Date: 09/14/2015 09:12 AM
AP-OR–2nd NewsMinute/269
Here is the latest Oregon news from The Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – In the wake of some of the West Coast’s largest wildfires, ranchers are wrestling with the loss of cattle and grazing land. Data show that the vast majority of 2,600 square miles that burned in Oregon, Idaho and Washington this year are federally owned. And large swaths of that public land are used for livestock grazing. In one of Oregon’s wildfires, 125 of the 170 square miles burned were grazing allotments.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Scientists say that if increasingly destructive wildfires in the Great Basin can’t be stopped the sage grouse population will be cut in half over the next three decades. A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey projects that wildfires and recovery rates of burned areas and predicts long-term sage grouse population declines in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California.
MILTON-FREEWATER, Ore. (AP) – Umatilla County fruit growers are still hurting from a cold snap that last year decimated cherry, prune and other orchards. The East Oregonian reports growers around Milton-Freewater, northeast of Pendleton, won’t have a cherry crop until 2017. The reason: last November, temperatures plummeted by nearly 60 degrees in a matter of days, killing buds and trees.
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. (AP) – A Springfield father is campaigning to keep teenagers off their phones while they are behind the wheel with a series of billboards around the city. The Register-Guard in Eugene reports that Bruce Berg began asking businesses to donate $500 per billboard three years ago. This year he persuaded the Lane Transit District to display his anti-texting posters for no charge.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
