the elements
that were negotiated.”
This regulatory certainty is generally
cited as a key benefi t to foresters, loggers,
landowners and manufacturers, but detrac-
tors in the timber industry view the term as
unrealistically optimistic.
Critics say the regulations don’t actually
prevent environmental advocates from fi ling
lawsuits or seeking ballot initiatives, either
immediately or years from now.
“One must suspend disbelief that the
greens will not sue in the future. History
says otherwise,” said Rob Freres, president
of Freres Lumber. “Surrogates and newly
formed organizations will be used to circum-
vent the agreement.”
Meanwhile, the timber investment man-
agement organizations and real estate
investment trusts that agreed to the restric-
tions will eventually divest their Oregon
forestlands, “avoiding the harm they have
caused,” he said.
The larger buff er zones around water-
ways, which depend on stream type, are a
major component of the deal and have come
See Forestland, Page 10
Entomologists mull offi cial name for ‘murder hornets’
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
Asian giant hornets, popularly
called “murder hornets,” should be
commonly known as “northern giant
hornets,” according to the Entomo-
logical Society of America’s com-
mittee on naming insects.
Washington State Department of
Agriculture entomologist Chris Loo-
ney proposed the name. The recom-
mendation by the names committee
must still be approved by the soci-
ety’s governing board.
The society’s “Better Common
Names Project” has been targeting
what the society calls “problematic
names (that) perpetuate harm against
people of various ethnicities and
races.”
Last year, the society renamed the
“gypsy moth” to “spongy moth,” the
fi rst name change approved by the
governing board.
Looney said Wednesday that he
wanted to keep the public from con-
fusing Asian giant hornets with a dif-
ferent species commonly known in
Europe as “Asian hornets,” another
large and destructive pest.
“That was my main motivation,”
he said.
Asian giant hornets, scientifi cally
known as Vespa mandarinia, have
been found in Washington and Brit-
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ish Columbia.
Asian hornets, Vespa veluntina,
are spreading in Europe, but have
never been documented in North
America. The similar names, how-
ever, have already apparently caused
a mix-up.
A Washington resident in 2020
reported an Asian giant hornet sight-
ing to a United Kingdom agency’s
website. The misdirected report
delayed fi nding an Asian giant nest
in Whatcom County, the agriculture
department said.
The confusion spans the Atlan-
tic. Residents of Switzerland, Spain
See Name, Page 10
WSDA
An Asian giant hornet held
captive by the Washington
State Department of Agri-
culture.
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