Coast Range Radio

It is important to celebrate our victories, and today we get to talk about two of them!

The Oregon Board of Forestry (BoF) recently voted to approve its first ever Habitat Conservation Plan on State Forests, and a bill to fully fund and strengthen Oregon’s Marine Reserve Program sailed through the recent legislative session.

To talk about these victories and get updates on what’s ahead for both of these campaigns,...

We often think of the land and the sea as separate worlds that have little to do with each other.  But that barrier is much more fluid and interconnected than many people realize.

We’ve talked on this program before about what folks call the ‘Land-Sea Connection’, and today we’re going to talk about the ‘connection’ piece of that equation, estuaries! Estuaries are where the land and sea meet and intermingle, and are some o...

On today’s show, Canopy of Titans: the Life and Times of the Great North American Temperate Rainforest!

Canopy of Titans is a new book written by journalists Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate which shines a light on the critical importance of protecting the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest.

Paul and Jessica spent years reporting and researching for this book, traveling from the redwoods all the w...

Where I live in the coast range, I am surrounded in all directions by industrial timber plantations for miles in all directions.

Now, I have no problem with logging.  I think silviculture is a good and noble profession.  But it is plain for anyone to see that the short rotation, financialized plantation management practiced by the Wall Street investors who own the vast majority of private timberland is destroying our commu...

For those of us who work to make a positive impact on the world, there is often a default towards focusing on big national and international level issues.

Between the rapidly worsening climate crisis, national campaigns to preserve Mature and Old growth forests, decarbonization and electrification fights, never-ending election cycles, on and on,  it’s easy to forget that there are important local, grassroots struggles happ...

I don’t have to tell anyone reading this that here in the west, wildfires are a fact of life. I’m also sure that most folks are already aware that the climate crisis, combined with more and more homes being built in and around forest lands is creating an escalating cycle of devastation in fire prone communities.

There is a tremendous amount of pressure on politicians and agencies to act, or at least to be seen to be acting...

This is our first episode of 2024, and I can’t think of a better guest to start the year off with than State Representative David Gomberg.

Representative Gomberg represents House district 10, which encompassess Lincoln County, as well as parts of western Benton and Lane counties, and happens to be my State Representative.

Among many other positions, he serves as co-vice chair of the powerful Ways and Means budgeti...

It’s dark, it’s cold, and it’s very rainy.  We may be a couple weeks from the solstice as of this recording, but for my money, we’ve definitely entered another coast range winter.

I love to use this time of year to reflect and take stock, so I figured it was a great time to invite the Coast Range Association’s Executive director, Chuck Willer back for our annual year in review episode.

You can find out more about ...

I recently had a great interview with Brenna TwoBears from the Indigenous Environmental Network, but I couldn’t fit our whole conversation into our last full episode.

Brenna came on to talk about IEN’s ongoing fight to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, and how you can take action by submitting comments to the army corps of engineers by December 13th.   But we also covered a lot more ground, and I really appreciated wh...

Today, we have not one, but two amazing guests talking about two important and timely topics: the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, and the recent Elliot State Forest drama.

Bob Sallinger joins to walk me through the bombshell that Oregon State University just dropped on the Elliott State forest process, and why them walking away might actually be good news.

But first, we’ll hear a short excerpt of my conversation wit...

This is part three of our Forests Over Profits series, featuring selected presentations from the Forests Over Profits Conference that the Coast Range Association helped organize this September.

I’m so excited for you to hear this talk by John Brush of the Cedar Moon Collective and Tryon Life Farm, entitled, "Should Anyone Own The Forest?".

From the "Rights of Nature" legal movement, to communit...

This episode is part two of our Forests Over Profits series, featuring excerpts from our Forests Over Profits conference and protests this past September.  If you’re not familiar with this series, here’s what you need to know:

This September, the Coast Range Association, in partnership with many other amazing organizations, organized a series of protests and a day long Forests Over Profits conference in response to a corpo...

Hopefully, you’ve already heard our last two episodes on the Who Will Own The Forest conference, or maybe you attended the Forests Over Profits protest or counter-conference that We helped organize in response.

If not, I would highly encourage you to go back and listen to the episode I did a few weeks back called, “Who Will Own the Forest, with Brenna Bell” so you can have some context for this episode.  You can also go to...

This September, The Coast Range Association, along with partners like 350pdx, Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network, the Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance, and many more, organized a major protest and counter conference in response to the Who Will Own The Forest timber investor conference.

If you aren’t familiar with the Who Will Own the Forest Conference, I’d encourage you to listen to the ep...

We talk a lot on this show about the devastation wrought on our environment and communities by invasive capitalism, and today we get to talk about something tangible we can do to fight back!

On September 26-28, Wall Street investors will join timber corporations, big oil, carbon offset & biomass companies in Portland for their annual “Who Will Own the Forest?” conference.

With tickets costing over two thousand dollars ...

One of the most important questions in the drive to rapidly decarbonize our society is how to replace fossil fuel generated electricity with clean, renewable sources

And one of the key questions there is, what counts as clean and renewable?

Today’s episode is all about biomass energy, which is essentially the burning of pelletized wood for electricity.  The Biomass industry is valued at over 100 billion dollars per year and...

North Coast Land Conservancy, or NCLC, has been working to conserve land along the northern Oregon coast and coast range for nearly 40 years, and Katie Voelke has been its Executive Director since 2008.

In this interview, she discusses NCLC's conservation philosophy, Oregon's land-sea connection, reckoning with the ownership model of conservation on stolen indigenous lands, and more.

Learn more about Nor...

This episode is part two of my conversation with State Representative Mark Gamba, breaking down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2023 legislative session

Mark Gamba represents house district 41, which encompasses Milwaukie, Oak Grove, and parts of Southeast Portland.  I knew I could trust him to give an honest assessment of his first year in Salem, and he really delivered.  

You don’t need to listen to episode one bef...

As the dust settles on another chaotic legislative session, I wanted to look back, revisit some of the bills we dug into on previous episodes, and explore how we can keep pressure on our legislators between sessions.

I couldn’t think of a better person to guide us through the good, the bad, and the ugly of this legislative session than one of oregon’s most tireless climate champions, State Representative Mark Gamba.  

I’ve ...