Beaver State Podcast

Oregon's commercial fisheries are a vital part of Oregon's coastal economy. Aside from supplying fresh fish, crabs and pink shrimp to Oregon and the world, the families who work these fisheries, some going back decades, are the heart and soul of the towns and fishing villages up and down Oregon's 300 miles of coastline. Oregon's commercial fisheries are also sustainable, several to the highest levels of certification. We dive into four of Oregon's commercial fisheries in a conversation with ODFW to Fishery Management Section Leader Maggie Sommer.

While the beginning of October might be synonymous with buck deer seasons, waterfowl hunters start looking up at the sky for the familiar sights and sounds of northern birds moving south. ODFW's waterfowl biologist, Brandon Reishus, talks through the 2020/2021 outlook as well as waterfowl management in the age of Covid-19. 

ODFW Hatchery Program Manager Scott Patterson walks us through a half-dozen of the most common misconceptions about Oregon's fish hatcheries including why so many people complain about closing hatcheries, when only one hatchery has closed in the last decade. This episode will debunk a lot of the fish tales that you see floating around the Internet and give you a much better understanding about Oregon's hatchery program. 

ODFW Wildlife Chief Doug Cottom and Deputy Kevin Blakely join us for a look at Oregon’s mule deer management to wrap up this four-part series about this iconic western species. From cutting junipers to managing invasive grasses to modifying regulations, mule deer management benefits from the information passed along by ODFW researchers as well as representatives from the many western states that participate in the Mule Deer Working Group as well as from insight from ODFW’s own Mule Deer Initiative.

Dr. Darren Clark is a research scientist who studies many different Oregon wildlife species, but one of the most significant in terms of challenges is the iconic mule deer. Declines in mule deer populations in Oregon make for a lot of questions about how to effectively manage them. Dr. Clark’s research at both Starkey Experimental Forest and with a large-scale project that collared more than 500 mule deer to study migration routes and summer and winter range behaviors, provides wildlife managers with key data to help inform conservation decisions for these remarkable animals.

Mule deer range is characterized by beautiful but unforgiving landscapes. Mule deer numbers have always been determined in the margins between ever-changing weather patterns, food sources and predator numbers. Today they face additional problems like loss of winter range, obstacles to migration, poaching and invasive plants. Because their survival is so dependent on these razor thin margins, scientific research has driven conservation of the species. Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist Mark Hurley has been studying mule deer for much of his twenty plus year career. He's scrutinized everything from loss of nutrition to predator reduction in his quest to better understand mule deer survival and what management actions can be done to improve that. 

Mule deer, or muleys, are one if, if not the most, iconic critters in western North America. They are synonymous with wide-open landscapes, canyons, mountains and nearly any landscape found here. When a number of mule deer populations across several states declined several decades ago, the Mule Deer Working Group was formed to tackle conservation issues through sharing science and information across wildlife agencies. Jim Heffelfinger is the chair of the Mule Deer Working Group and the Wildlife Science Coordinator at the Arizona Game and Fish Department and an expert in mule deer morphology and evolution. 

Leland Brown is the non-lead hunting education coordinator at the Oregon Zoo, and co-founder of the North American Non-lead Partnership. His goal is to increase the voluntary use of non-lead ammunition for hunting and thereby improve landscape and ecosystem health, because it’s another important conservation challenge that hunters can solve themselves. We talk to Leland about his work with hunters as well as with hunting and conservation groups and dig into some of the science behind the discussion. 

Dr. Shaun Clements is at the interface between science and policy, where he looks at things like the impacts of climate change on our oceans, rivers and the fish that live there. Ultimately he helps create policy based on the scientific data he collects and sees. While many think of climate change as something that will happen way down the road, Dr. Clements is looking at the way warming rivers and increasingly acidic oceans are affecting the fish and wildlife that live there now. 

Like watching sausage being made, legislation isn't the prettiest of processes to delve into. But two major conservation bills have been moving through Congress, one of which was signed into law recently, and they have major ramifications for America's natural resources. ODFW's Conservation Policy Coordinator, Davia Palmeri, has carefully followed these and many other bills that shape our outdoor recreation and conservation efforts here in Oregon, and she talked to us about how that process works, what's happening now and what will happen next. Get ready to get into the sausage making of outdoor legislation.