by Alex Baumhardt
Originally published on Oregon Capital Chronicle.com, September 18, 2023
For two days in early August, a dozen staff from the natural resources department of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians walked along the banks of the north Umpqua River, grabbing small, eel-like fish that were squirming in the mud.
by Joseph Winters, Newsletter Reporter
Originally published on Grist.org, March 7, 2023
Last month, Eugene became the first city in Oregon to pass an ordinance requiring new residential buildings to be fossil fuel-free. But the policy may never go into effect — not if the natural gas industry gets its way.
by Henry Houston
Originally published by EugeneWeekly.com on January 12, 2023
The U.S. Forest Service ended 2022 with a decision that local environmentalists are celebrating.
The federal agency decided to withdraw its plans for the Flat Country timber sale, which would have affected some more than 100-year-old trees in a nearly 75,000 acre project area in the Willamette National Forest near McKenzie Bridge.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, October 2, 2022.
If you are feeling helplessness about the state of the world, it’s understandable. In the past few weeks alone we have witnessed large swaths of Oregon blanketed by toxic air pollution yet again, hurricane Fiona leaving Puerto Rico without electricity and the Dominican Republic without drinkable water, one third of Pakistan still submerged by flood waters, four million people in Japan under evacuation and Alaska experiencing unprecedented flooding because of typhoons.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, August 28, 2022.
As the Western U.S. again endures record-breaking summer heat and enters our third decade of drought, it’s time for us to adopt bold, regionwide solutions that will support climate-resilient communities, safeguard drinking water sources, reduce wildfire risk, protect remaining mature and old-growth forests and enhance wildlife habitat.
by Monica Samayoa (OPB). Originally published on OPB.org, Aug. 17, 2022 7:19 p.m.
More than two dozen organizations along with Oregon lawmakers are calling on the state’s Department of Justice to investigate Oregon’s largest natural gas utility over what they claim is false advertising to the public and in schools.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, July 31, 2022.
Adequately describing just how destructive the last 10 days of the Supreme Court’s term was for our democracy, constitutional rights and the work to address and adapt to climate change is a murky task. The court’s disastrous spring term makes several things clear, not least of which is that we cannot rely on a group of nine people in robes to save our democracy or our climate. Indeed, the court has morphed into one of the greatest threats to civil rights and a livable future.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, June 26, 2022.
During a time of profound partisanship, Oregon’s federal elected leaders are working diligently to protect more of the state’s key arteries loved by Oregonians of every political persuasion: our rivers. Key to clean drinking water, recreation economies, sustainable rural development, imperiled species’ recovery, and wildfire and climate resilience, Oregon’s rivers are our state’s lifeblood.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, May 27, 2022.
NW Natural is running full page ads in this paper co-opting the word “choice” while half of our country’s population is facing the impending loss of a fundamental constitutional right. The company, like others wedded to climate-destroying fossil fuels, knows that the future is bleak for its dangerous product, so it is behaving like the dying industry it is by employing increasingly desperate rhetoric.
by Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director for Cascadia Wildlands
Originally published in The Register-Guard, May 1, 2022.
Last month, in honor of Earth Day, President Biden signed an executive order on Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies. While the EO represents progress in its acknowledgement that old-growth and mature forests are essential bulwarks against the worst impacts of climate change, its stated commitment to science-based management, and its inclusion of indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge as key to sustainable forest management, it does not — yet — actually safeguard the last of these forests here at home.
