{"id":20429,"date":"2024-08-29T11:24:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.merkley.senate.gov\/?p=20429"},"modified":"2024-09-10T11:29:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T15:29:54","slug":"oregon-leaders-call-on-u-s-government-for-help-flexibility-to-help-ranchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merkley.senate.gov\/es\/oregon-leaders-call-on-u-s-government-for-help-flexibility-to-help-ranchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon leaders call on U.S. government for help, flexibility to help ranchers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/oregoncapitalchronicle.com\/2024\/08\/29\/oregon-leaders-call-on-u-s-government-for-help-flexibility-to-help-ranchers\/\">Cr\u00f3nica de la capital de Oreg\u00f3n<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The wildfires this season have scorched a record 1.5 million acres, forcing ranchers to move their cattle as flames approached while also fighting fires to save their homes\u00a0<\/strong><br>This summer\u2019s historic wildfires in Oregon have taken a toll on ranchers and their more than a million cows and other livestock, prompting a unified plea by the state\u2019s top leaders for federal help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gov. Tina Kotek declared a state of emergency and invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act nine times to deploy state resources to help ranchers and local communities. And then at the end of July and again in early August she called on the U.S. government for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to designate 23 counties in central, southern and eastern Oregon disaster areas and open up federal resources to help devastated communities, a plea that was backed by all eight members of Oregon\u2019s congressional delegation, Democrats and Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAs climate chaos continues to worsen \u2013 turning fire seasons into fire years that see millions of acres scorched and countless lives forever changed \u2013 we must make sure communities can access the federal resources they need to equitably recover from these increasingly devastating fires,\u201d the lawmakers wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The delegation and Kotek asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to work with the U.S. Forest Service, which falls under the USDA, to modify grazing permits. She and Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden made the same request to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM manages more than 245 million acres nationwide, including 16 million in Oregon and Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oregon ranchers, who own more than 1.2 million heads of cattle and sheep, depend on that land to feed their livestock in the summer. But they submit their grazing plans in the winter, months before they know where the fires will burn. And this year the blazes were historic: A total of 1,650 fires have scorched over 1.5 million acres in Oregon, setting a new record. Much of the land blackened was grazing allotments, said Matt McElligott, president of the Oregon Cattlemen\u2019s Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When fires emerge, ranchers have to snap into action to get their cattle out of harm\u2019s way, McElligott said. He has cows grazing this summer and at one point, a fire flared just south of his forest allotment and threatened about 550 of his cattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t know if it was going to blow up on us,\u201d he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>McElligott helped put it out. He also carved bulldozer lines around properties threatened by the&nbsp;Monkey Creek Fire in Umatilla County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The threat was real, McElligott said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe weather was hot. The winds were blowing, and it was moving fast,\u201d McElligott said. \u201cThere were thousands of people on that fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Monkey Creek Fire merged with others to form the Battle Mountain Complex of fires that are still not fully contained. They\u2019ve blackened more than 183,000 acres, destroyed seven homes and 10 other buildings and forced ranchers to scramble to protect their cattle and property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If McElligott had followed his grazing permit, he would have moved his cattle on land that was on fire. So he worked out an agreement with the local BLM official under an \u201cadaptive management\u201d clause to move them elsewhere. But not all federal officials are flexible, he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like anything else, you get in the habit of doing things one way and you think that\u2019s just the way it should be,\u201d McElligott said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s why McElligott and others asked Kotek to intervene. He said federal cooperation and resources are crucial to helping families get back on their feet. McElligott has not lost any cows. Others have, and he said it\u2019s going to take a while to assess the damage.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEverybody\u2019s been busy either fighting fires or trying to find their cattle and take inventory,\u201d McElligott said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He suspects by October ranchers will have a tally of their losses. Though firefighters have made progress on many of the wildfires, new ones have flared, prompting Kotek to invoke the Conflagration Act a total of 13 times this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ranchers say federal help can\u2019t come soon enough, a sentiment that lawmakers echoed in their letter to Vilsack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGiven the harm these fires have caused to both the physical and social infrastructure throughout Oregon, we urge you and your department to ensure the state, local and tribal governments have all the resources they need to help Oregonians recover from these deadly fires,\u201d the lawmakers said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oregon Capital Chronicle The wildfires this season have scorched a record 1.5 million acres, forcing ranchers to move their cattle as flames approached while also fighting fires to save their homes\u00a0This summer\u2019s historic wildfires in Oregon have taken a toll on ranchers and their more than a million cows and other livestock, prompting a unified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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