Oregon Wildblog
The Instability of Stability: Remembering Jack Ward Thomas
On May 26, 2016, Jack Ward Thomas lost his battle with cancer. Thomas began his career with the U.S. Forest Service as a research wildlife biologist in 1966. He was one of the top scientists involved in the construction of the Northwest Forest Plan, the management framework that stopped the wholesale liquidation of Oregon's oldgrowth forests on national public lands and protected critical spotted owl and salmon habitat. He later became the 13th Chief of the USFS, serving from 1993-1996.
Are You a Wild One?
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.
The Political Double-Standard for Wolves
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.
A Eulogy for OR-4
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.
Oregon Wild Madness!
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.
Wildlife Corridors
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.