REGION
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
A3
Large dairy Ranchers, wildlife managers grapple with NE Oregon elk
heifer
By KATY NESBITT
For the Capital Press
feedlot
ENTERPRISE — Wallowa Coun-
ty’s elk herds have long attracted hunt-
proposed
ers, bringing economic stimulus to the
region each fall, but the treasured big
at Burns
game species also compete for forage
EO Media Group
The Oregon Department
of Agriculture through Dec.
21 will take comment on
Silver Sage Farms LLC’s
plan to build and operate
a 2,000-head dairy heifer
feedlot in Burns.
Chris Eggert of Tualatin
is proposing Silver Sage
Heifer Ranch at 28870
Weaver Springs Road, in
Burns. The department
said in a public-participa-
tion notice that it proposes
to issue a Confined Animal
Feeding Operation regis-
tration under a National
Pollutant Discharge Elimi-
nation System general per-
mit that regulates manure,
litter and process waste to
protect water quality.
Eggert said it would be
a new facility. He would
not elaborate.
A nutrient management
plan included in application
materials says Silver Sage
would dehydrate manure
and use it as bedding in
pens, or apply it to crops
when heifers are on pasture.
Plans also call for a
storm-runoff lagoon, feed-
lot-adjacent ditches not
connected to surface water,
and berms and grass strips
around pens. The 6,092-
acre site includes 4,027
acres of cropland.
A hearing is scheduled
from 2 to 4 p.m. Dec. 16
at Harney Education Ser-
vice District, 25 Fairview
Heights, Burns.
Comments can be sub-
mitted by mail to Wil-
liam Matthews of the state
Agriculture Department’s
CAFO program, 635 Cap-
itol St. N.E., Salem, Ore.,
97301, by email at wmat-
thews@oda.state.or.us or
by fax at 503-986-4730.
with cattle, the county’s main agricul-
tural commodity.
In the past few decades, wildlife
managers and ranchers have worked
together to reduce the loss of valuable
livestock feed to elk by hazing and
extending hunting seasons on private
land.
Pat Matthews, Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife Enterprise district
biologist, said over the past 20 to 30
years the elk numbers have stayed the
same in Wallowa County but the dis-
tribution has changed, putting more
pressure on crops, haystacks and
rangeland.
To complicate matters, a few of
the large properties, like a ranch in the
Wallowa River canyon, are managed
to encourage wildlife use, thus provid-
ing a corridor from the high mountain
meadows to winter livestock pastures.
“They own that ranch for elk and
they spill over to the neighbors,” Mat-
thews said. “It’s been an issue.”
In the county’s northern Chesnim-
nus wildlife unit, the redistribution
of elk from the forest to private land
on the Zumwalt Prairie is the most
noticeable.
In 2008, when the elk numbers were
in the thousands, rancher Tom Birk-
maier said he turned to OSU extension
agent John Williams to help him orga-
nize a coalition of landowners and Fish
and Wildlife biologists to find ways to
ODFW File/Capital Press
Large numbers of elk are causing damage on private property in portions of Wallowa County in the northeastern
corner of Oregon.
reduce the number of elk.
“When we do good range manage-
ment we use a deferred or rest rotation
system, but when 4,000 head of elk are
grazing in the same place most of the
year there is no rotation system,” Wil-
liams said.
For a few years state Department
of Fish and Wildlife managers pushed
the elk back onto public forestland and
into Hells Canyon using an Access and
Habitat grant. Matthews said hazers on
ATVs moved the herd toward the can-
yons five days a week for several win-
ter months, but the elk kept returning
to the prairie.
Chad Dotson was one of ODFW’s
hazers and now works for The Nature
Conservancy managing Zumwalt Prai-
rie Preserves hunting program. He said
hazing became a “babysitting” job.
“Elk will respond to pressure, but
that doesn’t mean they are going to
change their home range,” Dotson
said. “From an elk’s perspective it is
a generational thing — a calf born to
a mother who doesn’t migrate won’t
migrate. All it knows is the prairie and
that becomes its fish bowl.”
Outside organized hazing on the
Zumwalt Prairie, Matthews said the
state issues hazing permits allowing
landowners to scare elk away with
shotguns or propane cannons or chase
them with ATVs.
Ultimately, increased hunting pro-
vided the most relief. Williams said
today hunters are harvesting about 450
cow elk a year out of 700 issued tags.
“I do believe hunting stopped the
increase of the Zumwalt herd, but we
need to wait and see if over time we are
reducing them,” Williams said.
And that, he said, could take another
10 if not 20 years.
Most of the hunting tags issued for
the Zumwalt are through the state’s
scheduled control hunts. Depredation
tags are issued to landowners by a state
district biologist and used to reduce
deer and elk numbers on private prop-
erty. In extreme situations, Matthews
said emergency hunts are allowable
when several property owners are
experiencing crop or hay loss.
The state has a list of hunters at the
ready, alleviating landowner from hav-
ing to organize hunts.
Kill permits can be issued to a land-
owner or adjacent landowners who
want to work together, Matthews said.
Landowners and any affiliated agents
listed on the permit are allowed to
shoot a specified number of elk, deter-
mined by the district biologist.
Mike Hale, who works on The
Nature Conservancy’s Zumwalt Prai-
rie Preserve, said the years of hunt-
ing pressure from mid-August to early
January has helped reduce numbers,
but moving the elk off the prairie could
be merely moving the problem onto
someone else.
“Now there are more elk on the toe
slopes of Imnaha Canyon, but some are
pushing west into private land to the
west near Elk Mountain and Swamp
Creek,” Hale said.
Oregon’s population is growing, but not as fast as before
By Meerah Powell
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Oregon’s popula-
tion increased by more than 40,000
people over the last year — or 1%,
according to an estimate from Port-
land State University’s Population
Research Center.
Since 2010, the state has added
more than 400,000 residents.
Still, this year has seen slower
growth than in the recent past. Last
year, Oregon’s population increased
by 54,200 people. The year before
that, the population grew by 64,750.
PSU’s research center said this
slight slowdown in growth mir-
rors “the slowdown in employment
growth.”
Morrow County had the larg-
est percentage of growth with 6.7%.
Boardman’s population went from
3,690 in 2018 to 4,490.
The growth in Umatilla County
was marginal. The county finished
2018 with 80,765 residents and pre-
liminary 2019 figures show the
county with 81,160, a rate of 0.4%
Growth in the county’s two larg-
est cities was also on the upswing.
Preliminary estimates show Pendle-
ton with 16,985 residents, up from
16,810 in 2018. Hermiston’s prelimi-
nary numbers show it with 18,370, up
from 18,200 residents in 2018.
The state’s aging population and a
declining birth rate has also contrib-
uted to the slowdown. In its report,
PSU said Oregon’s births outnum-
bered deaths in the past year by less
than 6,000.
A continuing trend is that the
state’s growth relies more on people
moving to Oregon, rather than new
residents being born here.
In this past year, the number of
people moving to the state has been
the main factor of population growth,
accounting for 86% of new residents.
The Portland metro area accounted
for nearly half of the state’s growth
from 2018 to 2019. Multnomah and
Washington counties each added
more than 7,000 new residents, PSU
said, and Clackamas County added
almost 4,000.
Other counties with a large number
of new residents included Deschutes,
with more than 4,000, and Lane and
Marion, both with about 3,700 new
residents.
Crook County also saw a large
growth rate with 3.2%.
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