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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 12, 2003)
Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR 97523 February 12, 2003 Page 9 Ore. greenhouses happy to pay tax for bug control Fourteen businesses and two organizations attended the Fed- eral Forestry Contracting Workshop on Saturday, Feb. 8. Bill Duke, who has been helping small contractors in Lakeview for Sustainable North West, facilitated the discussions. Duke shared some of his experiences and provided a number of hints on how to find, prepare for, and obtain Forest Service, BLM, and RAC contracts. One of the main strategies Duke has used is to work with the agency contracting officers to shape contracts that are more user- friendly (smaller acreage and longer duration) for the small busi- ness. The group who attended decided to form an association as a way to explore how to work together to keep these contracts in Illinois Valley for local businesses. The association is an attempt to influence the contracting process and to provide services to members. Since many of the contracts are announced on the web, com- puter skills are important; we will be organizing a computer class for those who want to sharpen their skills. There also may be advantages in terms of meeting licensure requirements in forming a cooperative. An umbrella co-op busi- ness might also be a way to increase the capacity of individual small businesses by bringing together the equipment, workforce, and experience each has individually in order to bid on larger jobs. The idea of a co-op will be explored to determine if there is value in coming together. To join the association, attend the next meeting on Saturday, Feb. 22 at 9 a.m. at the Josephine County Building. Phone the CRT office for more information. National Fire Plan Applications Applications are due for the next round of Fire Plan projects on February 27. The IV Forestry Contractors Assoc. has asked the CRT to apply for a grant to fund thinning in the wild-land-urban interface. For those not familiar with federal terminology, that means private property where we live adjacent to federal lands. The ac- tual work would be performed by members of the association. There is another type of project - Fuels Utilization and Mar- keting - that can be applied for as well. The CRT currently has such a project to assist local wood product businesses in market- ing. The group met last week and decided to purchase a digital camera, lights, and backdrop for taking product photographs. The group also decided to contract with Original Web Solutions to build an IV Wood Product portal web site. Any woodworker wanting to improve their marketing is eligi- ble to participate in this program. Please contact the CRT office for details. The purpose of the Fuels Utilization and Marketing grants is to create value for the thinning off-take. A category of grant is for new product development using small diameter poles. Any ideas on products that could be produced out of this material should be directed to CRT. They might be included in the next proposal. The deadline for submission is less than three weeks. Community Fire Education Workshop A fire education workshop is scheduled for Monday, Mar. 3 at 7 p.m. at the county building, . The committee has invited sev- eral people who actually do this kind of work to come talk about their approach to creating defensible space. In addition to meeting the people to hire to do thinning and clearing work, there will also be an explanation of the free assessments available from the For- estry Action Committee and the Oregon Dept. of Forestry pro- gram and how to qualify for the $330 it pays for this work. Then on Saturday, Mar. 15, each of the presenters has agreed to take a group to visit a home site where the work has already been done or will be done. There will be a chance to plan a per- sonal defensible space then compare the selection to the plan worked out between the homeowner and the contractor. In Memory of Winnie Renfro Perhaps you sent a lovely card or sat quietly in a chair, perhaps you sent a floral piece, if so we saw it there. Perhaps you brought some food our way and helped us through the day, Perhaps you spoke the kindest words that any friend could say. Perhaps you were not there at all but kept us in your heart. Whatever you did to console our grief, we thank you so much for your part. Winnie Renfro’s Family With a production value of $680 million, Oregon’s greenhouse and nursery indus- try is a major economic player, particularly in the ur- ban counties of the Portland metropolitan area. So when a pest or disease problem shows up on Oregon nursery stock, it can have potentially damaging results. That’s why the industry values research to the point of literally taxing itself so that researchers can help. Part of the fee collected by the Ore- gon Dept. of Agriculture (ODA) for nursery license goes to support a nursery re- search grant program that an- nually awards funds for wor- thy projects, ranging from finding biological control agents that fight plant pests to developing hardier landscape plants. One project involves bat- tling a disease that has been found in a small corner of Oregon but has caused major damage in Northern Califor- nia. “Industry support for nursery research is critical for Oregon growers to maintain their competitive advantage,” said Mark Krautmann of Hetritage Seedlings, Inc. in Salem, and current president of the Oregon Association of Nurserymen (ODN). “Especially now, when tradi- tional Oregon State University research funds are being cut drastically during the current state fiscal crisis, Oregon nursery growers realize that our independent funding for research is key to keeping Oregon “The Nursery State.’” ODA collects and admin- isters the money used in the grant program. A nursery ad- visory committee and mem- bers of OAN decide which projects should be funded and by how much. For 2003, $130,029 has been allocated to seven projects and to the Horticultural Research Insti- tute, which issues additional grants. The industry and OAN kick in more money so the best of the proposals are funded as fully as possible. Three holdovers from pre- vious years are on this year’s list of funded projects, includ- ing biological control of an insect pest known as cherry bark tortrix. ODA entomolo- gist Dr. Barry Bai has worked on a project that is now being funded for the fourth straight year. Along with principal investigator Dr. Lynell Ta- nigoshi of Washington State University’s Vancouver Re- search and Extension Unit, Bai has been trying to find a natural enemy of the damag- ing moth. The grant provides an additional $4,000 to con- tinue the project. “The pest attacks cherry, peach, plum, and apple trees among other plants,” said Bai. “We have landscape trees of these varieties planted along streets and in parks. The pest can get into orchards and cause damage to the fruit pro- ducing industry as well. Quar- antines are certain to be estab- lished with an infestation.” In the adult stage, the tor- trix moth is harmful only be- cause of reproduction. But in the caterpillar stage, tortrix bores deep into the bark and can effectively girdle the tree. That can lead to damage and eventually death of the tree. Pesticide treatments can be expensive and not always ef- fective. After infesting trees in British Columbia in the late 1980s and Washington in the 1990s, cherry bark tortrix was eventually detected in Oregon in July 2000, continuing its southerly migration. The co- operative project between ODA and WSU has resulted in some promising biological control tools. In particular, a parasite of the pests eggs, Trichogramma cacoeciae, is successfully be- ing reared in a laboratory fa- cility and then distributed in cherry bark tortrix breeding areas in Portland with high hopes that a natural enemy can halt the spread of a dam- Animals have some unique methods of communicating with other animals, particularly within their own species. It may not be as precise or complex as human speech, but animals can share large amounts of information. Most people know about tail move- ments of a dog, the rattling and hissing of snakes and especially the various calls of birds. Scientists have learned a lot about birds and can identify many methods as well as reasons for bird communication. Bird call are thought to announce territory boundaries and breeding availability and so bird singing is more noticeable in spring and summer. Also, bird calls in social birds, such as crows and ravens, can communicate food sources and also danger to other members of their colony. Woodpeckers are not noted for their singing ability but they can also communicate with sounds. Last summer, an acorn wood- pecker trained me to move away from the bird bath area when it was time for his afternoon drink. I can’t describe the sounds that he made but I learned that he was there and I should move out of his territory at least temporarily. Acorn woodpeckers have another method using sound to communicate, probably for other members of their social group. It’s called “drumming,” and it can be very annoying to someone trying to sleep, when they began “drumming” on the side of the house. These woodpeckers will drill large numbers of holes in poles, barns, houses, dead trees and other structures in order to store acorns. However, scientists have observed them drumming on hol- low, resonant structures, and even sheet metal roofs and never attempting to store acorns. Other woodpeckers will also drum on trees to communicate, but nobody has learned to decipher their secret codes yet. Acorn woodpeckers also use color to send messages. The red spot on top of their head, the flashy black and white pattern on their feathers, and particularly the large white rump which is ex- posed when they fly suddenly away, are all used as signals to other members of their colony. Oak trees are a basic requirement of acorn woodpeckers which are never found in areas which are lacking oak trees. They range from the coastal areas of southern Washington, south through western Oregon and California into Mexico wherever oak trees are abundant. The woodpecker’s scientific name is Melanerpes formi- civorus and relates to their feeding habits and coloring. “Melanos” is Greek for “black” and “erpes” from “herpes” which is Greek for “creeper.” “Formica” is Latin for “ant” and “vorus” is Latin for “eat” or “devour.” Therefore, they are the black creepers that eat ants. Actually they also eat acorns, nectar, fruit, flowers, as well as many differ- ent insects. They have also been seen eating grass seed and other bird’s eggs. Acorn woodpeckers look like the clown of the forest but they have a very complex social life. This involves sharing mates and raising their young in a communal pattern. This relationship in- volves much communication and acorn woodpeckers have many methods to make sure it occurs. Closed Tuesday & Wednesday Publication by OSU help forest owners How “green” is the forest? For forest owners and managers, that question has bearing on forest practices, conservation and marketing. In the last several years, forest certification has devel- oped as a way to identify for- est products in the market- place that come from forests being managed with conser- vation-minded practices. But not all certification processes demand the same standard or carry the same credibility. A new publication from Oregon State University (OSU) Extension Service sorts out various systems of forest certification to help forest owners and managers choose the best system for their for- ests and markets. Written by a team of for- esters from OSU and the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, the pub- lication explores the opportu- nities, limitations and costs of forest certification. “Forest certification is no longer a new topic in forestry, but new systems and features are always developing,” said Rick Fletcher, one of the pub- lication’s authors and an OSU Extension forester in Fenton County. “Certification is now a worldwide reality in forest product markets and looks like it will be with us for some time to come,” said Fletcher. Don’t drink and drive.
