Beaver State Podcast

Perhaps a "Game of Thrones" and a "Where the Crawdads Sing" mashup was overreaching for this episode of the Beaver State Podcast, but we're going to run with it, because Oregon's native Signal crawdad is losing its battle against more aggressive non-native crawdads brought into the state, some as long ago as the early 1900s, while in Europe and other parts of the world where Signal crawdads have b...

The Oregon Wildlife Foundation has been raising money for fish and wildlife conservation projects in Oregon for a long time. An integral partner of ODFW, the foundation has put money into land purchases like the Lower Deschutes River Wildlife Area, an important habitat for mule deer and bighorn sheep, as well as the Herman the Sturgeon habitat at Bonneville hatchery and many other projects over th...

Chronic Wasting Disease affects members of the Cervid family such as deer, elk and moose. It is an always fatal, infectious disease caused by a protein called a prion. It is spread by nose-to-nose contact between animals and through urine, feces, blood and saliva. CWD has never been detected in Oregon even through ODFW has tested more than 24,000 deer and elk for the disease over the last 20 years...

This is a slightly different episode from our usual format. We take you on a Do It Yourself sage grouse hunt on Steens Mountain after stopping in Hines to talk to District Wildlife Biologist Lee Foster about hunting the legendary mountain landscape and about sage grouse behavior. If you've ever wondered what it's like to hunt Steens Mountain or about hunting sage grouse, this episode might be for...

Dave Banks is the ODFW district fish biologist for the SE District, which covers like 21 percent of the state. It's mind-bogglingly large and can take hours and hours to drive across. But that's the way Dave likes it. He's a Great Basin kind of guy, so managing fisheries in the driest part of the state is kind of a natural fit for him. We talked about his district, the waterbodies that divide it a...

Generally called long-leader fishing but perhaps more appropriately called long-dropper fishing, ODFW staff and partners created this fishery several years ago to take pressure off the nearshore reefs and specifically yelloweye rockfish. By going a bit farther out and using gear that keeps bait off the bottom, anglers are able to target new and sometimes much-larger rockfish like canary rockfish a...

Amy Patrick is the policy director for the Oregon Hunter's Association. As such, she represents a lot of voices who are very passionate about the outdoors broadly and specifically about hunting. But many of us have forgotten everything we learned in that high school civics class we took 30 years ago. In this episode, we look at the various groups that give hunters a voice and a vehicle in the poli...

Oregon's Rocky Mountain goats were extirpated from the state, like many other animals, in the 19th Century. Just a few years ago, Rocky mountain goats from re-established populations in the Elkhorn Mountains were released near Mt. Jefferson, completing a remarkable comeback for a very unique species. ODFW's ungulate species coordinator Don Whittaker fills us in on these spectacular, high country d...

Kameron "Pono" Kadookak is Hawaiian but has spent much of his life fishing Oregon waters. Partly because his father raised him up to follow in his footsteps and partly because fishing runs in his veins. He's also spent time fishing in Hawaii, where he learned traditional methods of using specialized gear or techniques to catch fish from shore or pelagic fish from a boat. Today, Pono likes to mix t...

Snorkeling in cold water isn't for the faint of heart, but it's also not that difficult with a few pieces of gear and some knowledge about how to stay safe. Snorkeling Oregon's rivers opens a window on a world very few people see. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists spend a lot of time snorkeling to count fish and document wildlife in rivers, creeks and lakes all over the state, but...

Pronghorn are incredibly unique, and not just because they're the last-surviving member of the family Antilocapridae. They're the fastest land animal in North America. They have one of the longest land migrations of any animal in North America. Their eyesight is Swarovski-esque. They're not actually antelopes, but explorers familiar with African animals just had no idea what to compare them to whe...

Pronghorn are incredibly unique, and not just because they're the last-surviving member of the family Antilocapridae. They're the fastest land animal in North America. They have one of the longest land migrations of any animal in North America. Their eyesight is Swarovski-esque. They're not actually antelopes, but explorers familiar with African animals just had no idea what to compare them to whe...

When mid-coast district wildlife biologist Jason Kirchner starting seeing high numbers of cougar harvests and mortalities in the central coast range in Oregon, he wanted to know more about the population of cougars in his district. To do so, he'd need to capture and collar as many cougars as possible and then continue to take DNA samples of as many cougars as he could using teams of hounds to loca...

Oregon voters passed Measure 18 in 1994, effectively ending the practice of using hounds to pursue cougars and bears for sport. In this episode, we talk to ODFW's Wildlife Division Deputy Administrator Kevin Blakely and Carnivore Coordinator Derek Broman about the evolution of wildlife regulations since the passage of that ballot measure and we answer one of the most common questions we get, which...

The Controlled Hunt Draw has many moving parts. While a lot of it is accomplished through Boolean logic that applies to the business rules around things like preference points and non-resident tags, much of it is data entry and other human-oriented tasks that take many hours of application and error checking. And all of this begins after the change deadline on June 1. From June 1 to June 20th, it'...

A podcast in which we explore the origins of the saying, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." We also talk to ODFW's Angler Education Program Coordinator Amanda Boyles about the process of teaching someone to fish and the philosophies behind the angler who buys all the latest gear, and the traditional hook and worm angler. 

Oregon's Hunter Education Program has been around for a long time. The early focus was on firearm safety, but today the program's many priorities have broadened out to encompass safety but also rules and regulations, game tracking, ethics, survival and many other aspects of being in the outdoors. ODFW's Hunter Education Coordinator, Jered Goodwin, sat down for a wide-ranging look at Oregon's Hunte...

The Access and Habitat Program has been around since 1993. The legislature established the program as a funding mechanism to provide grants to private landowners, timber and agriculture corporations, sportsmen groups, natural resource agencies, and others for projects designed to increase public hunting access to private lands and/or improve wildlife habitat. Travis Schultz is the Access and Habit...

Trout is a classic first fish for many people. Whether that's a trout stocked in a lake by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife or a wild trout in a rainforest creek, trout make up a lot of our fishing memories. Many anglers oriented their calendars around the April 22 trout opener, but today, you can fish for trout 365 days a year somewhere in Oregon. We explore the love of trout fishing an...

The North Bank Habitat Management Area rises out of the North Umpqua River on dramatic cliffs before rolling out into oak savannahs, hardwood and conifer forests, rocky outcrops, grasslands and ash wetlands over its 6,581-acres that are set aside by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for the once-endangered Columbian White-tailed deer. In this week's episode, we talk to ODFW's DeWaine Jackson abou...

This is an episode you might want to share with those folks who are interested in tagging along on a hunting or fishing trip but who might not know the protocols yet. We talked to long-time hunting and fishing buddies Jay Remy and Chris Martin about how they navigate group dynamics and personal relationships when it comes to hunting and fishing with friends. 

Zoos and aquariums are often the first places kids encounter some of the critters they will ultimately be fascinated with the rest of their lives. Dr. Kathayoon Khalil is a conservation psychologist who studies these interactions and works to improve the relationship that humans have towards nature through education. Of course many zoos and aquariums also play a quiet, behind-the-scenes role in co...

Micah Rogers spends a lot of time looking through a microscope at the tiny world of phytoplankton, those microscopic, plant-like critters that make up the base of the marine food web. The reason she does this is to make sure none of those microorganisms is in such prevalence that it indicates a harmful algal bloom or HAB. When HAB's occur, they can raise toxicity levels in clams and crabs to the p...

Micah Rogers spends a lot of time looking through a microscope at the tiny world of phytoplankton, those microscopic, plant-like critters that make up the base of the marine food web. The reason she does this is to make sure none of those microorganisms is in such prevalence that it indicates a harmful algal bloom or HAB. When HAB's occur, they can raise toxicity levels in clams and crabs to the p...

Herpetology is the study of amphibians and reptiles, and herping is the practice of going out to find amphibians and reptiles, Chris Cousins explains in this episode of the podcast. Cousins is a PhD candidate at Oregon State University, where he focuses much of his attention on some of Oregon's most elusive salamander species. Cousins shares a lot of his adventures on his Instagram and sat down to...