Coast Range Radio

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...

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 pr...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 lifecyc...

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 f...

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 coal...

Dr. Robert Michael Pyle is a pioneer and legend in invertebrate conservation research and advocacy, as well as an accomplished author and poet.  In 1971, he founded the Xerces Society, which has grown into the most influential invertebrate conservation organization in the world. He is also the author of many books of prose and poetry, and a great storyteller.  This is part one of our conversation,...

The word fascism gets tossed around a lot these days, but what does that term even mean, and what does it mean to call, for instance, the Trump regime fascist as opposed to, or in addition to, authoritarian, or autocratic?  And what about terms like eco-fascism or petro-fascism? Last fall I interviewed University of Oregon Professor Sarah Wald and we touched on the term ‘eco-fascism’.  That sent m...

Today I’m featuring the second half of my conversation with author, speaker, entrepreneur, and wearer of many more hats, Jamie Workman. Jamie is most recently the co-author, along with Environmental Defense Fund executive director, Amanda Leland, of the new book, “ Sea Change: Unlikely Allies and a Success Story of Oceanic Proportions ”, which highlights the under reported success of collaborative...

Of all the myriad harms modern society is inflicting on our oceans, overfishing is right up there with climate change itself as one of the biggest threats to both marine ecosystems and the billions of people who rely on seafood as a major source of nutrition and income. The authors of the new book, “Sea Change: unlikely allies and a success story of oceanic proportions”, argue that there is a prov...

I have been a vocal critic of the so called “Fix our Forests Act” or FOFA, that is making its way through Congress. I think it is a cynical, bad faith bill that at best, doesn’t address the wildfire issues it purports to solve, and could actually make those issues much worse. Combined with the attempt to repeal the ‘roadless rule’, which protects vast swaths of public lands from road construction...

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 communities and ecosystems. Coast Range Radio has been highlighting the need for an alternative model of forest management that sustains both economies and ecosystems for years.  So when I heard about tod...

Today we’re joined by Nathan Daniel, Executive Director of the Great Peninsula Conservancy.  Nathan has helped guide some of the most ambitious conservation work going on in Western Washington - specifically on Kitsap Peninsula, the forested lowlands between Seattle and the Olympic mountains.  Big thanks to Andy Shoemaker for co-hosting this episode! https://greatpeninsula.org/ https://www.instagr...

Are Amazon data centers fueling a water contamination crisis in Eastern Oregon Rolling Stone recently published a major investigative piece asking that question. But Amazon is far from the only major corporation polluting the drinking water of Morrow County residents, and this crisis has been going on for decades. Oregon Rural Action has been organizing in and advocating for communities in Eastern...

Is the conservation movement being as effective as we need to be?   This is a moment in time when so much is on the line, and we need to act not just boldly and quickly, but wisely and strategically. To discuss all of this and more, my guest today is Mitch Friedman, founder and Executive Director of Conservation Northwest, and the author of a brand new memoir: “Conservation Confidential: A Wild Pa...

Should we be logging our drinking watersheds to protect them? That’s the question for residents of Walla Walla Washington, whose pristine drinking water  comes off of National Forest land. The Forest Service is planning to a major and multi-faceted project with the stated purpose of protecting Walla Walla’s drinking water from wildfire.   But what about the impacts of road building and commercial...

By now, many, if not most of you have heard that ICE has been secretly planning to build some kind of jail or detention facility in Newport here on the Oregon Coast. The community pushback has been immediate, fierce, inspiring, and seemingly successful, at least so far. This is a developing story, and only one skirmish in a wider war to protect our communities from these masked and lawless thugs....

My guest today is Britney Van Citters, Political and Organizing Director at the Oregon League of Conservation Voters. Britney joins to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency is being refashioned into the Environmental Destruction Agency, OLCV’s legislative Scorecard, and what we can do to push Oregon legislators to meet this moment of overlapping crises with real action. My email is coast...

I’m joined today by filmmaker Jesse Andrew Clark, to talk about his recent documentary, “Free to Grow”. Free to Grow uses deeply personal first person storytelling to highlight the harms of herbicide spraying on industrial timberlands in the Northwest. Show Notes: https://www.oldgrovefilms.com/forest-stories https://www.opb.org/news/article/blm-investigates-after-company-sprays-pesticide-on-public...

My guest today is University of Oregon professor and longtime activist, Sarah Wald.  Sarah is the author of multiple books, and as you’ll hear today, a profound thinker on a wide variety of issues concerning the conservation and environmental justice communities. This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever had on this show, in part because Sarah was so game to explore some really complicate...

As I’ve talked about on this show before, the Trump administration is using every tool available to target public lands and our mature and old-growth forests ( along with, of course, democracy, basic human rights, any shred of protection against corporate oligarchy, etc etc. But this is primarily a show about northwest conservation and climate, so as much as I want to rant about all the things, I’...

I don’t have to tell anyone how bleak things look at the federal level.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, if we’re being honest, there is not a lot that we can do at the moment to influence federal policy. But when it comes to climate and the environment, I’ve always been a little ambivalent about how much can be done at the state and local level. I want to be clear, local activism and organizing ar...

We’re heading East today!   Oregon’s Blue Mountains encompass some of the most beautiful landscapes and habitats anywhere. Within the Blue’s 15,000 square miles, you’ll find such Oregon gems as the John Day river, the Eagle Cap wilderness, Hell’s Canyon, and a huge percentage of Oregon’s forests.  But because they are geographically isolated from major population centers, they often don’t get the...