STATE/REGIONAL
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
A17
Nonprofi t secures funding for regenerative ranching program
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
PORTLAND — A Port-
land-based
conservation
group is forming what it
says will be the country’s
largest program to support
regenerative ranching across
the West.
Sustainable
North-
west received a $488,500
grant from the M.J. Mur-
dock Charitable Trust to roll
out the initiative, partner-
ing with Country Natural
Beef to help ranchers adopt
grazing practices that build
healthy soils and improve
water retention.
The program aims to
include 100 ranches and 6.5
million acres of rangeland
by 2025.
“When we think about
regenerative (agriculture),
we really start with the soil,”
said Dylan Kruse, vice pres-
ident of Sustainable North-
west. “If you have heathy
soil, you’ll have a healthier
landscape.”
For
example,
rota-
tional grazing is a strategy
that falls under regenera-
tive ranching. Livestock are
rotated frequently between
pastures, allowing forage
plants to recover and deepen
their root systems.
“You get increased car-
bon sequestration, you get
better water fi ltration and
capture, you get better nutri-
ent management and better
forage production,” Kruse
said. “That can help the bot-
tom line for ranchers.”
In late 2020, Sustainable
Sustainable Northwest/Contributed Photo
A ranch in the Klamath Basin. Sustainable Northwest received a $488,500 grant from the
M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to roll out what it says will be the country’s largest program to
support regenerative ranching across the West.
Kruse
Probert
Northwest was awarded
funding from the USDA Nat-
ural Resources Conservation
Service to put some of these
practices to the test on four
Oregon ranches. That proj-
ect is still underway.
But Kruse said they
wanted to go bigger. There
is no single, large-scale pro-
gram looking at regenerative
ranching, which he sees as a
gap in the market.
“This
regenerative
space is just exploding
right now,” Kruse said, cit-
ing more than $50 billion
in U.S. organic food sales
in 2019. “Responding to
those demands is really
signifi cant.”
Country Natural Beef, a
ranching cooperative based
in Redmond, was founded
on the premise of market-
ing naturally raised beef to
local consumers. The co-op
today has 100 members in
14 western states, and sells
beef to natural and organic
supermarkets
including
Whole Foods and New Sea-
sons Market.
Dan Probert, a Wallowa
County rancher and the mar-
keting director for Coun-
try Natural Beef, said the
alliance with Sustainable
Northwest makes sense for
their members.
“We want to call out the
attributes that we have that
are important to our con-
sumers, so they feel good
about the products they
pick,” Probert said, add-
ing that ranchers today face
increased pressure and com-
petition from plant-based
meats among environmen-
tally minded shoppers.
Crash:
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Continued from Page A16
we will issue an update.”
Emily Smith, director
of communications for St.
Anthony Hospital, Pend-
leton, reported that as of
3 p.m., the hospital received
six patients from the crash.
“The patients’ statuses
are unknown at this time,”
she reported, “and no infor-
mation on ages etc. is avail-
able to the media at this
time.”
Smith also explained
how St. Anthony responds
to these kinds of crises.
“When we receive word
of an incident like this, the
hospital activates Code D, or
disaster response,” accord-
ing to Smith. “Available
staff (off -duty) are called and
asked to come in based on
current personnel needs as
well as staffi ng for the next
shift. Patients are seen in
the emergency department
as well as other care areas
of the hospital as appropri-
ate for their level of injury.
We have an extensive disas-
ter plan that is drilled with
local emergency response
teams to ensure we are pre-
pared for situations like this
when they arise.”
Pendleton Convention
Center provides respite
The Hyatts said emer-
gency personnel checked on
them often, and they appre-
ciated that. And many of
Wallowa.com
Carter Hyatt/Contributed Photo
The engine of this Nissan Pathfi nder ended up on the asphalt
after the vehicle crashed Monday, Feb. 21, 2022, into a
semitrailer on Interstate 84 about 21 miles east of Pendleton.
The family inside the Nissan were OK. Oregon State Police
reported the car was one of 98 vehicles involved in crashes
that shutdown the eastbound and westbound lanes of the
interstate for an extended period.
the other people in the crash
helped each other, they said,
off ering water and making
sure people were OK.
“There were people, reg-
ular people,” Marjorie Hyatt
said. “All that was really
nice.”
When school buses
arrived to carry the Hyatts
and so many more off the
mountain, they said they
had to cross the median to
the eastbound lanes. Mar-
jorie banged her knee on
the fence, but fi refi ghters
were right there to help.
And when they got on
the bus, she said, the OSP
trooper who was the person
to check on them assisted
them onto the bus.
The buses took groups to
the Pendleton Convention
Center, where its manager,
Pat Beard, said the while the
facility was holding events
that day, it opened rooms
for the people in crash and
provide what hospitality it
could while they waited for
rides from family or friends
or made arrangement for
other accommodations.
The center also served
as something of a base of
operations for law enforce-
ment, Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health and more. Beard
praised the coordination he
witnessed between the dif-
ferent groups.
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ral landscapes thrive while
simultaneously
growing
local business.”
“Ranchers in the Pacifi c
Northwest play a vital role
in helping our region thrive
but face a variety of chal-
lenges, including develop-
ment, climbing costs, cli-
mate change and more,”
Moore said. “Organizations
like Sustainable Northwest
are doing important work to
help support the individuals
and families who run these
spaces.”
Kruse, with Sustainable
Northwest, said the group
plans to hire a new regenera-
tive ranching program man-
ager by the end of March.
They will then get to work
enrolling the fi rst cohort
of ranches in the program,
mapping their properties and
developing individual graz-
ing plans.
“It’s voluntary, it’s incen-
tive-based. For us, that’s
good conservation,” Kruse
said. “It’s good for the com-
munity, and it’s good for the
economy.”
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Probert Ranch is one of
the four operations currently
working with Sustainable
Northwest under the NRCS
grant. The ranch has about
21,000 acres in the Zumwalt
Prairie near Joseph, divided
into more than 100 pas-
tures to facilitate rotational
grazing.
Probert said he thinks
of regenerative ranching
as a “triple bottom line” —
promoting healthy cows,
healthy people and healthy
land. With the new regen-
erative ranching program,
he said Sustainable North-
west will provide them with
objective data to validate
these claims.
“We use extensive moni-
toring to tell if we’re mov-
ing toward or away from our
objectives,” he said. “We
know we have to be ahead
of the game in that space.”
Steve Moore, executive
director of the M.J. Mur-
dock Charitable Trust, said
the program “provides an
innovative, sustainable solu-
tion that helps our natu-
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