Southern Oregon livestock district ruling overturned

Published 2:45 pm Wednesday, September 2, 2020

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The Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed an earlier ruling that annulled a 17,000-acre portion of a livestock district, which Curry County ranchers complained was disruptive.

However, the appellate court’s ruling has left some questions of law undecided, so the lawsuit against the livestock district by neighbor Dement Ranch will continue.

“Dement is still in the game, in that there are a number of issues that now need to be addressed,” said David Johnston, the ranch’s attorney.

In 2018, Curry County converted the 17,000-acre property from open range, where livestock can roam freely, to closed range, where owners must contain their animals behind fences.

The decision was made at the behest of the Weyerhaeuser timber company, which wanted to keep livestock off its forestland, but it angered surrounding ranchers who faced the cost of building fences on inaccessible and steep terrain.

The cost of fencing its boundary with the livestock district would be prohibitive for Dement Ranch, said Johnston, the company’s attorney.

“Dement probably couldn’t afford to fence in that property and would go out of business,” he said. “We’re not talking about flat rangeland. We’re talking very mountainous areas with valleys and crevasses.”

Dement Ranch filed a lawsuit against the county and convinced a state judge the 17,000 acres were wrongly annexed into an existing livestock district five miles away.

Curry County Circuit Judge Jesse Margolis agreed and annulled the district, ruling that annexing a distant, detached parcel into a livestock district would “render open range somewhat meaningless” because ranchers could be forced to build fences around a “patchwork” of isolated livestock districts.

New livestock districts must be at least 2,000 acres, so it makes “little sense” to allow a separate parcel “no matter how small and no matter how remote” to use the “simplified process” of annexation into an existing district, Margolis said.

Last year, the dispute prompted Oregon lawmakers to change statewide law to clarify that only adjacent properties can annex into a livestock district and that counties must notify affected landowners of the change.

However, the Oregon Court of Appeals has now decided that the original language of the statute allowed “any area” to be annexed into a livestock district, which must include non-contiguous tracts of land.

The appellate court said there is “nothing in the text” of the original law “from which we could imply a contiguity requirement,” and that lawmakers “could have included an express contiguity requirement” instead of stating that “any area” could be annexed.

“In sum, the legislature required the boundaries of the proposed district to follow certain lines, but it did not require that they be contiguous with an existing district,” the ruling said.

However, the Court of Appeals hasn’t resolved the issue of whether Weyerhaeuser’s legal description of the livestock district’s boundaries was correct. It also didn’t decide whether the district infringed on Dement’s property interests, as the ranch has easements allowing it to move livestock across Weyerhaeuser property.

If the livestock district forced Dement Ranch to keep its livestock off the property, that would have “essentially eliminated or voided Dement’s easements across that land,” said Johnston, the ranch’s attorney.

Circumstances may also have changed in the case, as Weyerhaeuser recently sold 149,000 acres of property in Southern Oregon.

However, it’s not yet clear this particular parcel was involved in the transaction, or whether a new owner would continue pursuing the district, he said.

Dominic Carollo, attorney for Weyerhaeuser, could not be reached for comment as of press time.

Curry County, which ultimately sided with Dement Ranch in the lawsuit, is still reviewing its options in the case, said John Huttl, its attorney.

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