12-2 NWR Christmas Tree Shortage

This is your Northwest report for Friday, December 2 I'm David Sparks and I chatted with The Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association's Executive Director, Bryan Ostlund: "There was a recent article that said that Christmas  Trees in Oregon might cost more due to an oversupply in 2015 that caused growers to leave the market. The USDA says that harvest and sales of all trees in the US dropped 26% in 2015 compared to 2010. "We came off a period of time, typical of agriculture, when times are good, it seems like it is a good idea to plant more which is not the case but roughly 2000 to 2005 we were putting Christmas trees in the ground in excess of 10 million trees a year which was far more than we sold. Once those trees are in the ground, you have to live with that inventory for a while and we really started to see that oversupply cycle through and things really started turning in the 2015 harvest and that proved very much true come 2016."

Elsewhere, The Associated Press is telling us a U.S. Senator from Wyoming says he'll seek to reverse changes in how government officials plan for development across almost 250 million acres of public lands.

The Obama administration just announced an overhaul to an often-cumbersome process that dictates oil and gas drilling, grazing and other activities on lands administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The administration says its new rule will increase public involvement and government transparency.

But Sen. John Barrasso predicted it will take away authority from locally based government workers and increase the influence of officials in Washington, D.C.