Wes Siler, author of the creatively named “Wes Siler’s Newsletter”, recently published a series of articles on the Trump administration’s secret plot to gut the National Parks, and I’m delighted to have him on the show today. We’re also going to get into his thoughts on the forest service, the roadless rule, and the opportunity this moment of crisis provides us. https://wessiler.substack.com/p/leaked-documents-reveal-trumps-planhttps://wessiler.substack.com/p/on-public-lands-could-chaos-be-aA...

I’m joined today by Aya Cockram from the Breach Collective and Dylan Plummer of the Sierra Club to talk about the Eugene Clean Energy Fund, or ballot measure 20-388. The Eugene Clean Energy Fund is modeled after the wildly successful Portland Clean Energy Fund, and would impose a small tax on mega corporations to help fund clean energy projects in Eugene. But whether or not you live in Eugene, the Eugene Clean Energy Fund is absolutely worth following and getting involved with. We spen...

If you are hearing this before September 21st and you care about public lands, they need you to act! The Trump Administration is attempting to open 45 million acres of protected public lands to destructive road building, logging, and mining, by repealing something called the Roadless Rule. This has fortunately gotten a lot of press, but if you aren’t familiar, here;s a quick primer: Since 2001, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (or simply The Roadless Rule) has protected over 45 million acr...

Have you ever heard of a June Hog?? June Hogs were legendary, gigantic summer run Chinook salmon that could weigh up to 100 pounds on their way up the Columbia river. These days, the average Chinook caught on the Columbia weighs between 10 and 20 pounds. So what happened to these giants? You may be familiar with some of the reasons: dams, overfishing, habitat destruction, climate change, and hatchery fish. But what about where the fish are caught? I’m joined today by Misty MacDuff...

Let’s talk about something hopeful for a change! The ongoing renewable energy revolution is probably one of the most under-reported narratives in the story of climate change, and the American west is a literal hot bed for one of the most important green energy innovations - geothermal power. Geothermal power taps into the functionally limitless energy generated by earth’s molten core. It uses a fraction of the space that other green technologies like wind and solar require, and de...

Amidst the barrage of direct attacks that the Trump administration and their allies have been waging on public lands and the environment, you’d be forgiven for missing a potentially seismic shift in the Forest Service. On March 31st of this year (2026), the US Department of Agriculture, the agency which the Forest Service is a part of, quietly announced a dramatic restructuring of the agency which manages almost 200 million acres of public land. Responses have ranged from ‘Trump is destroying...

Today’s show features the second half of a fascinating conversation I had with Patrick Hunnicutt, Assistant Professor of Environmental Administration at the University of Oregon. Patrick is the co author of a yet to be published research project called Poisoning the Well: Process, recognition, and opposition to environmental policy in rural America. His research argues that grievances rooted in procedural injustice, for instance, the perception of resource extraction dependent communities tha...

My guest today is Patrick Hunnicutt, Assistant Professor of Environmental Administration at the University of Oregon. Patrick is the co author of a yet to be published research project called Poisoning the Well: Process, recognition, and opposition to environmental policy in rural America. His research argues that grievances rooted in procedural injustice, for instance, the perception of resource extraction dependent communities that they are excluded from meaningful participation in land man...

Oregon forests recently got a big win in court. Earlier this month, a US District Court Judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, had broken the law during the planning of its so-called “Blue and Gold” timber sale, and threw out the entire project. The “Blue and Gold” is a nearly 3,500 acre tract of mature and old-growth forest on the eastern slopes of the Coast Range between Eugene and Roseburg. I actually visited the Blue and Gold forest a couple years ago. It was immediately ...

Unless you frequent the same activist email listservs I do, you may have no idea that, completely aside from the Trump administration’s assault on public lands, there is a bill quietly making its way through congress that would privatize and clearcut over one hundred thousand acres Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Seems like a pretty obvious bill for environmentalists and allied congress people to oppose. But there’s a twist. The bill, called the Alaska Native Landless Equity Ac...