Page 6C
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 28, 2018
BLOOMIN’ BLUES
Photo by Bruce Barnes
American vetch, Vicia americana
American vetch
a good luck charm
By BRUCE BARNES
For The East Oregonian
High Country News
WOLVES: Missing cattle claims skyrocket
Continued from 1C
meandered from Hawaii to
Vietnam to a Chinese com-
mune in Inner Mongolia,
now runs hundreds of cows
in northeastern Oregon, with
many grazing up in the Harl
Butte area.
The trouble with com-
pensating only for con-
firmed losses, Sheehy said,
was that the region’s dense
forests and rocky canyons
were too rugged for ranchers
to be able to find all the live-
stock that wolves may have
killed. Paying for missing
animals is “about the only
way you can have any pos-
sibility of accurate compen-
sation out in the Marr Flat,
Snake River and Hells Can-
yon areas.”
The program that Oregon
ultimately developed, over-
seen by the state Depart-
ment of Agriculture, gave
ranchers what Sheehy advo-
cated for. Based on their
record-keeping, they would
be compensated in full for
missing livestock if, after
wolves appeared in their
area, their losses climbed
above their documented his-
torical average.
Under the program, coun-
ty-level wolf committees
would vet claims for missing
animals and review investi-
gation reports before apply-
ing for state grants to cover
claims for confirmed losses
based on market value. An
additional 30 percent of
funding over the county’s
total annual claimed amount
was added to help ranch-
ers pay for deterrents, such
as range riders to monitor
cows, and fladry, colored
flagging that scares wolves
away from fence-lines. An
Oregon Department of Agri-
culture official would pro-
vide oversight, but authority
lay largely with the counties.
Sheehy showed me the
creased notebook where
he tracks his cows. Other
ranchers joke that he has
fewer losses because his ani-
mals wear Alpine-style cow-
bells, “like Heidi.” So far,
he’s requested compensa-
tion only twice. That’s true
for many ranchers — though
some claims stand out.
On a blue-sky fall morn-
ing, wolf advocate Wally
Sykes, 72, drove into the
Wallowa-Whitman National
Forest, dodging deer hunt-
ers and cows, including two
of Sheehy’s belled animals,
then hiked through thick
pine forest to Marr Meadow,
not far from where Todd
Nash’s calf was killed two
days earlier. A faint howl
drifted through the trees.
Though Sykes has seen
wolves in the wild only
a half-dozen times, he’s
devoted a lot of time to
them, serving seven years on
the Wallowa County Wolf
Committee. The program’s
enabling legislation requires
all the committees to include
one county commissioner,
two livestock producers, two
wolf conservation advocates
and two county business
representatives. But Sykes
said Wallowa’s committee
is biased by local anti-wolf
politics, with the other con-
servation post historically
filled by someone associated
with agriculture, not wildlife
conservation.
Sykes believes that’s led
to questionable decisions. In
one case, the Wallowa com-
mittee approved a $1,000
compensation request and
passed it to Jason Barber,
the state official who over-
sees the program, for a calf
killed by a wolf while ille-
gally grazing on an allot-
ment the Forest Service had
already closed. The state
paid the full amount.
Baker County has been
unable to fill its wolf-advo-
cate posts, which are cur-
rently empty. In 2016, con-
cerns were raised when the
committee agreed to com-
pensate for 41 missing
calves and 11 missing cows,
valued at more than $45,000.
At the time, there had
been only one confirmed
wolf kill in Baker, in 2012,
and according to the state
wildlife department, no pack
had yet denned there. That
cast doubt on the size of the
claim. But the rancher who
filed it, Chad DelCurto, said
wolves had been active on
his allotment for three or
four years. Come fall, most
of his calves were missing.
“I hadn’t had problems in
the past, until these wolves
started coming in so thick,”
DelCurto said.
The
committee’s
response so alarmed Mike
Durgan, one of Baker’s busi-
ness representatives, that he
quit.
“Nobody
believed
(DelCurto’s claim) except
our
committee,”
said
Durgan.
He worried that it sig-
naled a bigger problem:
The county lacked a consis-
tent, defensible procedure
for obtaining accurate docu-
mentation from ranchers.
Baker County Com-
missioner Mark Bennett
acknowledged the case had
problems, but said DelCurto
hadn’t been using that allot-
ment long enough to have
historical loss numbers.
When Barber began asking
questions, the committee
revised its ask, and DelCurto
ultimately received $9,540.
Critics believe the case
could embolden others.
Ranchers can only receive
money for missing livestock
if their animals are graz-
ing in areas of known wolf
activity — currently eight
counties — as designated
by the state wildlife depart-
ment. But wolves are fan-
ning out, and more counties
will soon be eligible.
Even in more moder-
ate Umatilla County, there
are concerns about the lim-
its of oversight. The coun-
ty’s committee has two wolf
advocates, and for major
claims, it closely inves-
tigates ranchers’ routines
for monitoring cows and
locating missing ones, says
county commissioner and
committee member Larry
Givens. But there’s only so
much vetting they can do.
Givens worries wolves are
getting blamed for cougar
and bear kills, as well as cat-
tle rustling.
“I think that you’re going
to face some risks if you
have your animals up in out-
lying areas,” he said.
In 2018, compensation
requests for missing live-
stock from four counties
climbed to $42,000, far out-
pacing requests for direct
losses, which have remained
between $7,000 and $18,000
statewide annually.
Roblyn Brown, the state’s
wolf coordinator, said that
she’s not aware of any bio-
logical reason for the surge.
In theory, places with high
missing-cattle claims should
more closely track areas that
are known to have dense
wolf populations or high
numbers of confirmed kills.
In a case at Baker Coun-
ty’s Pine Valley Ranch, 24
animals disappeared with-
out a trace in fall 2013. The
rancher requested more
than $26,000. But just one
confirmed wolf kill had
occurred in the area, a year
before.
“If the producer is check-
ing his livestock, you would
expect the producer, or other
people recreating in the
area, to find several injured
or dead calves to correspond
with the missing numbers, if
wolves were the cause,” said
Brown.
The spike isn’t good for
either rural residents or for
wolves. If wolves are solely
responsible, then nonlethal
preventive measures aren’t
working. That could lead
the state to kill more wolves.
To date, the state has paid
$595,790 in state and fed-
eral funds to 13 counties
for nonlethal deterrents. But
because the enabling legisla-
tion that required these deter-
rents didn’t define what their
“reasonable use” would look
like, Oregon Wild worries
they aren’t being deployed
effectively. Fladry works in
small pastures, but not large
allotments. Wallowa County
Commissioner Susan Rob-
erts says the only thing that
has worked to keep wolves
away there is human pres-
ence — the county’s range
rider. But that’s just one per-
son for thousands of acres.
Another
possibil-
ity is that some claims are
inflated, either unintention-
ally or deliberately, blaming
wolves for animals that dis-
appeared for other reasons.
“Wolves would have to do
nothing but kill livestock for
24 hours a day to get up to
the numbers they’re talking
about,” said Defenders’
Stone. And if ranchers are
submitting illegitimate, or
poorly documented, claims,
they’re not just taking
money from taxpayers, they
may also jeopardize pub-
lic support for reimbursing
ranchers. “That’s the kind of
thing that’s going to kill this
program,” Durgan said.
Some ranchers have
another explanation for the
discrepancy between miss-
ing cattle claims and con-
firmed kills: They believe
there are more wolves in
Oregon than acknowledged,
and that the wildlife depart-
ment is attributing actual
wolf kills to other causes.
They feel betrayed.
Cynthia Warnock lives
in Imnaha, her home over-
looking rolling hills dotted
with Indian paintbrush. She,
her husband and brother-in-
law have been some of Wal-
lowa’s most frequent claim-
ants for confirmed losses,
receiving more than $4,000.
In late 2016, when
wolves killed one of their
calves and maimed two oth-
ers, the Warnocks asked
officials to kill the offend-
ers. They had lost more than
four animals in the previous
six months to wolves — the
number legally required for
a lethal removal permit. But
the state declined because
the season was almost over
and the cows would be
moved soon.
In another case, Cynthia
Warnock found a calf cov-
ered in bite marks. But inves-
tigators said they weren’t
wide enough to be from a
wolf and more likely came
from a coyote. A month
later, the Warnocks found a
partially eaten cow, but the
state ruled that wolves had
scavenged an already-dead
carcass.
Cynthia didn’t trust the
findings; like other ranchers,
she felt investigators were
biased in favor of the wolves
the department is charged
with protecting. Produc-
ers want Wildlife Services,
which handles many ranch-
er-wildlife conflicts, often
by killing predators, to take
over.
Phase three of Ore-
gon’s wolf management
plan, which Eastern Oregon
entered in 2017, does allow
Wildlife Services to conduct
investigations once staff
complete required training.
That prospect worries Ore-
gon Wild’s Rob Klavins.
Roughly a quarter of Wild-
life Services’ budget in Ore-
gon comes from livestock
and agricultural producers.
“There’s an incentive to
make a different decision,”
Klavins said.
And with such investiga-
tions ultimately leading not
just to a payout, but deciding
if wolves will live or die, the
stakes are high.
Cynthia Warnock was
clear on what she wants.
“If we have a pack that
predates on livestock, then
we eliminate the pack,” she
said. “Compensation helps
us adjust financially, but
that’s it. … You can’t pay for
what we feel.”
Oregon’s compensation
program doesn’t appear any
closer to achieving local tol-
erance for wolves — one
of its key goals. If it had,
you’d expect to see fewer
requests for lethal removal
and a decrease in poaching,
said Adrian Treves, direc-
tor of the Carnivore Coexis-
tence Lab at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. In
2017, after Eastern Oregon
passed a population thresh-
old where the state’s plan
begins to relax protections,
officials killed five wolves at
ranchers’ behest — the same
number killed in 2016 —
despite far fewer confirmed
livestock losses. An addi-
tional four wolves may have
been poached.
Name: American vetch
Scientific name: Vicia
americana
American vetch is a
widespread member of
the pea family, found from
Alaska and across Can-
ada to Quebec, and south
to California to Texas, and
Missouri to Virginia. The
genus Vicia is the Latin
name of vetch plants since
early Roman times. There
are about 200 species of
vetch worldwide. This
vetch covers most of the
upper 2/3 of the continent,
easily earning the name
American. It is not the
most common vetch of the
six in northeast Oregon,
but can be found in scat-
tered locations in the Blue
Mountains at middle-ele-
vations, usually blooming
in mid-summer.
Vicia americana is not
weedy, and nothing like
the aggressive vetch that
makes large purple, tan-
gled patches several feet
across on the lower lev-
els of Cabbage Hill near
Pendleton. American vetch
is a low, scrambling vine
that seldom grows over 2
feet long. It has pinnately
compound leaves, each
leaf having 8-12 slender,
linear to narrowly lance-
shaped leaflets lined up
opposite each other in 4-6
pairs. The tip of each leaf
ends in a tendril that often
branches into 2-3 grasping
tips.
The flowers are borne
in small clusters of about
4-6 small, blue to purplish
pea-like flowers. The fruit
is a linear pod about 2-3
inches long with several
seeds inside.
Vicia americana has
been used by several
southwest and northwest
Indian tribes for a vari-
ety of purposes. Medicinal
uses included treatment for
soreness and spider bites,
as an eyewash, a “life”
medicine, and as a “love”
medicine. Several tribes
used the plant for food,
including cooking it or as
greens, and preparing the
stems and pods by boiling
or baking. It was also used
as fodder for horses and
cattle. The fibrous roots
were used to tie objects
and also as a good luck
charm when gambling.
Where to find: Look
for it along roadsides in
shady woods around 5,000
feet elevation. It is one of
the few perennial plants
that hasn’t dried up yet this
summer.
David Ellifrit/Center for Whale Research via AP
In this photo taken Tuesday provided by the Cen-
ter for Whale Research, a baby orca whale is being
pushed by her mother after being born off the Cana-
da coast near Victoria, British Columbia.
Orca whale continued
to carry her dead calf
SEATTLE (AP) — For
two days she has grieved,
carrying her dead calf on
her head, unwilling to let
it go.
J35, a member of the
critically
endangered
southern resident family of
orcas, gave birth to her calf
Tuesday only to watch it
die within half an hour.
All day, and through the
night, she carried the calf.
She was seen still carry-
ing the calf on Wednesday
by Ken Balcomb, founder
and principal investigator
of the Center for Whale
Research.
“It is unbelievably sad,”
said Brad Hanson, wildlife
biologist with the North-
west Fisheries Science
Center, who has witnessed
other mother orcas do the
same thing with calves that
did not survive.
Robin Baird, research
biologist with the Casca-
dia Research Collective in
Olympia, in 2010 watched
L72, another of the south-
ern residents, carry her
dead newborn in 2010.
“It reflects the very
strong bonds these ani-
mals have, and as a parent,
you can only imagine what
kinds of emotional stress
these animals must be
under, having these events
happen,” Baird said.
“You could see the calf
had not been dead very
long, the umbilical cord
was visible. When we were
watching, all the rest of the
whales were separated by
a distance, and they were
just moving very slowly.
She would drop the calf
every once in a while, and
go back and retrieve it.”
J35 is doing the same
thing, carrying her calf by
balancing it on her ros-
trum, just over her nose.
She dives to pick it back
up every time it slides off.
Scientists have docu-
mented grieving behav-
ior in other animals with
close social bonds in
small, tightly knit groups,
observed carrying new-
borns that did not survive.
Seven species in seven
geographic regions cov-
ering three oceans have
been documented carrying
the body of their deceased
young.
“It is horrible. This is
an animal that is a sen-
tient being. It understands
the social bonds that it has
with the rest of its family
members. She carried the
calf in her womb from 17
to 18 months.”