Klamath Falls, Ore. – The Klamath County Board of Commissioners had a work session yesterday to hear from farmers about their experience with the grasshopper plague this summer. Commissioner Dave Henslee says he doubts the validity of the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s 2023 grasshopper report, which he says seemed to miss the event entirely.
After hearing from dozens of farmers about the economic toll the grasshoppers caused on agrarian interests in the lower Klamath basin, Dave Henslee seemed to solve the riddle of how the report missed the target so completely saying, “I’m really glad to hear you say that there were 77 reports. That is very good for me to hear you acknowledge that. But I was told by a representative of ODA, I will not get into names. This is not pointing fingers. But I was told, there were very few reports from private landowners. That’s why nothing was done. So I’m really concerned about the contradiction between very few reports from private landowners and you acknowledging that there were 77. That’s quite a contradiction for me.”
