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...

How did the majestic forests of the Pacific Northwest come to be? That may seem like an esoteric question, but if we want to know how to protect and steward them as we enter the chaotic era of the climate crisis, it’s a question worth asking New research by University of Oregon researcher James Johnston is upending a big part of the conventional wisdom around the key role fire plays in the lifecycle of our forests. James is an Assistant Research Professor in U of O’s Institute for Res...

As I’m recording this in mid-April, we are coming out of the one of the warmest and driest winters on record in the Pacific northwest, and snowpack is at catastrophically low levels. Add in the Trump administration’s intentional sabotage and decimation of FEMA, the Forest Service, NOAA, and other federal agencies, and it is hard not to think that we are in for an unprecedented fire season. Aside from the threat of homes and communities burning, and smoke potentially blanketing vast swaths o...

I’m so excited to be back with a new interview after taking a little time off. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of bad news to come back to, but as ever, I am inspired by all the great work being done by activists and organizations to fight for a better world. One of those people is Len Montgomery, Director of Environment America's Great Outdoors Campaign and one of the leaders of the coalition to protect the Roadless Rule. Len has been working tirelessly to hold the line against the Trump...