A nationwide effort to save the whitebark pine in underway. Much of the story is happening in the Pacific Northwest

By K.C. Mehaffey. April 11, 2024. At the Dorena Genetic Resource Center near Cottage Grove, Ore., scientists are collecting whitebark pine cones, growing seedlings, examining them for resilience to disease and then gathering cones from the strongest survivors.

Those select seeds are then used to grow hundreds of thousands of baby trees in nurseries and plant them across the West.

It’s a job meant for the Clark’s nutcracker, a gray-and-black bird in the crow and raven family with a long sharp beak designed to crack open the toughest of nuts.

Mostly, he uses that beak to dig into the tough cone of a whitebark pine, pick out the seeds, eat a few and stash away several more in the ground to eat later.

Over the course of a year, a Clark’s nutcracker will cache thousands of seeds, many of which will go uneaten and become the next generation of whitebark pines.

While it appears to be their favorite food source, Clark’s nutcrackers aren’t wholly dependent on these high-elevation trees. In the Cascade Range, they also eat Douglas fir and ponderosa pine seeds.

But whitebark pine trees do depend on the nutcracker to disperse their seeds throughout their range that stretches across 80 million acres in seven western states and two Canadian provinces.

Now, one of the West’s few tree species able to survive on cold, windy ridgetops and steep slopes at alpine and subalpine elevations is in serious trouble.

It’s not that Clark’s nutcrackers aren’t doing their job—they are.

But a nonnative fungus that causes white pine to blister rust has entered the scene and become an existential threat to the pines, says Diana Tomback, one of the foremost researchers of the unique relationship between whitebark pines and Clark’s nutcracker.

Tomback is professor and interim chair of the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Colorado Denver. She also helped found the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation with several colleagues and now serves as its outreach coordinator.

She says there’s no cure for the disease, which continues to spread and threaten whitebark and other five-needled pines in the West. Many of these forests have also lost trees to mountain pine beetle infestations and wildfires that are becoming more frequent and more severe with the climate crisis.

“We’ve got this disturbing downward spiral,” Tomback tells Columbia Insight.

When a lot of whitebark pine die off, Clark’s nutcrackers—which are extremely mobile—sometimes move to new locations and find alternative seed resources.

And when the nutcrackers leave, the remaining whitebark pine trees—those that are resilient to blister rust—lose their means of dispersing seed.

“Whitebark pine clearly needs human intervention to come in and break this downward spiral,” says Tomback.

No ordinary tree

According to the Federal Register listing, “Whitebark pine is considered both a keystone and a foundation species in western North America, where it increases biodiversity and contributes to critical ecosystem functions.”

Its large and high-calorie nut is a critical food source for Clark’s nutcracker, and for 18 other animal species ranging from grizzly bears to red squirrels.

Individual trees can live to be hundreds of years old and become craggy and gnarled as they appear to thrive in the harsh mountain environment.

In many western landscapes, its beauty is secondary to the immense importance of these forests for sequestering snowpack.

“Whitebark pine forests exist in the headwaters regions for several large western river systems (e.g., Snake, Columbia and Missouri). High elevation forests like those featuring whitebark pine help redistribute, shade and retain snowpack, and their root systems stabilize soil and prevent erosion, especially on steep, rocky slopes where they thrive,” says Wash. D.C.-based American Forests.

The nonprofit group deems them “vital to the health of western watersheds, helping sustain ample stream flows that human and natural communities depend on.”

When not exposed to a foreign fungus, these trees are ultra-hardy.

They tolerate poor soils and can exist in rocky and shallow soils over bedrock. They grow in mountain ecosystems with vastly different climates, with annual precipitation amounts ranging from 20 inches to 100 inches of rain—most of which falls as snow.

But they’re also slow growing and can be outcompeted and replaced by more shade tolerant trees, such as subalpine fir.

Tomback says having these rugged trees at high elevations stabilizes the snowpack and allows it to melt at a slower rate, providing water to lower elevations during the summer.

In a short documentary about saving the whitebark pine, she says, “If we fail to do anything for whitebark pine, we are going to end up with many regions of our high mountain areas without it and we lose the ecosystem services, the wildlife food, the habitat protection, the watershed protection. It will be very apparent that some cataclysm affected our western forests mightily on a large scale.”

In January 2023, the whitebark pine was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It is the most widely distributed forest tree under ESA protection, according to the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation.

According to U.S. Forest Service researchers Sara Goeking and Deborah Izlar, there are now more standing dead whitebark pine trees than live ones.

They estimate that more than 325 million trees have died.

Because whitebark pine is a high-elevation species, the vast majority of its range is on public land. Tomback says between blister rust and mountain pine beetle, some places—like Glacier National Park—have lost the majority of whitebark pine trees.

There, she says, 80-90% of the living trees now have blister rust. Along with the northern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest is among the areas that have seen widespread decline from this unprecedented combination of threats.

Just how bad the rust is varies widely across Washington and Oregon, according to Robyn Darbyshire, regional silviculturist for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest office in Portland.

She says some places, like the Warner Mountains in southern Oregon, have no rust. Others, like the Gifford Pinchot National Forest seem to have a fairly high degree of resistance.

But trees in some areas seem to have very little resistance to the disease.

Still, there’s plenty of whitebark pine around, Darbyshire says. And some of the trees—at least individual ones that appear to be resistant to blister rust—can be protected from mountain pine beetles by using pheromone patches.

“We can protect good trees and high-value stands, and make sure we have a variety of age classes,” she says.

Additionally, having white pine blister rust isn’t always a death certificate. In some cases just a branch tip will die off, and the tree is able to prevent it from getting to its trunk.

“Trees can have rust for quite some time, and just because they have rust doesn’t mean they’re going to die from it. When we get worried about rust is when it girdles the mainstem of the tree,” says Darbyshire.

Those trees that are surrounded by the disease but seem to resist it have become the foundation for recovering this majestic conifer.

“In nature, these things would sort themselves out over time,” says Tomback.

Resistant trees would survive, and their seeds would eventually become the next generation of whitebark pines. But whitebark pine cones don’t open on their own, Darbyshire notes. And if Clark’s nutcrackers leave to find food in new areas, it could become too difficult for the next generation of trees to become established.

Human intervention

Scientists working to save the whitebark pine are playing the long game.

Many likely won’t be around—or will at least be retired—by the time the seedlings they’re cultivating produce cones.

Darbyshire says that a Douglas fir or ponderosa pine can start producing cones as young as 10 years old.

It takes whitebark pine trees 30 to 50 years to mature.

To find the resistant trees, people go into whitebark pine stands where rust is occurring, and look for trees that appear to be resisting the disease.

“We do a fairly thorough evaluation of the degree of rust resistance. We’re not necessarily looking for the perfect tree that has no rust at all, but ones that have some sort of defense system that keeps rust from getting to the main stem,” says Darbyshire.

They collect cones from those trees, grow the seeds in a greenhouse, and subject them to rust spores to test whether they are truly resistant.

“You might have to test 100 trees to find five that are resistant enough. It’s a lot of work narrowing it down and finding those resistant trees,” she says. “Then we want to go back and collect seed from those trees that have the rust resistance.”

The cones from each resistant tree have to be carefully marked so the seedlings can be planted back in the same geographic areas.

And they can’t all come from the same rust-resistant tree.

“We want to make sure we have at least 25 parent trees in a seed lot, so there’s genetic diversity,” says Darbyshire.

The seedlings are grown in greenhouses in containers.

And true to this slow-growing tree’s nature, it takes two to three years to get a seedling that’s big enough to plant, whereas most conifers would be ready to plant after a year.

The whole process takes several years, just to find the right seeds, ensure there’s enough genetic diversity and grow seedlings to an age where they can be planted.

Final restoration plan

Tomback says work on the National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan started in 2016—six years before the tree was listed as threatened.

It’s a collaborative inter-agency and tribal plan based on identifying a subset of the whitebark pine range for priority restoration, developed by the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation and American Forests and advised by the Forest Service.

“We think it will be highly compatible with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Recovery Plan for whitebark pine, which is now under development,” says Tomback.

The pandemic and a government shutdown delayed the process, but the draft National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan went out last summer.

“I’m in the middle of incorporating minor suggestions and updates. The revision has just been submitted to the Forest Service,” she says.

The draft plan got high marks from American Forests, which is working with the National Park Service to restore the trees within national parks. Its website says, “The National Whitebark Pine Restoration Plan is a science-driven, collaborative strategy to restore whitebark pine across its U.S. range. The plan is designed to work with nature—by using the seed dispersal capabilities of the Clark’s nutcracker to restore whitebark pine populations.”

The plan suggests that agencies identify 20-30% of the range of whitebark pine within a given jurisdiction—such as a national park, a Forest Service region, a Bureau of Land Management state office or a tribal reservation—to focus initial recovery efforts.

Because of the logistical and financial challenges of recovering a species that is so far ranging and often so remote, these core areas would receive the highest priorities and eventually serve as dispersal centers for adjacent areas.

Tomback says Region 6 of the U.S. Forest Service—which comprises national forest land in Oregon and Washington—has been proactive in selecting core areas and coming up with its restoration strategy.

Identifying those core areas was more challenging than Darbyshire thought it would be.

“We looked at places where there was a need—places that had burned or places with bark beetle mortality, and then we also wanted to identify places where we need to go collect seed for resistance testing, because we haven’t done that everywhere yet,” she says.

Part of the challenge is the ecological diversity across Washington and Oregon—from the Olympics to the North Cascades to the Selkirks. Darbyshire notes that the Forest Service region hasn’t gotten feedback on its core-area selection from the national office.

“These things aren’t set in stone. We’ll see how other regions did the process and learn from each other.”

Even without a finalized plan, the Forest Service is continuing its work to replant stands of new rust-resistant trees.

Mimicking Clark’s nutcrackers

A big part of the restoration challenge has to do with where whitebark pine grow. Tomback says 29% of their range is in wilderness.

Here in the Northwest, 60% of their range is in wilderness, and an additional 20% is in roadless areas, according to Darbyshire.

“So accessibility is pretty challenging in many cases,” she says, adding, “It’s important to protect the cone-bearing trees that we have inside and outside of wilderness and to establish new rust-resistant trees wherever we can.”

Within the wilderness, the Forest Service can’t use invasive technical or mechanical means to plant trees. Even taking cones out, growing them and brining seedlings back to plant is not fully supported, says Tomback.

She and other researchers are trying to figure out if humans can essentially mimic what Clark’s nutcrackers do.

“That means going in with bags of seeds harvested within the same seed zone and methodically planting them in caches, just like the nutcrackers,” she says.

The method is still experimental.

“We need to monitor it and get results to figure out whether this is going to be adequately productive and learn how to modify where we put the seeds” and discourage rodent thefts, she says.

But since it’s one of the few things they can do in wilderness areas, the Forest Service, Park Service and BLM are all seriously looking at the option.

While scientists are doing some of the work that Clark’s nutcrackers do, the long-term plan is to eventually give the job back. But in areas that are highly devastated, if nutcrackers have moved on to find better food sources, that may not happen until enough rust-resistant trees have grown old enough to start producing cones.

“It’s sort of a you-build-it-and-they-will-come idea,” says Tomback. “If we can restore these areas where whitebark pine were once abundant, we believe the nutcrackers will come back.”

What happened to the female half of Klickitat County’s two-wolf Big Muddy Pack?

By Dawn Stover. February 27, 2024. In April 2023, Columbia Insight reported that Southwest Washington had its first gray wolf pack in a century.

The Big Muddy Pack formed when a collared male that wandered into Klickitat County was joined by an un-collared female.

Together they met the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s minimum for recognition as a pack: at least two wolves traveling together in winter.

The state wildlife agency’s wolf biologist Gabe Spence told Columbia Insight it was a “big deal” to finally find a pack in the southwestern third of the state.

It seemed likely the pair would produce pups in 2023.

Now wolf experts with the agency aren’t sure the pack still exists.

And some locals are wondering if the wolf may have been intentionally killed.

Missing in action

Since October 2023, the wildlife department’s monthly updates have repeatedly noted that agency experts “conducted monitoring activities” in the Big Muddy Pack’s territory. Those activities have thus far failed to detect the female member of the pack.

The collar on wolf WA109M, the pack’s male, usually transmits his location twice a day. When he’s in rocky or heavily wooded terrain, it can take longer to receive that data.

The state’s wolf team uses the collared wolf’s last known location to look for tracks in snow and check game cameras in the area.

They can also circle over the location with an airplane or helicopter.

The team’s aircraft were grounded by freezing fog and freezing rain for a few days, and team members are still finishing their surveys of all packs in the state.

Data from survey counts, camera footage and reported sightings will be compiled into an annual wolf report that will be released in mid-April, said WDFW statewide wolf specialist Ben Maletzke.

When Columbia Insight spoke with Maletzke on Feb. 14, the team had one more flight to do and some cameras to check, but they hadn’t yet been able to pick up the Big Muddy female wolf.

“We have not been super successful at finding that wolf, but that doesn’t mean she’s not out there,” Maletzke said. It’s possible she is on a hunting foray, he said, or “she may be more camera-shy” than her collared mate.

Maletzke acknowledged there is a “lot of animosity toward wolves in certain areas,” but he said there is no evidence of foul play involving the Big Muddy female.

Staci Lehman, a spokesman for the department, said “the wolf world can be a rough one. It’s not unusual for a wolf to go on a temporary or permanent road trip to new territories or to run into trouble along the way.”

New model for species recovery

If Southwest Washington’s only known pack has split up or the female has died, that would be “a big loss for sure,” said Maletzke.

In the short term, the loss of one wolf may have an impact for the next year or so, he said, “but over the next two to five years, I think we’ll see an influx of wolves down into the South Cascades.”

Maletzke said the state documented a lot of wolf mortalities in 2023 but is still seeing the species recovering in Washington.

The statewide population of wolves and the number of breeding pairs has been increasing for 14 years.

In its Periodic Status Review for the Gray Wolf dated February 2024, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife recommends that the state reclassify wolves from “endangered” to “sensitive,” bypassing the intermediate designation of “threatened.”

The agency says wolves no longer face a serious risk of extinction throughout a significant portion of their range in Washington.

The Wolf Management and Recovery Plan adopted in 2011 calls for the state to consider downlisting wolves from endangered to threatened when there are at least two successful breeding pairs in each of the three recovery regions for three consecutive years.

But that hasn’t happened yet.

The Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery region currently has no successful breeding pairs and, with the absence of wolf WA109M’s partner, might have lost its only known pair.

However, the state is proposing to jettison those recovery criteria and rely instead on a new model that estimates current and future population dynamics of Washington wolves.

The model estimates a 100% probability that wolves will “colonize” the southwest recovery region by 2030—meaning at least one wolf territory with two or more adults in it.

The downlisting proposal will be presented to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission at a meeting next month, and a decision is expected in June.

Both the draft proposal and the final version published this month note that “the first known pack was documented in [the southwest] region as of 2022.”

For now, that “pack” appears incomplete.

Nearly two-thirds of the state’s agricultural land will change ownership in the next 20 years. It’s ripe for development

By Eva Jacroux. January 17, 2024. Farmland in the United States is under threat. About 31 million acres, a land mass equivalent to the size of New York state, has been lost to urban expansion in the last 20 years. By 2040, nearly 18 million more acres could be lost to development.

“Without farms, there’s not only no food, but there’s no future. We need farmland to feed us and sustain our economy—but also to help restore our planet” says American Farmland Trust president John Piotti.

Urban sprawl has been swallowing farms around the peripheries of our nation’s cities.

Oregon has a strong history of protecting its farmland, creating a leading land-use planning system to protect open spaces.

However, with growing pressure on land to both house and feed an expanding population, the state’s lawmakers are being pulled in multiple directions.

Now, a boundary isn’t enough. Farmland advocates must work across the rural-urban divide, tackling urban housing policy in the process, to protect the future the state’s food systems.

Rural gentrification

Rural America is experiencing a real estate crisis. Low density rural development and urban sprawl into rural areas continues to drive up land prices.

In agricultural areas, the conversion of farmland to non-farm uses deters the extended life of irrigation districts and processing facilities.

As profitability decreases, farmers are more likely to divide and sell land for development, deepening the cycle of conversion and slowly reducing the amount of farmland nationwide.

“It’s what we can call rural gentrification” says Brooks Lamb, American Farmland Trust, land access specialist.

Rising land prices and declining agricultural districts further restrict young farmers and underrepresented groups like women and BIPOC from entering the industry. Thriving agricultural food systems require a critical mass of farmland, and this land-intensive industry is framed by issues of equity, access and entry.

Roughly 370 million acres of farmland across the United States will change hands as the aging population of farmers retires in the next 20 years.

In Oregon, nearly two-thirds of the state’s agricultural land will change ownership in that time—farm owners aged 55 and older control 64% of agricultural land in the state, according to an Oregon State University study titled The Future of Agricultural Land.

Land transfers to heirs create tenuous periods of ownership that can be exploited by developers. In declining agricultural economies, property heirs are more likely to sell or be bought out by developers.

Some become victims of “forced partition sales.” Heirs can be bought out by a developer who then becomes an equal co-owner and forces the entire parcel to be put up for sale at a public auction for pennies to the dollar of the market rate.

SB 100 and contemporary challenges

In the 1970s, Oregon created one of the strongest land-use planning systems in the United States. Senate Bill 100 was passed to create urban growth boundaries designed to protect Oregon’s environment and open space.

Its secondary goal was to continually reevaluate housing production to meet statewide needs. This was an important tool for the conservation of Oregon’s farms, forests, natural resources, economic development and open spaces.

However, single-family zoning requirements have undermined both urban and rural housing affordability and land access, creating low-density expansion out of urban growth boundaries while simultaneously failing to build enough units to house a growing population.

While SB 100 has been influential in slowing suburban expansion, it failed to codify funding pathways for increased compact housing production.

As state policymakers grapple with how to meet housing demands without these avenues, the urban growth boundary is being chipped away.

Last year, Oregon’s controversial House Bill 3414 was narrowly defeated. If passed into law, the bill would allow cities to unilaterally expand urban growth boundaries.

Furthermore, while SB 100 remains a strong conservation tool, it has often failed to protect the state’s most valuable farmland, especially on the peripheries of cities.

Expanding residential development to the outskirts of cities through single-family homes rapidly raises the cost of living in rural areas while simultaneously exacerbating inequality in cities.

Now, Oregon is experiencing a statewide housing shortage.

People in all Oregon counties are concerned about affordability and homelessness. While Portland housing prices are expected to begin a slight decline from their recent historic heights, prices for Oregon farmland have continued to rise year after year.

Oregon has continually ranked at the top of federal measures for statewide homelessness.

In recent years, Oregon has made monumental moves to reform city zoning laws.

In 2019, it became the first state in the country to do away with single-family zoning requirements and has begun funding city-housing strategies to increase housing production of multi-use housing.

However, rural areas haven’t been allocated the same funding to create similar housing strategies.

Many rural county governments lack the resources to protect agricultural economies to resist the development of prime farmland.

How then should state, county and municipal governments create measured policies that don’t take productive farmland out of commission and decrease the expansion of single family-homes?

Advocates on concurrent fronts

Beneath the glow of warm lighting of Helioterra Winery in Southeast Portland, Oregon Agricultural Trust partners and farmers celebrated a successful 2023 year over locally sourced appetizers and vibrant Pacific Northwest wines.

Among many of its successes was work done to petition local, regional and national governments for more funding to protect agricultural land.

In Washington, American Farmland Trust has set a model of holistic urban sprawl prevention policy: working to reduce development pressure by advocating for middle housing options within Seattle.

By promoting affordable high-density housing in cities, American Farmland Trust is attempting to build bridges across the rural-urban divide by increasing affordable housing.

Land trusts are working to help educate farmers about the importance of succession planning.

Many use the “Buy, Protect, Sell” model to place easements on farmland to permanently remove development rights. They rely on public outreach to inform agricultural land owners about the importance of stewarding farmland, and how one plot of land sold can become millions of acres lost.

The nonprofit 1,000 Friends of Oregon spearheads the Portland for Everyone campaign.

The watchdog organization was formed by Governor Tom McCall, who was integral to the bipartisan push behind SB 100.

In the past, 1,000 Friends of Oregon has collaborated with LandWatch Oregon and American Farmland Trust for the Portland for Everyone program. Continuing this overlap and drawing in more agricultural land trusts to protect the urban growth boundary is a natural coalition.

The Lower White Salmon Coalition is pushing a new plan for conservation of fish and wildlife habitat. Will its PacifiCorp landowners listen?

By Kendra Chamberlain. November 27, 2023. Even before PacifiCorp began removing the 125-foot-tall hydroelectric Condit Dam in southwest Washington in 2011, speculation ran rampant about how the power company would dispose of the approximately 500 acres of land along the White Salmon River where the dam stood.

The dam’s removal left behind a giant, dried lakebed after the waters of the Northwestern Lake reservoir behind it were sent downriver.

Since then, questions and anxiety about the future of the land have only increased. PacifiCorp has yet to announce a decision regarding its intentions.

The lakebed and six-mile stretch of river in question, surrounded by protected Wild and Scenic designated land, has become popular among recreationalists: the newly restored river offers some of the best whitewater paddling in the state, and the area contains an established trail system.

Now, the Lower White Salmon Coalition (LWSC) has released a community-backed Vision Plan for the land. Not surprisingly, conservation is the group’s top priority.

The LWSC was formed in 2016, amid concerns about how and when PacifiCorp might divest its land holdings in the Washington counties of Skamania and Klickitat. Its more than a dozen member organizations include Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Mid-Columbia Fisheries Enhancement Group, Mt. Adams Resource Stewards and Underwood Conservation District.

PacifiCorp had previously offered land leases for the construction of lakefront cabins. After the dam’s decommissioning, the lake is all but gone and cabin owners aren’t sure what PacifiCorp plans to do with the land underneath the cabins.

In 2019, the coalition was caught by surprise when PacifiCorp sold a 39-acre parcel to a developer that clear-cut a wooded area and built residential housing.

“No one knew that parcel existed except them,” LWSC member Pat Arnold told Columbia Insight, adding that the parcel contained high-value habitat. Arnold is also Chair of the Board of the Friends of the White Salmon River.

Lake bed land a priority

The LWSC has spent the intervening years developing its own plan for the land, with the hopes that the group will have a seat at the table of future decision-making.

The planning process included developing committees, conducting public surveys, holding discussions with adjacent landowners and meetings with stakeholders to identify a broad community-backed strategy for the land.

A grant from the U.S. National Park Service’s Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program helped fund the process.

PacifiCorp has already agreed to a Right of First Offer with the Yakama Nation for up to 289 acres from the former dam site south to the mouth of the river. Yakama Nation Fisheries staff, who have begun habitation restoration in parts of the lake bed, participated as observers in LWSC’s planning process and offered feedback to the coalition.

The LWSC would like to see the return of native riparian vegetation along the river corridor and salmon spawning areas protected. It also wants assurances that public access and recreational use of the area will remain in the future.

Arnold said the coalition is particularly concerned with the lake bed parcels, because that land would most likely draw developer interest.

“It’s very important for the coalition overall to see those parcels go into conservation ownership,” said Arnold. “The plan has areas where we feel we had a strong consensus and then some areas where we might not have such a strong consensus. But the conservation of those lake bed parcels is absolutely imperative [for the community].”

PacifiCorp has no obligation to take LWSC’s Vision Plan into consideration. But the groups have been in contact.

“We were in communication with PacifiCorp at the beginning of our NPS technical assistant grant,” said Arnold. “We needed to make sure we could access the land for the purpose of the developing the Vision Plan. They were okay with that. We met a couple of times. … We have asked to meet with them to discuss the Vision Plan, but do not have a date yet.”

Despite the lack of commitment, the LWSC remains cautiously optimistic.

“For no particular good reason, we feel that PacifiCorp is on board with the conservation emphasis of the Vision Plan,” said Arnold. “They did their due diligence years ago about finding which parcels could be sold profitably, and apparently after they sold the 39 acres there were not any more, without short platting and such. … We’re just hoping that we can continue to be a voice for what we feel is a pretty clear consensus as discussions go on.”

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Agrivoltaics integrates solar power and crop cultivation to the benefit of both. An OSU prof thinks it could be the future

By Kendra Chamberlain. November 23, 2023. Solar energy and agriculture can play nice—in fact, solar panels might actually allow farmers to produce better crop yields.

It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s what Oregon State University Professor Chad Higgins is hoping to prove with a pilot agrivoltaics project in the Willamette Valley.

His project runs contrary to prevailing narratives in rural areas, where encroaching renewable energy facilities are seen as a threat to agriculture.

Higgins spoke about the project during a two-day conference held earlier this month in Corvallis by the nonprofit Sustainable Northwest.

“It’s not that the solar panels are impeding farm progress,” Higgins told the audience. “They are literally farming equipment that is used to manage a farm resource—light.”

Solar Harvest, the agrivoltaics collaboration between Oregon Clean Power Coop and OSU’s College of Agriculture, is the first field-scale research station aimed at studying whether solar panels can improve things like soil health, water use and crop yields.

It’s also part of a community solar program serving electricity to OSU’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center.

Solar Harvest just completed its first growing season after coming online in April.

Higgins said his group celebrated with a big harvest meal, which included watermelon grown without irrigation.

Throwing shade

Vast tracts of open land make agricultural areas a great place to place solar arrays.

But can large panels coexist with crops or livestock?

Higgins calls sunlight the “forgotten resource” on agricultural land.

“It’s the one that is least likely to be managed,” said Higgins, adding that sunlight is always in excess on a farm.

“It’s uncommon to realize how much energy is in sunlight. There’s so much energy in sunlight that the plants can’t take it all,” he said.

Placing solar panels on agricultural land can serve a dual purpose.

The panels generate energy that can be used by the farm—or delivered to residential homes.

Panels can also help plants and animals survive the hottest, driest parts of the year by providing shade. Shade can translate into reduced water demand.

“What is the plant to do when it gets too much energy? It heats up. What’s the only thing a plant can do to cool down? Drink water,” said Higgins. “So all of that excess solar that goes onto the plants is translated one-to-one to water draw from the ground—that goes into nothing productive. All you have to do is shade the plants and you save a proportional amount of water.”

Extra shade offers other benefits to the crops: cooler soils, increased humidity, less stress on plants and potentially increased crop yields.

The Solar Harvest project is testing a range of shade and water conditions to see what works best, “because somewhere—and I don’t know where it is, because no one’s studied this—somewhere there is the perfect combination of light and water to make the plants grow the best,” said Higgins.

Atypical array

There are limits to how much shade plants will tolerate—and not all plants can be optimized using shade.

But for crops such as alfalfa, beets, bok choy, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, spinach, sweet potatoes, turnips and yams, farmers could shade their plants up to 50%, depending on the species, with little consequences on output.

There’s nothing revolutionary about providing shade to crops. But farmers receive an additional bonus by using solar panels instead of more traditional means, such as shade cloth.

“Why not shade it with something that creates a tertiary farm product?” asked Higgins. “This is where you get into agrivoltaics: you engineer a system such that it removes the excess sunlight to optimally manage your farm resource for the benefit of the crop.”

Solar Harvest is a 120 kW array. It uses bifacial solar panels that let some amount of light through to the ground, but provide enough shade to help plants cool off.

“These systems don’t look exactly like a standard solar array,” said Higgins.

The solar panels tilt upwards to allow farming equipment to pass between the rows, preserving 95% of the farm footprint.

Farmers can manage sunlight by moving the panels into different configurations, some up some down, for example, to reach specific outcomes.

“If you are at a deficit of 30% water, you can take 30% of the light away and not have to suffer,” said Higgins.

Some research shows that crops can actually help increase the efficiency of the solar panels, too. The panels operate better in cooler conditions, just like the plants do.

Taking agrivoltaics mainstream

Solar Harvest, which will provide research over a 20-year period, is one of the first pilot projects of its kind in the country. Higgins hopes his research will pave the way for more acceptance of solar energy among rural communities.

Nationally, the agrivoltaics industry is still nascent.

There are only a handful of commercial agrivoltaic installations across the country. But with wider adoption, the sector could help the nation meet its decarbonization goals.

An OSU study from 2020 estimates widespread adoption of agrivoltaics could put a dent of 330,470 metric tons in the agriculture sector’s greenhouse gas emissions annually.

There are obstacles to overcome.

In Oregon, permitting is one of the largest barriers. Under Oregon state law, areas with better soils for agriculture are not typically permitted for renewable energy installations.

“Willamette Valley is a Goldilocks zone for agriculture,” said Higgins. “It’s actually a fantastic place to do agri-solar, if the community wants it.”

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Can salmon, steelhead, eagles, kiteboarders, Tribes, BNSF, the Forest Service and one tiny Washington town come together to share a unique piece of water?

By Bill Weiller. October 26, 2023. Just east of its origin in Vancouver, Washington, State Route 14 is one of the most scenic and historic highways in the Pacific Northwest, if not the entire country.

Forming a section of the Lewis and Clark Trail Scenic Byway, the highway winds through the entirety of the Columbia River Gorge.

Heading east, where SR 14 enters the tiny town of Lyle (pop. 269), most motorists steal glances over their right shoulders across the Columbia River to marvel at the towering bluffs around the Rowena Crest Viewpoint on the Oregon side of the Gorge.

With such spectacular scenery, it’s easy to miss another remarkable feature of the area—one that’s recently emerged as a flashpoint for stakeholder conflict, and become a microcosm of similar issues playing out around the Pacific Northwest, as an increasing number of interest groups, government agencies, tribal nations and private citizens vie for access to and control over public resources impacted by climate change and steadily growing public usage.

On the outskirts of Lyle, the Klickitat River flows into the Columbia River, creating the Klickitat River Delta.

Just below a highway bridge that passes over the river, the delta spreads out across the Columbia River like a broad and shallow fan, creating the point of Klickitat River access for migrating salmon and steelhead, and the birds that feed on them.

These same conditions also happen to make the delta perfect for kiteboarders. Lots of kiteboarders.

Therein lies, at least for now, a major challenge for the town of Lyle, conservationists, recreationists, the land-owning BNSF Railway and various government entities.

As president of the Lyle Community Council, I’ve been involved for several years with a public process undertaken to resolve issues surrounding legal access to the Klickitat River Delta.

Though work is ongoing, issues around the delta have proven tricky to sort out.

Fish and wildlife concerns

Once used for cattle grazing as part of a Starr Ranch operation, the Klickitat River Delta became a focal point of conservation efforts when the U.S. Forest Service bought the ranchland in 1994.

The USFS also owns the spit of land that stretches into the delta.

After its purchase of Starr Ranch land, the USFS constructed facilities and a loop trail leading to what it now accurately deems “a prime bald eagle viewing spot” in winter months. In winter, eagles from around the Pacific Northwest migrate to the area to feed on spawned-out salmon that wash up on the delta’s sand and gravel bars, making them easy pickings.

As I learned during an Oregon State University pilot class called Climate Stewards, which took place on the banks of the delta in September, salmon and steelhead migrating up the Columbia River are attracted to the delta’s cool waters.

Snow-melt water flowing into the Columbia from the Klickitat—which originates on Mount Adams in the high country of the Yakama Indian Reservation—makes the delta a vital cold water refuge for salmon and steelhead in the warming Columbia.

Three speakers in the Climate Stewards class—two from the Yakama Nation and one USFS staff—explained the challenges of maintaining the delta as a cold water refuge.

In recent years, the delta’s waist-deep waters have been warming. That’s a troubling trend for salmon and steelhead, which are sensitive to water temperatures.

What’s more, according to the USFS, it’s been a boon to freshwater bass, which prey on salmon smolts.

The Yakama Nation has championed federal research into deepening the channel by dredging the area where the Klickitat River flows into the Columbia. The hope is to keep water temperatures there relatively cool, and, thus, safer for salmon and steelhead.

Enter kiteboarders

The delta’s shallow, warming waters have also been a boon to another group—kiteboarders.

No one knows precisely when the delta became a magnet for kiteboarders—the area was the site of sailboarding speed trials in the 1980s, according to one local source—but their activity here has picked up considerably over the past decade.

“The Klickitat Delta has perfect launching conditions only found in two other locales … in the world,” according to Mike Evans, who works with the Columbia Gorge Wind & Water Association.

Those “perfect conditions” include a broad, shallow launch point leading to a wide body of water with reliable wind.

The undeveloped delta has been discovered.

Visitor data wasn’t collected during the 2023 summer recreation season, but Lyle Community Council members estimate that hundreds if not thousands of kiteboarders descended on the delta, likely even more so than in previous years when usage was heavy.

Part of that estimate is based on tickets for illegal parking issued by Klickitat County deputies.

Along the highway, a potholed, gravel turnout provides haphazard delta parking for about 15 vehicles. From there, one either runs across the busy highway then heads down a hill and across a set of railroad tracks to the delta, or (wisely) takes a footpath under the road then crosses the tracks to enter the site.

No signs mark the parking spot. No restrooms or other facilities are in sight. No fees are collected. Rashawn Tama of the USFS calls it an “unmanaged site.”

Many drivers resort to simply parking along the highway or in other unauthorized places.

The parking situation along SR 14 has also raised the hackles of the BNSF Railway, by some estimates the largest freight railroad in the United States.

BNSF owns tracks and a wide swath of land between the highway and Columbia River.

Despite visible signage forbidding the public from crossing the tracks, kiteboarders (and others) regularly trespass over railroad property in order to gain access to the delta.

The railroad has backed up its warnings to trespassers by issuing its own citations.

Adding intrigue, Klickitat County Prosecuting Attorney David Quesnel told the Lyle Community Council this summer he would not prosecute the railroad’s tickets. (BNSF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

Resolution efforts

It’s not clear what impact recreation is having on the fish and wildlife that depend on the Klickitat River Delta.

During the Climate Stewards class, one of the Yakama Nation speakers confirmed that the Tribe’s interest in the delta lies with conservation, not recreation. This presumably explained why the Tribe has shown little interest in engaging in conversations about access to the delta. (Yakama Nation Fisheries did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

The effort to allow legal recreation in the Klicktat River Delta and settle ongoing access disputes will ultimately require cooperation from all interested parties. All voices are valid and should be heard and considered

In 2021, the Lyle Community Council formed a Delta Committee to resolve issues surrounding delta access. In the past year, participation has grown to include the USFS, kiteboarders, local citizens, Klickitat County, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (which regulates the railroads) and Washington State Parks. To date, neither BNSF nor the Yakama Nation have joined official discussions.

Bringing BNSF to the table will likely require conducting a feasibility study that would recommend solutions. That process is costly.

Another potential partner, the National Park Service, has a small recreation and trails grant program that provides free community mediation and can provide project funding. This year, the Lyle Community Council and USFS developed a joint grant proposal to the NPS, but the USFS decided not to submit the proposal when it became clear the Yakama Nation would not join the process.

Even if the railroad agrees to make public access to the delta legal, the fish-friendly dredging project could produce a tonnage of mucky spoils that would likely be placed on the delta’s sandbar and planted with native vegetation, potentially rendering the site unsuitable as a put-in location for kiteboarders.

While the Lyle Community Council is on record supporting salmon restoration at the delta, it’s unknown whether fish and kiteboards will ultimately be able to coexist on a small patch of delta that, at least in winter, remains a lonely and lovely place to walk … illegally.

The views expressed in this article belong solely to its author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else associated with Columbia Insight.