The BulleTin • Friday, June 25, 2021 A3
TODAY
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
Today is Friday, June 25, the 176th day of 2021. There are 189 days left
in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On June 25, 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of a
state-sponsored prayer in New York State public schools was uncon-
stitutional.
In 1788, Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
In 1876, Lt. Col. Colonel George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were
wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little
Bighorn in Montana.
In 1942, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was designated Commanding
General of the European Theater of Operations during World War II.
Some 1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany.
In 1947, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne
Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Na-
zis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.
In 1950, war broke out in Korea as forces from the communist North
invaded the South.
In 1973, former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying
before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administra-
tion officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in
the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
In 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that male-only draft registra-
tion was constitutional.
In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its first “right-to-die” decision,
ruled that family members could be barred from ending the lives
of persistently comatose relatives who had not made their wishes
known conclusively.
In 1996, a truck bomb killed 19 Americans and injured hundreds at a
U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America threatened
to sue hundreds of individual computer users who were illegally
sharing music files online.
In 2009, death claimed Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” in Los An-
geles at age 50 and actor Farrah Fawcett in Santa Monica, California,
at age 62.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld nationwide tax subsidies
under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in a 6-3 ruling
that preserved health insurance for millions of Americans.
Ten years ago: A suicide car bomber blasted a small clinic in eastern
Afghanistan, causing the building to collapse and killing some three
dozen people.
Five years ago: Pope Francis visited Armenia, where he recognized
the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians as a genocide, prompting a
harsh rebuttal from Turkey.
One year ago: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state would “pause”
its aggressive reopening as it dealt with a surge in coronavirus cases
and hospitalizations. A government watchdog found that nearly 1.1
million relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion in the government’s
coronavirus aid program went to dead people. Two U.S. warships,
the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS San Jacinto, notched their
161st consecutive day at sea, breaking the previous Navy record, as
ships were ordered to avoid port visits because of the coronavirus.
Restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese filed for bankruptcy protection.
Census Bureau figures showed that for the first time, nonwhites and
Hispanics were a majority of people under age 16 in 2019.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor June Lockhart is 96. Civil rights activist
James Meredith is 88. R&B singer Eddie Floyd is 84. Actor Barbara
Montgomery is 82. Actor Mary Beth Peil is 81. Basketball Hall of Famer
Willis Reed is 79. Singer Carly Simon is 76. Rock musician Ian McDon-
ald (Foreigner; King Crimson) is 75. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is
74. Actor-director Michael Lembeck is 73. Rock singer Tim Finn is 69.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is 67. Rock musician David
Paich (Toto) is 67. Actor Michael Sabatino is 66. Actor-writer-director
Ricky Gervais is 60. Actor John Benjamin Hickey is 58. Actor Erica
Gimpel is 57. Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo is 55. Rap-
per-producer Richie Rich is 54. Actor Angela Kinsey is 50. Rock musi-
cian Mike Kroeger (Nickelback) is 49. Rock musician Mario Calire is 47.
Actor Linda Cardellini is 46. Actor Busy Philipps is 42. Jazz musician
Joey Alexander is 18.
Hungry grasshoppers spurred by
U.S. drought threaten rangeland
Scientists are launching
largest killing campaign
since the 1980s
BY MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
B
ILLINGS, Mont. — A punish-
ing drought in the U.S. West is
drying up waterways, sparking
wildfires and leaving farmers scram-
bling for water.
Next up: a plague of voracious
grasshoppers.
Federal agriculture officials are
launching what could become their
largest grasshopper-killing campaign
since the 1980s amid an outbreak of
the drought-loving insects that cattle
ranchers fear will strip bare public
and private rangelands.
In central Montana’s Phillips
County, more than 50 miles from
the nearest town, Frank Wiederrick
said large numbers of grasshoppers
started showing up on prairie sur-
rounding his ranch in recent days.
Already they’re beginning to denude
trees around his house.
“They’re everywhere,” Wiederrick
said. “Drought and grasshoppers go
together, and they are cleaning us
out.”
Grasshoppers thrive in warm, dry
weather, and populations already
were up last year, setting the stage
for an even bigger outbreak in 2021.
Such outbreaks could become more
common as climate change shifts
rainfall patterns, scientists said.
To blunt the grasshoppers’ eco-
nomic damage, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture this week be-
gan aerial spraying of the pesticide
diflubenzuron to kill grasshopper
nymphs before they develop into
adults. Approximately 3,000 square
miles in Montana are expected to
be sprayed, roughly twice the size of
Rhode Island.
Agriculture officials had seen this
year’s infestation coming, after a 2020
survey found dense concentrations
of adult grasshoppers across about
55,000 square miles in the West.
A 2021 grasshopper “hazard map”
shows densities of at least 15 insects
per square yard in large areas of
Montana, Wyoming and Oregon and
portions of Idaho, Arizona, Colorado
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service via AP
A male migratory grasshopper. Besides feeding on grasslands, large grasshopper pop-
ulations can also devastate cultivated crops such as alfalfa, wheat, barley and corn.
and Nebraska.
Left unaddressed, federal officials
said the agricultural damage from
grasshoppers could become so severe
it could drive up beef and crop prices.
The program’s scale has alarmed
environmentalists who say wide-
spread spraying will kill numerous
insects, including spiders and other
grasshopper predators as well as
struggling species such as monarch
butterflies. They’re also concerned
the pesticides could ruin organic
farms adjacent to spray zones.
“We’re talking about natural areas
being sprayed; this is not cropland,”
said Sharon Selvaggio, a former U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service biologist
now with the Xerces Society, a con-
servation group focused on insects.
Government officials say they will
spray pesticides in low concentra-
tions and reduce the area treated by
alternately spraying a strip of range-
land, then skipping the next strip.
The intent is to kill grasshoppers
passing between strips while sparing
other insects that don’t move as far.
If spraying is delayed and grass-
hoppers grow larger and more resil-
ient, federal officials could resort to
two more toxic pesticides — carbaryl
and malathion, according to govern-
ment documents.
Selvaggio said pesticides could
drift into areas not being targeted
and kill beneficial insects such as
bees that pollinate crops. “The toxic-
ity is more than enough to kill bees,”
she said. “This is not adequate pro-
tection.”
Organic farmers are divided on
spraying. Some are concerned about
losing their organic certification for
years if they inadvertently get pesti-
cides on their crops, while others are
willing to tolerate spraying out of def-
erence to their neighbors’ problems,
said Jamie Ryan Lockman, director of
Organic Montana.
The trade group isn’t going to chal-
lenge the spraying but wants organic
farmers protected and for the gov-
ernment to research alternatives to
chemicals for future outbreaks.
As this year’s crop of grasshoppers
emerges, they’re starting to compete
with cattle for food in arid eastern
Montana, where single ranches can
sprawl over thousands of acres of pri-
vate and public rangeland.
The grasshoppers start eating ten-
der plants first, then move on to ful-
ly-grown plants and the seed heads of
grain crops, killing them, said Marko
Manoukian, a Montana State Uni-
versity agriculture extension agent
in Phillips County. Farmers can col-
lect insurance on damaged crops,
whereas ranchers have no recourse
when the grasshoppers remove vege-
tation from public lands.
“They are competing against our
food supplies,” said Manoukian.
— Associated Press
Brown commutes sentences of 41
inmates who battled wildfires
BY NOELLE CROMBIE
The Oregonian
Gov. Kate Brown has com-
muted the sentences of 41 pris-
oners who helped fight wildfires
that burned across the state
last year, the Oregon Depart-
ment of Corrections confirmed
Wednesday.
Of those she identified for
commutation, 23, including
eight women, are expected to
be released on July 22 provided
they have housing in place.
Brown shaved 12 months off
the sentences for the remaining
18 prisoners, including three
women. Three are serving man-
datory minimum sentences
under Oregon’s Measure 11, ac-
cording to the Department of
Corrections.
Brown said in March she
would consider commuting the
sentences of those who took
part in firefighting efforts last
summer. The group she com-
muted was pulled from a po-
tential pool of 164 prisoners,
according to the Department of
Corrections. To be eligible for
consideration, candidates must
have worked the 2020 wildfire
season. They had to have good
conduct for the past 12 months
and a housing plan upon re-
lease. The corrections agency
said they assessed candidates
based on their “safety, security,
or compliance risk to the com-
munity.”
The wildfires torched more
than 4,000 residences and
burned more than 1 million
acres across the state.
Sharon Preston
Haily Takagi
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Suite 100A
Nolan Town Square
Redmond, OR
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