A8
STATE
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Eastern Oregon regaining lost jobs
LA GRANDE — East-
ern Oregon is back on track to
recovering jobs lost due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, accord-
ing to state economists.
Regional economists Chris-
topher Rich and Dallas Frid-
ley at the Oregon Employment
Department reported unem-
ployment rates have dipped to
the lowest level since the pan-
demic began in the spring of
2020.
Union and Wallowa counties
saw a 1.5% and 1.6% decrease in
ered from the 1,400 jobs lost at
the start of the pandemic. Lei-
sure and hospitality regained
87% of jobs lost, but remained
roughly 60 shy of full recovery.
Evidence of those statistics
can be found in persistent help
wanted signs at fast food chains
such as McDonald’s and Dairy
Queen, while job advertise-
ments have largely disappeared
from the windows of local
restaurants downtown. Restau-
rants such as Mamacita’s Inter-
national Grill, La Grande, have
had to close down temporarily
due to staffing shortages, while
others such as local bistro and
tied with Clackamas and Yam-
hill counties.
Umatilla County with
an unemployment rate of
5% placed 14th in Septem-
ber among Oregon’s 36 coun-
ties, tied with Jackson County.
During the year, Umatilla Coun-
ty’s seasonally adjusted unem-
ployment rate fell by 1.2 per-
centage points since September
2020. Umatilla County led job
growth primarily through pub-
lic sector jobs, adding 470 gov-
ernment jobs during the year.
Union County is largely
back on track, according to
economists, but not fully recov-
eatery Wine Down have closed
permanently.
The total increase across
Northeastern Oregon counties
was approximately 1,450 jobs
over the year ending in Septem-
ber. Of those jobs added, 700
were in the private sector.
Across the state, unemploy-
ment rates fell to 4.7%, down
from its high of 13.2% in April
2020 when government-man-
dated shutdowns halted econo-
mies across the United States.
The unemployment rate sits
slightly higher than its pre-pan-
demic level of 3.5%, flirting
with the idea of a full recovery
Western lawmakers
set conservation goals
Rancher gets back in the saddle
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
SENECA — Despite an
accident nine years ago that
left him paralyzed from the
sternum down, Alec Oliver is
busier than ever at his family’s
fifth-generation cattle ranch in
Eastern Oregon.
Oliver, 33, rides tall in a
modified saddle that allows
him to continue roping cows
on pasture and forestland east
of Seneca. When he’s not
managing his own herd, Oli-
ver is usually connecting with
other ranchers across the West
as membership director for
Country Natural Beef.
A rising star in the livestock
industry, Oliver was named
2021 Agriculturist of the Year
by Oregon Aglink, a nonprofit
group dedicated to agricultural
education and promotion.
“It’s shocking and very
humbling,” he said. “I still feel
I have a long ways to go, a lot
to prove and a lot to achieve.”
Getting to this point almost
didn’t happen for Oliver, who
was 23 when he rolled his
pickup truck one night after
having too much to drink at a
fundraiser in Seneca, popula-
tion 262.
Prior to the accident, Oli-
ver had actually gotten a
ride home but decided later
he would return to town. He
remembers the truck fishtailed,
and he swerved to avoid hit-
ting their fence. That’s when
the vehicle flipped, pinning his
leg between the steering wheel
and gear shifter.
Instead of being ejected,
Oliver had his hip pulled out
of the socket and broke the
T7 vertebrae in his spine.
The truck landed back on its
wheels, and his parents, alerted
WASHINGTON, D.C. —
Western lawmakers are voic-
ing their concerns about the
Biden administration’s stated
goal of conserving 30% of
public lands and waters by
2030 and have offered an
alternative.
In addition to being ambig-
uous and confusing, the Sen-
ate and Congressional West-
ern Caucuses contend the
initiative threatens to “pre-
serve” lands and waters and
does not address much-needed
landscape restoration.
Instead, the caucuses have
developed the Western Con-
servation Principles as an
alternative.
The principles take a holis-
tic approach to conservation
based on restoring healthy and
resilient landscapes versus yet-
to-be defined land statuses.
The principles are based on
“collaborative, innovative and
time-tested approaches” that
leverage local expertise, cre-
ative tools and dedicated part-
ners to achieve well-balanced,
tangible outcomes. They are
rooted in western values with
numerous locally led success
stories, the caucuses stated.
“It’s important that we have
a proposal in terms of what we
are for, what we want to move
forward with,” said Steve
Daines, R-Mont., chairman
of the Senate Western Cau-
cus who serves on the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources
Committee.
“We can talk about what
we are opposed to but then
we have to lay out a vision for
what we want to see happen,
that reflects the common sense
of most westerners and most
J.C. Oliver Inc.
Alec Oliver working cattle on the ranch near Seneca.
by the noise, ran outside to find
him hanging out of the driver’s
window.
“If (the truck) had gone
another quarter-turn on its
side, I’d have been underneath
it,” Oliver said.
Oliver was flown from the
hospital in John Day to an
intensive care unit in Bend,
where he had surgery. After
two weeks, he was flown again
to Craig Hospital in Engle-
wood, Colo., to begin rehabili-
tation as a paraplegic.
Even then, Oliver said
he never gave up hope he
would eventually get back to
ranching.
“I never thought about quit-
ting,” he said. “It was just a
matter of how do I do it.”
The biggest moment of
inspiration for Oliver came
when he was visited by his
neighbors and fellow ranch-
ers Mike and Linda Bentz. To
be a rancher, they told him all
he needed was his brain —
he could always hire help for
physical tasks.
In 2013, the year after
the accident, Oliver went
to Indiana, where he had a
lift installed in the back of
his truck that could maneu-
ver him on and off a horse.
He also had a custom saddle
made by Randy Bird in Texas,
with a high back and a strap to
keep him from falling.
Today, Oliver runs the
ranching business, J.C. Oliver
Inc., after his father, J.C. Oli-
ver III, died in 2017. Another
silver lining of the accident,
Oliver said, is it put him in
touch with Country Natural
Beef, a co-op with more than
100 rancher-members from
Hawaii to Texas.
Networking with other
ranchers has helped to refine
practices on their own ranch,
Oliver said, such as grazing
plans and regenerative agri-
cultural techniques to increase
the land’s overall resiliency
and drought tolerance.
“I think grazing has been
a huge thing, just manag-
ing the grass and soil to cre-
ate healthier landscapes and
allow for more production,”
Oliver said.
The goal, Oliver said, is to
keep the 132-year-old ranch
along Bear Creek healthy
and productive for another
century.
“We’ve been here since
1889,” he said. “My hope is
by 2189, there’s new genera-
tions taking even better care
of the land than I am.”
Oliver will be recognized
by Oregon Aglink on Nov.
19 during the organization’s
annual Denim and Diamonds
event at the Salem Conven-
tion Center.
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podcast on the alternative to
the administration’s initiative.
“We support conversation.
It’s tied to our western way of
life,” he said.
But the 30x30 plan allows
some elements from the left
that aren’t really in tune with
western values to define west-
erners’ future, he said.
“Those closest to the land
know best how to manage it,”
he said.
More of the decision mak-
ing needs to be moved out of
Washington, D.C., and closer
to communities and locals.
Bureaucrats in D.C. don’t
understand the western way of
life, he said.
The principles serve as a
strong, conservative blueprint
for conservation and effective
land management, said Rep.
Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.,
chairman of the Congressional
Western Caucus.
It’s an alternative that “rep-
resents the work already being
done by land managers and
using scientific-based man-
agement practices to ensure
our lands are conserved,” he
said.
The principles help out-
line where to go from here,
said Hannah Downey, policy
director for the Property and
Environment Research Cen-
ter, which promotes free-mar-
ket environmentalism.
She hopes the administra-
tion adheres to the principles it
identified in the “America the
Beautiful” report, she said.
“I want them to live up
to these ideas of respecting
property rights, conservation
over preservation, being truly
locally led, incentive based in
these approaches,” she said.
She also hopes the admin-
istration respects private prop-
erty and the role they and land
owners play in conservation,
she said.
“I really hope that the
Western Conservation Princi-
ples are able to guide what the
administration does, is able to
actually be implemented on
the ground so we’re able to
actually focus on management
and conservation outcomes
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she said.
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unemployment from September
2020 to September 2021, respec-
tively, closing out with 5.3% and
5.4% total unemployment rates.
Baker County saw a 2.2% drop
during the same period, from
7.1% to 4.9%, the largest drop of
the Northeastern Oregon coun-
ties. Grant County saw a 1.5%
decrease, down to 6.6%.
Morrow County recorded
one of the lowest year-end
decreases with just 0.9%, down
to a 4.4% unemployment rate
since September 2021. Morrow
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EO Media Group
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