By MITCH LIES
Capital Press
SALEM — Legislators, a governor’s policy adviser and state agency representatives on May 29 explained the workings of a recently reached wolf settlement agreement to a House committee and shared background on how the agreement came together.
Rep. Bob Jenson, R-Pendleton, said the agreement “is a product of … about a decade, on the part of a lot of people, a lot of different interest groups.”
Brett Brownscombe, natural resources policy adviser for Gov. John Kitzhaber, characterized the agreement as a “landmark historic moment where a lot of parties who typically have not been able to come to agreement on this issue, did.”
And Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Pendleton, characterized the settlement as “bipartisan, bicameral: All the different good things that we in Oregon are known to do as far as getting good public policy.”
The agreement was reached May 23 after more than a year of meetings between the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, state agency personnel, the governor’s office and two environmental groups.
Included in the agreement is a requirement that lawmakers approve changes to the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, changes codified in House Bill 3452.
The changes also need the approval of the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. The commission is scheduled to take up the agreement at its July meeting, said Ron Anglin, wildlife division administrator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In presenting the plan to the House Rules Committee, Brownscombe characterized the working group’s year-long negotiations as “difficult.”
He urged the committee to move forward the bill in its entirety and not tinker with the agreement.
“There were many days when I thought it would never happen,” he said, “but the parties, to their credit, all showed a very high degree of commitment to working out their interests on what they needed, whether it be for wolf protection and recovery, or for livestock and property protection, or, on the state’s end, for science based wildlife management.”
Brownscombe presented the committee a letter from Kitzhaber showing his endorsement of the settlement.
“After over a year of difficult negotiations, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands, the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, and ODFW agreed that settlement could do more to serve their respective interests than pursuing the zero-sum-game approach of seeing litigation to its very end,” Kitzhaber wrote.
Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands are involved in a suit that halted a state issued “lethal take” order on two wolves from the Imnaha pack in northeast Oregon. The wolves have been involved in more than two-dozen livestock attacks.
A court-ordered injunction on the order has been in place since October 2011, and the pack has continued to kill livestock.
Wolves in Oregon are protected under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
The settlement includes provisions freeing the state to lethally take the wolves. And it frees ranchers to take wolves caught biting, wounding and, in some cases, chasing livestock.
The “chasing” provision “goes beyond what the (state) wolf plan allows,” Brownscombe said.
“I think what is different now, compared to 2005 when the wolf plan was adopted, is that we’ve had a number of years of not just hypothetically living with wolves, but really living with wolves,” Brownscombe said.
The new provision allows ranchers to conduct what is known as “permit-less take” in areas of chronic wolf depredation when catching wolves biting, wounding or chasing livestock, provided the rancher has performed nonlethal measures to try and prevent wolf depredation.
The permit-less take provisions are provided only to qualifying ranchers in the area inhabited by the Imnaha pack, and only after the pack is confirmed involved in one additional depredation.
“This is not something that is going to set back wolf populations,” Brownscombe said to the House Rules Committee. “It is something that gives landowners more assurances and certainty that they can protect their property when it is being challenged.”
Brownscombe said amendments to HB3452 that reflect provisions of the recently reached agreement could be ready as early as May 30, and the committee could take up the bill in a second work session any time after that.
The committee took no action on the bill May 29.