By Oregonians for Food and Shelter,
Legislators returned to Salem this week for the final time this year, meeting for the last installment of quarterly “legislative days” and convening a special session to allocate funds to the past season’s wildfire fighting costs.
With the 2025 Legislative Session just around the corner, many committees unveiled bills that will be introduced when session starts on January 21st and heard preliminary presentations about those bills. On the Senate side, OFS kept an eye on updates from the Natural Resource and Wildfire Committee regarding the Elliott State forest and the ongoing wildfire funding workgroup as well as a brief summary in the Energy and Environment Committee on the recently updated Climate Protection Program. In the House, the Agriculture, Land Use, Natural Resources and Water Committee mostly talked water law (updates and work coming in 2025). Our member and partner organizations in timber and ag have been busy in the Capitol tracking other potential bills coming next year and working to introduce their own concepts to help our natural resources community.
The Special Session went as expected, a brief affair allocating $192 million to the Oregon Department of Forestry to cover its obligations for fire-fighting costs last summer. The proposal sailed through with only two “no” votes in each chamber. The Legislature will return next month to swear-in new members and organize, with official work starting on January 21st.
Regulatory Update
On November 22nd, EPA released its final Rodenticide Biological Evaluation/Rodenticide Strategy. In this Strategy, EPA identified 5 species that have the potential to be negatively affected by rodenticides in Oregon: northern spotted owl, yellow-billed cuckoo, streaked horned lark, Pacific marten, and Columbian white-tailed deer. To mitigate risks, EPA will pick and choose relevant measures from a list that includes restrictions to bait station size, design or location, carcass search and disposal, prohibitions of broadcast and/or burrow applications, or prohibitions of applications during certain times of the year. EPA has also committed to refining species ranges to ensure that mitigations are not required beyond where they are most needed.
OFS continues to have concerns about implementation of the Rodenticide Strategy, including whether there is in fact a risk to species identified by EPA and whether mitigations such as carcass search and disposal are effective and feasible. We are working closely with groups such as the Rodenticide Task Force to identify opportunities in Oregon for research on topics such as rodenticide exposure pathways in our listed species. EPA intends to release revised Proposed Interim Decisions (PIDs) for several rodenticides in 2025. Keep an eye out in this newsletter for chances to engage with us as we collect real-world usage information to help refine EPA’s risk assessments and mitigations.
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