Beaver State Podcast

ODFW's Deputy Director of Fish and Wildlife Programs is also the Legislative Coordinator, a role Shannon Hurn has held for the last five legislative sessions. The intersection of fish and wildlife management and statewide lawmaking is necessarily complicated. ODFW's role is to inform lawmakers about potential impacts on our natural resources, and because Oregon is such a big state with many different animals and habitats, many proposed laws would impact our natural resources. We talked to Deputy Director Shannon Hurn about her role as the Legislative Coordinator and about how ODFW works with the Legislature to protect Oregon's fish and wildlife. 

You may know them from their popular YouTube fishing show, NODR, or you may know them from social media. If you don't know them, you need to know them. They are Keevin Collier Sr., aka Crappie Killa, Dishaun Berry, aka RippinLips, and Damon Collier, aka Westbred Diamond. They're brothers, community builders, fishing partners, storytellers, film producers, spokesmen, activists and philanthropists. We caught up with the fellas, who recently regrouped, to talk about their experiences being Black in the outdoors, what they've been doing and what they have coming up in the future. 

In our last myth-busting episode, we debunked myths about Oregon's hatcheries. In this episode, we're doing the same for hunt reporting. There seems to be a lot of confusion about why people have to report their hunt regardless of whether they were successful or not or even if they hunted in the first place. The simple answer is that the more data we have, the more opportunities we can provide. Assistant Wildlife Biologist Justin Dion, who compiles all this data for ODFW, breaks down why hunt reporting benefits hunters and how they can access that data to their advantage. 

A PhD student at Notre Dame created the hashtag #25DaysOfFishmas in 2016, and the rest, as they say, is history. Five years later, people around the world participate in the tradition of highlighting a new fish species each day day of the first 25 days of December. Katie O'Reilly created the hashtag initially to feature the fish of the Great Lakes region where she is working on her PhD, but soon other fish biologists and agencies like ODFW, picked up on the hashtag to feature fish in other regions. We talked to Katie briefly about why she created the hashtag and how it's helped to bring a lot of awareness to some very unique fish. 

If you live in Oregon, you're probably already familiar with razor clams. One of the most popular, family-friendly recreational activities on the coast, razor clamming is a fun tradition today and the clams have been an important food source on the coast for thousands of years. ODFW Shellfish Project Management Leader Matt Hunter talks about razor clam biology, management and about increasing biotoxin closures in recent years in this episode. 

While Oregon is at the very southern range of chum salmon, there are several rivers with good fall runs of these fascinating and charismatic fish. North Coast District fish biologist Robert Bradley talks about the north coast's chum runs, their unique life history strategy and about how they're faring in this short, twenty minute podcast. 

Renowned wildlife photographer Gary Kramer stopped for a chat with the Beaver State Podcast on a recent swing through Oregon to photograph cacklers, taverners and duskies in the Willamette Valley. Kramer is set to complete a book that will feature every waterfowl species on earth in the next year, and he talks about the challenges of completing such an ambitious project through the Covid and highlights some of the benefits of wildlife photography for conservation. 

ODFW invasive species biologist, Rick Boatner discusses his long career fighting to keep Oregon free of some of the worst invasive species out there, including quagga and zebra mussels and feral hogs. It's not always easy, and it takes a lot of partnerships, including landowners, neighboring states and the federal government. But Rick's job is to worry about what's already made its way here, what's on its way and what may end up here some day. 

We talk to National Park Service Ecologist Tom Rodhouse all about Oregon's bats and their habitats. This episode is a good primer on Oregon bats but also details some of the habitat issues that impact many of our 15 species of bats in Oregon. Rodhouse also breaks down some cool new research that focuses on machine learning and bat species identification through sound monitoring. 

Cougars are a conservation success story in Oregon. Nearly extirpated by the 1960s, a change to game mammal status helped the species recover over the last sixty years. This episode takes a look at the biology, life history strategies and management of Oregon's cougars with ODFW's carnivore biologist Derek Broman.