Greetings From the Wild Side

Feb 22, 2024 | AOC Business Partner

Sponsored content contributed by AOC Business Partner: USDA – Wildlife Services

USDA – Wildlife Services (WS) is pleased to announce that Kevin Christensen has been selected as the new State Director of the Oregon program. Kevin has been with Wildlife Services for 26 years, the last 17 as the Assistant State Director in Oregon. “I am very grateful for the support and encouragement from the field, and from our many cooperators and friends that we work with, and I’m committed to supporting our mission to provide quality public service.”

WS has the opportunity to interact with a lot of individuals statewide, providing expertise and proven field experience to help solve and mitigate conflicts with wildlife. In federal fiscal year 2023, WS made over 13,800 responses to the public.  These responses covered many types of specific resources and included 9,023 for agricultural resources, 3,165 protecting property, 2,029 related to human health and safety, and 836 for natural resources.  

We recently posted a video on the USDA APHIS YouTube channel: “Using Drones to Haze Wolves.” This short video highlights some of the work being done by our WS staff to look at testing and refining various non-lethal methods, including drones, for mitigating wolf conflicts, with the goal of determining times and or locations where tools may be effective in helping to stop or mitigate depredation on livestock.    

Our employees are dedicated to providing support and solutions for your wildlife conflicts.  If you need help with conflicts from predatory animals, please give us a call.

Oregon Counties Reduce the Risk of Drug Misuse With At-Home Drug Deactivation and Disposal

Jan 24, 2024 | AOC Business Partner

Sponsored content contributed by AOC Business Partner: Deterra

Drug overdose deaths increased 76% in Oregon from 2011-2021, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Recently, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are driving an increase in fatal and non-fatal overdoses, with deaths from synthetic opioids increasing 83% from 2020-2021. 

Counties in Oregon are working diligently to combat this crisis by providing drug deactivation and disposal tools to reduce the supply of unused prescription medications and illicit drugs that can contribute to misuse and overdoses. 

In Clackamas County, District Attorney John Wentworth launched an initiative this summer to provide at-home drug deactivation and disposal pouches to encourage proper disposal of unwanted drugs. 

The DA debuted the Deterra® Drug Deactivation and Disposal Pouches at the Clackamas County Fair in August. Wentworth plans to distribute the plant-based drug disposal pouches across the county as a simple way for everyone to help prevent drug misuse and overdoses. 

The pouches safely deactivate and destroy prescription and over-the-counter medicine, opioids, fentanyl, illicit drugs and vape fluid.

Neighboring Multnomah County has also had success addressing youth substance use by increasing access to proper drug disposal resources. The county health department partners with Big Village Coalition on the “Keep It Safe” campaign to provide youth and families with prevention education and at-home drug deactivation pouches. Each pouch has a custom label adhered to it with a QR code linked to an informational website translated into six languages. 

The efforts in Clackamas and Multnomah counties address fentanyl and prescription drug safety in a way that empowers community members to help prevent drug misuse and protect the environment from the impact of unused drugs. Several counties in other states have started mailing Deterra Pouches directly to households as part of community prevention campaigns. 

Opioid settlement funds and grants support prevention and disposal efforts 

Opioid settlement funds and grant dollars are available to help counties implement evidence-based prevention strategies. 

As the result of a national lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies, Oregon is expected to be awarded around $325 million over 18 years. These funds can be used for evidence-based opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies. 

Participating local governments will receive 55% of these funds, and making an investment in prevention is essential to stop misuse before it starts. One of the most effective ways to quickly reduce the risk of drug misuse is a direct-to-household mailing of educational materials and drug deactivation pouches. A household mailing campaign is ideal for efficiently distributing prevention tools and reaching rural or underserved communities with limited access to other disposal methods.

To see the impact a prevention education and at-home disposal campaign can have on your county, request a free custom assessment. 

Contributed by: Senior VP of Marketing Erica Webb

Challenges, Needs, and Opportunities in Oregon’s Forest Sector

Jan 24, 2024 | AOC Business Partner

Sponsored content contributed by AOC Business Partner: Hampton Lumber

Northwest Oregon is home to some of the most productive and sustainably managed forests in the world. These forests have made Oregon the top U.S. producer of renewable building materials.

Local sawmills rely on a steady and sustainable supply of timber from surrounding public and private forests. Unfortunately, uncertainty over the trajectory of the 70-year Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for State Forests turned into alarm and disappointment for the industry and the Forest Trust Land Counties in 2023 when the Oregon Department of Forestry announced the proposed HCP will result in harvest levels as much as 34 percent lower than current levels. While the forest products sector is accustomed to short-term market disruptions, the long-term outlook for timber supply in the state remains a source of concern for local companies that must decide whether continued investment is tenable. Looking to the future, Oregon elected leaders and policy makers will need to prioritize, protect, and enable working forestlands in the state to not only support exiting wood manufacturing capacity but also create new opportunities for value-added mass timber manufacturing.

Sawmills are often the most visible component of a healthy forest sector, but Oregon’s working forests also support hundreds of family-owned logging and hauling companies that specialize in the safe and sustainable harvest and transport of wood products. Indeed, most local benefits that arise from timber harvests come not from the revenues associated with timber sales, but the work that active forest management generates year after year. We estimate that for every $1 million in revenue created by a timber sale, an additional $1.4 million is generated locally to harvest, transport, and create lumber. Additional revenue and employment are generated through lumber sales and secondary manufacturing facilities, including those that produce plywood, particleboard, and pulp and paper. This economic activity trickles through local communities, to stores, restaurants, and service providers and helps keep rural areas resilient.

Active forest management also creates climate-friendly building materials. According to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, lumber, plywood, particle board, and hardboard manufactured in Oregon each year can store an estimated 18.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtco2e) in the built environment. In 2021, total emissions in Oregon amounted to 60.1 mtco2e, which means building materials produced in Oregon have the capacity to store roughly 30 percent of the state’s emissions each year.

The local wood products industry also helps address other social issues from workforce development to community livability and access to affordable housing. Currently, Oregon produces enough lumber and plywood each year to frame around 375,000 single-family homes. Housing is a priority issue for our company, and we know Oregon’s cities and counties are equally committed to increasing housing access and affordability. The scale of the issue is enormous, and collaboration will be key. We look forward to working with private and public sector partners in the coming years on ways to better address these needs in our communities.

If you’d like more information on Hampton Lumber’s commitment to sustainable communities, visit www.hamptonlumber.com/sustainability.

Contributed by: Director of Public Affairs and Communications Kristin Rasmussen

Recruiting Success in Government

Jan 24, 2024 | AOC Business Partner

Sponsored content contributed by AOC Business Partner: IT Motives

When you think of hiring, what immediately comes to mind? Stacks of unqualified resumes, having to spend time sorting through them all to get to the qualified candidates, scheduling interviews, making job offers, negotiating back and forth, the list goes on and on.

Now, let me ask you, do you find that enjoyable? Is it the best use of your time and talent?

Chances are there’s a million other things you would rather be doing than trying to hire and especially so in this job market. With the unemployment rate at 3.7% it makes recruiting one of the most challenging aspects of being a manager.

Here is a pro-tip and best practice: don’t go it alone.

Hiring is hard enough, much less doing this all by yourself.

The “post and pray” method of recruiting…i.e., posting your job and praying that qualified candidates will start rolling in…is not a great strategy. Actually, it’s not even a good strategy.

Failed recruitments are a real thing. So, what do you do?

Three things:

1. Utilize the recruiting help you do have. Make your first stop to visit your HR department and talk to them about how they can help you. If you’re a larger government entity, it’s likely there are some external staffing partners that you can work with, and they can refer you to. Reach out to these companies proactively, find out who they are, how they work, and build a relationship with them. Here are questions to ask to make sure you are using them to the fullest effect:
   • What do you need from me in order to help us conduct a successful recruitment?
   • How can I streamline my hiring process, so we don’t lose candidates?
   • From your experience, how does the compensation we are offering compare to the current market? Are we competitive comp-wise?
2. If your government agency does not have staffing partners to work with, work with another government agency to leverage the cooperative agreement language in their contract. If you’re not familiar with the “co-op” model and the time you can save using it, here is a link to the ORS regarding co-op agreements https://shorturl.at/uFGLV. Your procurement team can help you with this. No need to reinvent the wheel if someone else has done the work for you!
3. Lastly, engage with your team to see if they might know of someone they could refer. Some of the best hires you’ll ever make are the one’s internally referred. Birds of a feather flock together as the saying goes. Leverage your team and their network and find out who they know.

Recruiting in this modern world is not easy and that’s why you want to turn to the experts such as HR, procurement, and third-party recruiters who do this work every day. Partner with them, get to know them, build relationships with them; and most importantly, do this before you need to hire again.

Contributed by Tony Seminary, CEO of IT Motives, a Native American-owned staffing and recruiting company based in Portland, Oregon. IT Motives has successfully made placements with government agencies such as the City of Portland, Portland Public Schools, and Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue. Tony can be reached at tony@itmotives.com if you would like to engage him in a conversation.