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Friday, July 1, 2022
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Even the Biden administration opposes Prop 12
C
alifornia’s Prop 12 is so bad,
even the Biden adminis-
tration thinks the Supreme
Court should strike it down.
Officially the Farm Animal Con-
finement Act, Prop 12 bans the sale
of eggs, pork and veal products in
California unless production facili-
ties meet animal-confinement stan-
dards dictated by the state. The law
applies to products produced outside
the state of California.
California voters passed the mea-
sure overwhelmingly in 2018.
Those voters, and by extension
state regulators, have the authority to
mandate production methods within
California’s borders. But, Prop 12
also seeks to regulate how farm prod-
ucts are produced in other states if
those products are destined for sale in
California.
Because of the nature of this coun-
try’s food production, processing
and distribution system, food sold
in California can originate from vir-
tually any state. State rules adopted
to enforce Prop 12 require any farm,
anywhere, producing for sales in Cal-
ifornia to be certified annually by the
state ag department, maintain specific
records, and submit to inspections by
California regulators.
The National Pork Producers
Council and the American Farm
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
U.S. Supreme Court.
Bureau Federation filed a federal
lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San
Diego, arguing that subjecting out-of-
state producers to California’s regula-
tions violates the U.S. Constitution’s
Commerce Clause, which grants
exclusive control over interstate com-
merce to the federal government.
Plaintiffs lost in the trial court, and
again on appeal to the 9th Circuit
Wolves are not endangered;
it’s time for common sense
wildlife management
A
ccording to the latest count,
Washington state is home to at
least 206 wild wolves running
in 33 packs. Wolves are so well estab-
lished that some tribal governments
have opened year-round hunting on the
predators.
Yet earlier this year
the federal government
GUEST
re-listed gray wolves in the
VIEW
western two-thirds of the
state as “endangered.”
Pam
Officials claim wolves
Lewison
cannot be considered
“recovered” until they
move west of the crest
of the Cascade Mountains, regardless
of how much the state wolf population
grows.
On June 13, the Washington State
Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a
kill order for the Togo Pack in Northeast-
ern Washington. It is the fourth kill order
issued for members of the pack.
The order represents good wildlife
management. Confrontations between
ranchers and members of the Togo Pack
have continued to be problematic through
the years. Ranchers have been quick to
adopt non-lethal measures first to drive
wolves away, and only turn to a request
for kill orders as a last resort when
they’ve repeatedly lost livestock.
Gray wolf advocates have long argued
ranchers should move livestock more fre-
quently, employ more non-lethal mea-
sures, hire more range riders, and just
keep piling on until depredations just
stop.
Urban environmental advocates say
ranchers should just put up with the
losses, even if it means higher food
prices. The question is: when wolf packs
like Togo develop a taste for beef, will
any level of deterrence ever be enough?
The scientific answer seems to be
“No.”
The best thing for both sides of the
argument is to provide ranchers with a
solution other than the now-infamous
“shoot, shovel, and shut up” way of get-
ting rid of problem predators. Officials
should offer clarity for what “gray wolf
recovery” in this state means.
Under the current definition of recov-
ery, there must be at least “15 breeding
pairs present in the state for at least three
years, with at least four in eastern Wash-
ington, four in the northern Cascades,
four in the southern Cascades/northwest
coastal area, and three others anywhere
in the state” or “18 breeding pairs docu-
mented during a single year
and the distribution objec-
tives are met.”
Packs are now located
in areas where gray
wolves have access to
food from deer and other
ungulates. Until natu-
ral food stocks dwindle,
there is no reason for the
packs to disburse beyond their current
range. Saying wolves must live in west-
ern Washington is unscientific and com-
pletely arbitrary when the natural popula-
tion is thriving where it is.
In addition, Washington state should
empower ranchers to protect their stock
and allow responsible wolf manage-
ment by issuing hunting tags to ranch-
ers in known wolf pack territories. Each
rancher in an area should receive one tag
annually to be used defensively after the
first loss of livestock during the calendar
year. If a rancher was successfully able
to fulfill a hunting tag, then a second tag
could be issued.
Tags could be used as the only legal
means for ranchers to protect their live-
stock with other hunting methods —
trapping, baiting, poison — prohibited
and punishable by a fine and/or jail time.
By empowering ranchers with limited
hunting tags, one or two a year, rather
than forcing them to continually rely
upon WDFW for hunting support after
depredations, ranchers will feel in con-
trol of their own destiny when it comes
to gray wolf management. With smart
management the natural wolf population
would continue to thrive, ranch animals
would be protected and, best of all, it
would show the Endangered Species Act
can be successful in recovering a wild
animal population.
Pam Lewison is a fourth-generation
farmer in Eastern Washington and the
research director for the Washington Pol-
icy Center Initiative on Agriculture. You
can read more of her work at washing-
tonpolicy.org.
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ness community.
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which could result in quicker publication. Letters also may be sent to P.O. Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308.
Court of Appeals.
In 2021, the 9th Circuit determined
the law doesn’t have an “impermis-
sible extraterritorial effect” because
the hog-raising standards only affect
pork sold in California and don’t dic-
tate prices or disfavor out-of-state
meat.
The case is now before the
Supreme Court. The administration
has weighed in on the side of the
plaintiffs against Prop 12.
It argues Prop 12 does not advance
a legitimate local interest as Cali-
fornia has no legitimate interest in
the housing conditions of out-of-
state animals. Prop 12, it says, has
no “genuine health-and-safety justi-
fication” as there is no scientific evi-
dence its production standards would
reduce human food-borne illnesses.
It further argues Prop 12 unduly
restricts and places a substantial bur-
den on interstate commerce.
No one disputes California’s
authority to regulate livestock pro-
duction within its borders. But what
if Texas, Florida or any of the other
states pass equally strict rules that are
at odds with those outlined in Prop
12? A national food system can’t
function with 50 different sets of
rules.
The real purpose of Prop 12’s sup-
porters was to use California’s eco-
nomic power to force a dubious ani-
mal rights agenda onto the rest of the
country. It is activism masquerading
as law, and bad law at that.
The judgment of the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals must be reversed.
If you don’t believe us, ask Joe
Biden.
Anti-forestry lawsuit
puts forests and
communities at risk
S
ix anti-forestry groups are suing
to block a new policy that would
make it a little easier for the
U.S. Forest Service to reduce wild-
fire risks and restore forest health on
national forest lands in Eastern Ore-
gon and Washington. In
doing so, their lawsuit
GUEST
affects several projects
VIEW
that would conduct haz-
ardous fuel reduction on
Nick
at least 209,000 acres of
Smith
land that’s vulnerable to
severe fire.
The lawsuit aims to
preserve an outdated and unscien-
tific rule from the Clinton era, known
as the “Eastside Screens.” It origi-
nally imposed a temporary rule pro-
hibiting the removal of trees larger
than 21 inches in diameter on national
forests east of the Cascades, includ-
ing the Malheur, Umatilla, Wal-
lowa-Whitman, Deschutes, Ochoco,
Fremont-Winema.
With little public involvement and
no scientific justification, this tem-
porary and arbitrary rule became per-
manent when it was amended into the
management plans as standards for
these federally owned forests.
In theory the rule was intended
to protect and improve forest con-
ditions associated with late-seral or
old growth habitat. But in practice, it
made it harder for the Forest Service
to remove tree species that compete
with native pine and are less resilient
to fire such as grand fir or white fir.
This compelled the national forests
in eastern Oregon to pursue dozens
of project-specific amendments to the
21-inch rule over the past 20 years
in order to meet their desired forest
conditions.
This arbitrary rule created an
expensive and time-consuming pro-
cess, and as a result, the Forest Ser-
vice has struggled to keep pace with
the growing risks and restoration
needs of these forests, which places
a variety of forest values and uses at
risk.
During the 30 years of this tem-
porary rule, anti-forestry groups
enjoyed the status quo because it tied
the hands of our public lands manag-
ers. They could also use it to block
restoration projects they did not like,
even if the science-based treatments
were supported by collaboratives with
diverse interests.
Rather than accelerate the trajec-
tory of forests toward a late-seral
structure, as sound forest manage-
ment would help accomplish, this
temporary, arbitrary and unscientific
rule created forest conditions that are
unnaturally dense and exacerbate risk
to wildfire, insect and disease infesta-
tions, and drought.
Rather than lifting
this rule completely,
the Forest Service only
made modest changes
to its policy. In Janu-
ary 2021, the agency
adopted the “Old Tree
and Large Tree Guide-
lines,” which includes diameter lim-
its for tree removal ranging from 21
inches to 30 inches, depending on tree
species, and an overarching age limit
on tree removal of 150 years.
In announcing their lawsuit,
anti-forestry groups labeled this mod-
est change as a “Trump-era” rule
allowing wholesale “logging of old
growth.” Yet the new guideline has
given our public lands managers some
flexibility to restore unhealthy for-
ests by implementing science-based
treatments that are appropriate to the
landscape.
The Forest Service is using this
new guideline to develop several
projects on six national forests. One
thing all of these projects have in
common is their primary objective is
not necessarily timber harvest, but
hazardous fuels reduction and forest
resiliency. Some projects are located
in areas identified as Wildland Urban
Interface (WUI) where the wildfire
threat to communities is heightened.
It’s unfortunate these groups would
sue to block projects that would
improve the health of our forests and
reduce the risks to our public lands
and nearby communities. As climate
change continues to impact our for-
ests, the Forest Service should be
doing everything possible to prevent
large-scale, carbon-emitting wild-
fires, while maximizing the ability of
our forests to sequester more carbon
and store more carbon in both healthy
trees and wood products.
Nick Smith is executive director of
Healthy Forests, Healthy Communi-
ties, a non-profit, non-partisan orga-
nization supporting active forest man-
agement on federal lands. He also
serves as public affairs director for
the American Forest Resource Coun-
cil, a trade association representing
wood products companies.