Coast Range Radio

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 lea...

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...

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 fin...

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, a...

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...

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 move...

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 confere...

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...

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 encoura...

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...

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 b...

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. Lea...

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 t...

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 Represe...

As we head into fire season, I wanted to revisit an episode from last year about an amazing documentary film called Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire. After a nationwide theatrical release and over a dozen awards, Elemental has just come out on streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, Google play, and Vimeo.   Fire is, and always has been, a permanent part of our western landscapes and ecosystems, but the debat...

As regular listeners may know, the Coast Range Association is a member of the Forest Climate Coalition, which is pushing for strong and durable protections of mature and old growth forests on our federal lands.   As you probably also know, mature and old growth forests are absolute superstars for preserving biodiversity and sequestering carbon.  Both of those ecosystem services are desperately nee...

Wildfires are a fact of life in the American west.  They have played a major role in our western ecosystems for millenia.  But as the climate crisis deepens, and more people move into wildfire country, fires loom larger and larger in the public consciousness.  Wildfires are reshaping everything from our landscapes to our politics, and the implications of how we respond to them will play a huge rol...

Oregon manages over half a million acres of state forest land.  That land is every bit as public as national forests, but historically, the state and the timber industry has treated it as just another timber plantation. But that’s finally changing, and right now, the Oregon Board of Forestry is considering a Habitat Conservation plan which would set aside almost half of that land for long term str...

Coast Range Radio’s interview with Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph. D.  We discuss a new messaging guide - Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change, Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management from Tim’s organization, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology. To find the guide and to learn more visit their website, fusee.org.  Tim is a leading expert in fire ecology and provides many insights to the lar...

We’ve already done a couple shows this spring on Oregon’s 2023 legislative session, and I would highly recommend you give those episodes a listen if you haven’t already. But today we’re going to talk about the bill I’m most excited about this year - Senate Bill 530 , aka the Natural Climate Solutions bill Amid all of the other pressing issues worthy of our time and energy, climate change stands al...

We talk a lot on this show and in the Coast Range Association work more broadly, about the invasive plague of global capital into our timberlands, all just about all other aspects of our world.   One of the key frontlines in the fight against that invasion is mega factory farms, and the pacific northwest is a huge land grab target for Big Ag.  I want to say right up top, this episode is not about...

Today’s topic is something I’ve been interested in learning more about for a while now.  Many of you may be familiar with the amazing carbon sequestration potential of mature and old-growth forests, and I hope our listeners are familiar with the Coast Range Association’s groundbreaking land reform work focusing on private timberlands. But forests aren’t the only ecosystem heroes in our fight again...

The 2023 legislative session is underway, and a LOT of interesting Bills have been introduced.   Speaking from experience I think the legislative process can be pretty daunting and somewhat byzantine if you’re not already familiar with it. So I wanted to make an episode to help folks understand some of the most important climate, forestry, and conservation focused bills that have been introduced,...

Aquaculture is the intentional cultivation of aquatic organisms like fish, mollusks, and aquatic plants, and humans have been practicing it in various forms for thousands of years. If I asked you to picture what aquaculture looks like, there’s a good chance that if anything comes to mind, it would be environmentally destructive salmon farms, which are basically the underwater equivalent to confine...

Today’s show is a perfect start to the new year - celebrating a win!  We’ve talked extensively in past episodes about the vital role that intact and recovering western forests play in carbon sequestration and preserving biodiversity. We’ve also talked about the threats to those forests.  Even as the climate emergency deepens and President Biden has issued executive orders to preserve mature and ol...