Oregon WildBlog

Raise a glass to summer in Oregon!

Join Oregon Wild and our Brewshed® Partners at the following events to celebrate local craft beer and the wild watersheds that make it possible:

The last two years we’ve seen Oregon politicians and special interest making gains attacking or trading away the things that make Oregon a special place. Luckily, we’ve also seen more Oregonians step up to defend our conservation values. But if we’re to succeed in protecting and restoring Oregon’s wildlife and wild places, we need to take things a step further.

That’s where Wild Ones comes in. 

Politicians in western Oregon counties have been complaining for years that tax dollars are scarce and they can’t balance their budgets. Their solution? Flush those scarce tax dollars down the toilet on a harebrained scheme to sue the federal government and increase clearcutting on public lands.

I hope you’ll bear with me for the following hypothetical scenario:

A controversial infrastructure project is being considered by Oregon’s Department of Transportation. There is intense public interest of the project, with 95% of public comments disapproving. While state law requires such projects to be evaluated by an unbiased peer review panel to be improved and revised before submitting to the Transportation Commission for a vote, in the name of political expediency, ODOT bureaucrats sidestep that review process.

We met three times, but I imagine that I barely registered in his life.

To him I was no more than an occasional scent on his trail or the source of a tortured imitation of a howl.
 
But to me, no nonhuman animal ever has been or likely ever will be as important or consequential in my life as OR4.

It's March and that means it's time for the fourth annual Oregon Wild Madness!

But before we tip off, you should know that not all "madness" is created equal.

For instance, earlier this year we all witnessed the kind of madness that fueled the armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and continues to call for privatizing public lands across Oregon and the West. That’s not the kind of unhinged craziness we’re talking about.

By Eleanor Solomon

Imagine yourself in your house. Now, imagine that you can never leave your house or you will risk getting run over by a car, or getting shot. Out your window you can see all your neighbor’s houses, and you want to talk to your neighbors, but they can’t leave their houses either. You and everyone else in the neighborhood are stuck in your houses, for the rest of your lives, until perhaps someone brave enough leaves her house and risks her life to reach other people. Pretty horrible, right? This is the situation many wild animals are in today. 

You've probably seen this commercial.

It’s a powerful thing when local businesses stand up for the environment, especially when they’re advocating for something as essential as water. 

Oregonians rank water as a top environmental priority, which makes sense; the tap water for two-thirds of Oregonians is sourced from our state’s lakes, rivers, and streams. Water is also the primary ingredient in craft beer, a product that continues to define Oregon culture and grow as an important sector of our economy. 

The bill to strip legal protection from Oregon wolves, HB 4040, passed the House this morning with a final tally of 33 yes, 23 no, 4 absent. While disappointing, the hard work of wildlife lovers like you convinced two thirds of Democratic Representatives to vote "NO" on this bad legislation.  Now we must turn our focus to the Senate.