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People Who Collaborate"Since 1991, I've worked for BLM." Bill Dragt is a Bureau of Land Management Supervisory Natural Resource Specialist and has worked in several locations during his 30 year BLM career; Cedarville, CA to Glenwood Springs, CO to Salt Lake City, UT to Reno, NV and finally Burns, OR where he supervises up to 8 resource specialists in range management as well as wildlife, fish biology, and geology. "Having worked in a number of BLM locations, it is my observation that Burns is a special place. While there are big differences, people in Harney County tend to be willing to talk to each other, often to the resolution of specific issues." READ MORE.
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Welcome Josh Hanson
Josh comes to HDP with a B.S. from Oregon State University and an M.S. from Montana State University in range and animal science as well as experience on working ranches. Amongst a competitive pool of candidates Josh stood out because of his varied experience in agriculture production and research, his passion for the health of the Harney Basin, and his understanding of the value of people working together to solve complex landscape issues.
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Seasonal Summer Jobs Offer Opportunities for Youths and Young Adults
The High Desert Partnership is hoping to help youths and young adults test out the waters in the natural resource career field by giving them experience as technicians collecting information on vegetation and helping with projects for the Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative and the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative. READ MORE.
Pictured: Carter Lardy and Megan Ellibee setting up a monitoring plot at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
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Radio Interview: Summer Drought ConditionsListen to an interview with retired range scientist Tony Svejcar and rancher Mitch Baker about this summer's drought impacts in the Harney Basin. LISTEN.
Pictured below: Tony Svejcar and Mitch Baker.
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Thank You Business OregonSummer of 2020 High Desert Partnership was awarded $300,000 from Business Oregon, the State of Oregon's economic development agency, to provide business technical assistance to small businesses in Harney County and beyond. HDP served as the lead agency in a partnership that, in addition to Harney, reached Baker, Union, Wallowa and Malheur counties. Through this funding, which is part of the state's pandemic response and allocation of federal CARES Act funding, agencies in each county were able to increase the direct technical assistance they provided to small businesses in their communities. The pandemic put an extraordinary strain on small frontier, Latino and tribal businesses especially and we were honored to be partnering with EUVALCREE, the Burns Paiute Tribe, Northeast Oregon Economic Development District and Launch Pad Baker to help our collective communities' businesses survive and even thrive during this extraordinarily challenging time.
The Burns Paiute Tribe shared: "In 2020 we provided 120 technical assistance hours to clients and with [this] funding more than doubled that amount to provide 260 hours of technical assistance in 2021."
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Projects in Stinkingwater Mountains Attempts to Make the Area Less Prone to WildifireThe Stinkingwater Mountains east of Burns have had their fair share of destructive fires. The area comprises more than 300,000 acres. About 100,000 acres of it burned most recently in the 2014 Buzzard Complex Fire, and the area has recently become the site of a project designed to prevent or mitigate the effects of catastrophic megafires. The Harney County Wildfire Collaborative, a collaborative of the High Desert Partnership, chose the Stinkingwater Mountains as the site of its next project because it has a sagebrush rangeland landscape that provides both forage for livestock and key habitat for wildlife including elk, mule deer and sage grouse. Another reason for choosing the area was the mix of public and private ownership. READ MORE.
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Radio Interview: Harney County Wildfire Collaborative and Listen to an interview with rancher Ron Whiting about the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative and its restoration and fire resilience project in the Stinkingwater Mountains. LISTEN.
Pictured: Ron Whiting (in blue hat) with rancher Keith Baltzor at a Harney County Wildfire Collaborative fuel break tour stop in 2019. Photo by Sarah Mundy.
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Project IBiS ContinuesProject IBiS is helping provide information on bird communities that utilize flood-irrigated ranch lands in Harney County as well as provide information on how new infrastructure at some properties is influencing bird use of these areas. Check out this website to learn how being outside counting birds can make a difference and where you can help.
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2021 Upcoming Events
Thursday - Sunday, September 8 - 12| Harney County Fair and Rodeo
Thursday, September 16| Harney County Wildfire Collaborative Meeting
Wednesday, September 22| High Desert Partnership Board Meeting
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Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative and
Wild Flood Irrigation
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Harney County Wildfire Collaborative and
Megafire Prevention
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| Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative and Reviving Malheur Lake
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| Six Collaboratives Supported By High Desert Partnership
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Training Your EmailDoes this newsletter land in your promotions folder each month and you miss it? If so, you can train it to land in your inbox by simply dragging and dropping the email from your promotions folder into your inbox or you can disable the promotions folder and send everything to your inbox. This article provides step-by-step directions.
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