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!
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 Oregon for years. They were heavily quoted in that Rolling Stone article, and they have been a strong voice on this, and other environmental justice issues.
So I’m delighted to be joined by Kaleb Lay, ORA’s research and policy director, and Zaira Sanchez, director of community organizing.
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 Path to a Less Polarizing and More Effective Activism.”
Conservation Confidential is a highly engaging story about Mitch’s activism journey and a provocative exploration of his philosophies around what effective activism and strategy looks like.
I found myself both agreeing and arguing with those philosophies, which, alongside some charismatic storytelling, made for a great read.
I’m so excited to speak with Mitch today, and I hope you’ll let me know what you think of this conversation.
Our show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out anytime!
Show notes:
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 logging in intact, native forest?
These questions over how and whether to use so called “active management” to mitigate fire risk grow more relevant every year, and there is a growing body of evidence that, in many cases, the Forest Service is not coming up with the right answers.
My guest today is Paul Lynn, a Walla Walla based mycology business owner turned community organizer. Paul has been creatively working to bring his community together to oppose commercial logging within the Walla Walla watershed, and I’m delighted to talk with him.
My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please let me know what you think of the show!
Show Notes:
https://substack.com/@wallawallawatershed
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.
The Newport City Council has been proactive, out front, and clear in their staunch opposition to ICE, so I invited Newport Mayor Jan Kaplan on to the show to talk through what’s going on with the facility, the huge groundswell of resistance, and what comes next.
Note: this interview was recorded on the morning on November 17th.
My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, I would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, guest ideas, all of that.
Show Notes:
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 coastrangeradio@gmail.com, I would love to hear what you think of the show!
Show Notes:
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
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 complicated points of tension within our movements. I definitely learned a lot, and was happy to have some of my beliefs and understandings challenged.
The show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out anytime with guest ideas, feedback, your harshest criticisms, or if you’re interested in helping make this show!
Research Links/Show Notes:
Referenced:
Sarah's Recommendations:
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’m going to keep it focused!)
As we gear up for a new round of the Timber Wars, I’ve been thinking a lot about the elders and unsung heroes of our community. Even as the fight ahead presents new challenges, we have a lot to learn from the OGs of the environmental and forest defense movements, and aside from that, they deserve to be celebrated!
So I’m excited to be interviewing some of those folks over the next few months in an occasional series I'm calling "heroes of the forest".
First up, my guest today is Francis Eatherington. Francis has been defending our northwest rainforests for decades, and I’m honored to have the chance to talk with her and learn from her wisdom and experience.
For our radio audience, you can hear the second half of our conversation on the Coast Range Radio podcast feed.
The show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out anytime with guest ideas, feedback, or if you’re interested in helping make this show!
Francis' trailcam youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@WOWTrailCam
Francis' Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/umpquawild/page7/
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 are incredibly important, and that’s where most of us can make the most difference. But even there, we run into issues. For instance, where I live in Lincoln County, voters passed a ban on aerial herbicide spraying in 2017, but that was overturned by a state court.
So how can we actually make a difference at the state and local level?
My guest today is Maya Van Rossum. Maya is, among many other things, the founder of the Green Amendment movement and the author of the book, The Green Amendment.
She makes a pretty compelling case for why passing state level constitutional rights to a healthy environment, also known as a Green Amendment, would be a powerful tool for climate and environmental justice, and I honored to have her join us.
As always, the show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out anytime with feedback, show ideas, hot takes, or whatever else is on your mind!
Learn more about the Green Amendment: https://forthegenerations.org/
Oregon: https://www.oceraunited.org/
Washington: https://wagreenamendment.org/
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 recognition they deserve.
That remoteness also makes them vulnerable to resource extraction. And right now, the Forest Service, which manages millions of acres of public land within the Blues, is revising their management plan under the most environmentally hostile administration in my lifetime.
To learn more about this special part of Oregon, and how to defend it, I’m joined today by Paula Hood, co-director of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project.
And as I mentioned last week, I am looking for volunteers to help with produce the show! That means help hosting, researching, editing, whatever! No experience necessary.
To learn more, or if you have feedback, guest ideas, etc, you can email coastrangeradio@gmail.com.
Show Notes:
BMBP Action Alert: https://bluemountainsbiodiversityproject.org/2025/09/06/action-alert-for-blue-mountains-forest-plan-revision-scoping-comments/
BMBP Vision for the Blues: https://bluemountainsbiodiversityproject.org/2025/08/04/an-overarching-vision-for-the-blue-mountains-forest-plan-revision/
My guest today is author and journalist, Paul Koberstein. I spoke with Paul in 2024 about a book he co-authored called “Canopy of Titans: The Life and Times of the Great North American Temperate Rainforest”.
I recently read a great new article of his entitled “Greenwashing in the Evergreen State”, exploring how an industry funded quasi-academic entity got the Democratically controlled Washington State Legislature to endorse industrial logging as beneficial for the climate.
I’m a sucker for exposing industry greenwashing, so I’m delighted to have Paul back on the show to talk about his deep dive into the shady world of the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, or CORRIM, as we will be referring to them throughout the show.
Are interested in radio and/or podcasting?? I am looking for volunteers to help with produce the show! That means help hosting, researching, editing, whatever! No experience necessary.
To learn more, or if you have feedback, guest ideas, etc, you can email coastrangeradio@gmail.com.
Show Notes:
Greenwashing in the Evergreen State: https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/the-logging-lobby-in-the-evergreen-state##
Canopy of Titans: https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/canopy-of-titans/?mc_cid=6d93e8f667&mc_eid=UNIQID
If you’re hearing this before September 19th, I need you to do me a favor: the Trump administration is attempting to eliminate a policy called the “Roadless Rule”, which would open tens of millions of acres of vibrant forests and public land to industrial logging and mining.
The Forest Service is accepting public comment on the plan to eliminate the Roadless Rule until September 19th, and it is important that we flood them with comments and petitions to leave these critical forests and ecosystems intact!
And look, I’m not going to pretend like our comments are going to stop the Trump administration.
But they serve multiple other critical functions, like strengthening resistance within the Forest Service, de-legitimizing the administration’s actions, bolstering lawsuits, and laying the groundwork for stronger protections in the future.
To learn more about the Roadless Rule and how to take action, I’m sharing a really well done presentation by the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club and Representative Andrea Salinas.
Thanks to Kai McMurtry and the Oregon Sierra Club for sharing this presentation, please check out the great work that they are doing throughout the state!
You can find all action links and resources in the show notes of the podcast feed, or by connecting with the Sierra Club or your favorite conservation org. I personally think that Cascadia Wildlands action page is very simple and straightforward, and you can find that at cascwild.org or bit.ly/cascadiaroadlessrule.
Show Notes:
I just got back from a really amazing backpacking trip in the wilderness of Wyoming, and I’ve been reflecting on how nature, wilderness, sacred lands, whatever you want to call them, have always been a source of refuge, spiritual rejuvenation, and healing for humans.
But a question I and so many others are grappling with right now is, how do we continue to find inspiration and healing in a world that is being so deeply harmed.
My guest today is author, travel writer, and speaker, Adam Sawyer. Adam is leading a series of facilitated discussions through the Oregon Humanities Project around grieving in nature and addiction recovery in nature.
Adam talks and writes openly and beautifully about how nature helped heal him on his journey through addiction and grieving, and I am thankful to be able to share this conversation with you all.
I love hearing feedback, guest ideas, or just a hello, and you can reach me at coastrangeradio@gmail.com or on the coast range radio instagram feed.
Show Notes:
https://adamsawyer.substack.com
Just keeping up with the Trump administration’s all out war against our environment is exhausting. Fortunately, we in the northwest are blessed with incredible activists, organizers, and more relevant to today, environmental attorneys to help us understand the attacks so we can fight back effectively.
One of the best of those attorneys is Brenna Bell, formerly of 350pdx and now with the Crag Law Center. This episode features a recent presentation Brenna gave along with Lauren Anderson of Oregon Wild and Grace Brahler from Cascadia Wildlands.
They covered the seismic changes happening via the Executive Branch, including to the National Environmental Policy Act, how the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act has changed to dramatically limit protections for species, and a lot more.
I’m delighted to be joined today by Rebecca Heisman, freelance journalist and the author of “Flight Paths: how a passionate and quirky group of pioneering scientists solved the mystery of bird migration”.
Flight Paths is a fascinating and engaging deep dive into the history and science of bird migration research, and how understanding bird migration matters for effective conservation efforts.
My 'emailbox' is always open coastrangeradio@gmail.com, drop me a line with show ideas, guest suggestions, scathing criticisms, or whatever :)
Research Links:
I’m off this week, so you’re going to hear the second half of one of my favorite interviews, with author and activist Rand Schenk, which I first released in July of 2024.
I loved this conversation, but I feel like it needs a little context at this point, since 2024 seems like a millenia ago, and the fierce arguments forest defenders and policy makers were having about forest management now seem like friendly disagreements.
Obviously our politics have undergone a cascadia megathrust level shift since I recorded this interview, and the politics and management of public lands is very much caught up in that devastation.
Some of the topics we covered, like to what extent the forest service is acting in good vs bad faith feel like moot points, and others, like Biden’s Mature and Old Growth Rule and the Northwest Forest Plan amendment, have been scrapped entirely.
With that said, Rand’s book about the history of the Forest Service is just as relevant today, and gives some important perspective on the changing nature of how we value forests.
And I’d like to think that our conversation still holds some relevance as well, but that’s for you to judge.
Speaking of judging, let me know your verdict on the the show! My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, and all of our episodes are available for free on any podcast app.
I am also so grateful to be carried on community radio stations across Oregon and even into Washington. I make this show for free, but local media needs your support now more than ever, so please donate to your community radio station, subscribe to your local paper if you have one, and if you have any goodwill left over, tell your friends about Coast Range Radio.
Finally, stay tuned at the end of the show for a song I recorded a while back with my band, The Road Sodas. If you like it, you can download our music for free at https://www.theroadsodas.com/
(I’m off this week, so I’m featuring one of my favorite interviews, which I first released in July of 2024. I hope you like it!)
Today’s episode is part one of a two part interview with Rand Schenk, author of a fascinating and timely new history of the Forest Service, its founder, Gifford Pinchot, and over 100 years of forest management and mismanagement in the Pacific Northwest.
The book, “Forest Under Siege: The Story of Old Growth After Gifford Pinchot”, explores the Forest Service’s progressive populist origins, how it abandoned its founding mission of conservation and drove our old growth forests to the brink of extinction, and how, or if, the agency is entering a new restoration ecology era.
Forest Under Siege is available at local bookstores throughout the northwest, and you can order a copy online by searching for Forest Under Siege.
My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com
I’m recording this in the aftermath of what I consider a largely failed Legislative session in Oregon and the passage of what will likely be remembered as one of the most extreme and destructive pieces of legislation in modern history at the federal level, aka the One Big Bill.
On the state level, Democrats failed to pass their major priority, a much needed transportation funding overhaul, despite having supermajorities in both chambers, and also failed on a number of other legislative fronts.
I plan to devote multiple episodes in the coming weeks and months on Oregon (and hopefully Washington) politics, but this episode is going to focus on the disaster that is the current federal administration and ruling party.
Today’s episode is a recording of a presentation by members of the Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance (PNWFCA) untangling the nefarious and overlapping schemes and policies designed to privatize and clearcut our public lands.
Speakers:
Earlier this year, I did an episode on the Legacy Forest Defense Campaign in Washington.
Since then, that campaign has only heated up, and in May, activists took to the forests in the Olympic peninsula to set up tree sits and road blockades in protest of State Land timber sales in the Elwha Watershed.
To learn more about protecting the Elwha watershed, Earth Law philosophy, and more, I’m delighted to be joined by Elizabeth Dunne, the director of legal advocacy for the Earth Law Center.
Coast Range Radio is free on all podcasts apps, and the show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out and let me know what you think of the show!
And quick note: this conversation was recorded on June 13th, so check out elwhalegacyforests.org for timely updates!
Show Notes:
https://www.earthlawcenter.org/elwha-legacy-forests
https://elwhalegacyforests.org/
One of the things I try to do on this show is get away from the binary good vs bad framing that so many of us fall into, and explore the messy complexities and grey areas within the environmental and conservation movement here in the northwest. That’s why I enjoyed today’s conversation so much.
My guest today is Tabatha Rood. Tabatha is a former Forest Service National Environmental Policy Act planner and currently leads the Wild Rivers Coast Forest Collaborative in Southwest Oregon.
As a former Forest Service project planner and collaborative leader, Tabatha brings a set of experiences and perspectives that are often missing in our broader dialogues.
As you’ll hear, Tabatha and I didn’t agree on everything in our conversation, and there were a number of topics that we didn’t have time to go as deep on as I would have liked. But I really appreciated her willingness to engage with me on some thorny topics, and I found her perspectives really valuable.
As always, Coast Range Radio is free on all podcast apps, which is a great way to share this episode.
We are also broadcast on community radio stations across the northwest. A lot of them are struggling right now, and I cannot ask strongly enough that you support local, independent media!
My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, let me know what you think of the show!
I’m willing to bet that most Oregonians don’t know who our State Treasurer is, much less what the State Treasury does.
But we should. The office of State Treasurer, currently Elizabeth Steiner by the way, is a powerful position, and invests a huge amount of public money.
How that money is invested matters, and it really matters that our public dollars and pension funds are deeply invested in the fossil fuel industry.
The statewide coalition Divest Oregon has been calling out the treasury’s dirty investments for several years now, and they’ve also put out policy proposals, research, and legislation to shift our investments to help foster a clean energy economy.
I’m delighted to talk with two of their members today about the work they do, how it affects all Oregonians, and how to help.
As always, Coast Range Radio is free on all podcast apps, which is a great way to share this episode. My email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, let me know what you think of the show!
Show Notes:
https://www.divestoregon.org/The-Pause-Act--2025
An absolute gem of a conversation with Oregon author M.L. Herring about her new book, “Born of Fire and Rain: Journey Into a Pacific Coastal Forest”.
Born of Fire and Rain is one of the best books I’ve ever read on our bioregion. It is a masterfully guided hike through virtually every aspect of the Pacific Coastal rainforests, seamlessly weaving in geology, ecology, timber politics, personal narrative, and more into a beautiful tapestry of this place we call home.
M.L. is the pen name of Oregon State University professor emerita Peg Herring, and I am so delighted have her on the show today.
Before we get started, I have to give my usual housekeeping: Coast Range Radio is free on all podcast apps, which is a great way to share this episode with a friend or two!
And the show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, reach out anytime with thoughts or show ideas!
Born of Fire and Rain is available at bookstores throughout the northwest, or check out:
Today’s episode is all about one of the most charismatic of all charismatic megafauna, the sea otter! Sea otters are a crucial part of nearshore marine ecosystems, but they were wiped out along the Oregon coast over 100 years ago.
The Elakha Alliance has been working tirelessly for years to bring them back, and I’m so excited to be joined by Jane Bacchieri and Chanel Hason to learn more.
As a note, we did an episode with Elakha co-founder Bob Bailey a few years ago, but I’ve been wanting to check back in with them for a while now.
As always, the show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please reach out anytime!
Show Notes:
As of this recording on May 6th, we are well into the 2025 Oregon Legislative session. And I, like many others, am still struggling to find a coherent throughline to the session.
And many climate justice advocates are increasingly wondering whether Oregon’s Democratic led government has given up on meaningful climate action. But there is still a lot that can happen in the next two months of the legislative session, and your voice really does matter.
To walk me through where things stand, and where we as citizens can make the greatest impact this session, I’m joined by my old boss, State Representative Mark Gamba.
Mark Gamba represents Oregon’s House District 41, which encompasses Milwaukie and parts of Southeast Portland. He is also one of Oregon’s most outspoken climate advocates, and one of my favorite returning guests.
As always, if you appreciate Coast Range Radio, which is now completely independent, please help me out by recommending or sharing an episode with two friends!
The show email is coastrangeradio@gmail.com, please let me know what you think of the show!
Landscape Conservation in the Kitsap Peninsula, with Great Peninsula Conservancy
29:00
Is Amazon Fueling A Water Crisis in Oregon?
32:55
Conservation Confidential: Mitch Friedman's "Wild Path to More Effective Activism"
35:15
Why is the Forest Service Trying to Log Walla Walla's Drinking Watershed??
43:59
Newport Crushes ICE Facility! (at least for now), With Mayor Jan Kaplan
29:00
Trump's EPA Sabotage, Is Oregon's Legislature Failing Us, and more, with Britney Van Citters of OLCV
39:30
Free To Grow - Aerial Herbicide Spraying in Industrial Timberlands, With Filmmaker Jesse Andrew Clark
33:04
Eco-Fascism, Public Lands Attacks, and the Power of Narratives, with Professor Sarah Wald
1:02:00
Heroes of the Forest, Part 1: Francis Eatherington
55:26
Maya Van Rossum's Green Amendment Movement
48:31
Defending Eastside Forests, with the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
37:48
Greenwashing in the Evergreen State, with Journalist Paul Koberstein
28:59
Action Alert! Defending the "Roadless Rule", with the Sierra Club and Representative Andrea Salinas
46:25
Grieving In Nature, and Grieving For Nature, with Adam Sawyer
28:59
How the Trump Administration is Sabotaging Environmental Regulations
56:14
Flight Paths: Why Understanding the Mystery of Bird Migration Matters for Effective Conservation
29:00
Best of (With Updates!): Forest Under Siege, with Author Rand Schenk - Part 2
28:57
Best of: Forest Under Siege, with Author Rand Schenk - Part 1
29:00
The New Federal Attacks On Our Forests, Explained - PNWFCA Presentation Series, Part 1
59:05
"Earth Law" and the Elwha Watershed Campaign, with Elizabeth Dunne of the Earth Law Center
31:44
A Frank (and Fun!) Conversation with a Former Forest Service NEPA Planner
42:19
Why is Oregon's Treasury is Addicted to Fossil Fuels?! With the Divest Oregon Coalition
35:38
Born Of Fire And Rain: Journey Into A Pacific Coastal Forest, With Oregon Author Peg Herring!
29:00
What's Up With Sea Otter Reintroduction In Oregon?
29:00
Why Do Oregon Democrats Keep Killing Climate Legislation, With State Rep. Mark Gamba
44:35