Coast Range Radio

How did the majestic forests of the Pacific Northwest come to be?

That may seem like an esoteric question, but if we want to know how to protect and steward them as we enter the chaotic era of the climate crisis, it’s a question worth asking

New research by University of Oregon researcher James Johnston is upending a big part of the conventional wisdom around the key role fire plays in the lifecycle of our forests.  James is an Assistant Research Professor in U of O’s Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments.

This is a surprisingly fun and fascinating dive into the ecology and politics of forest stewardship on westside forests!

Special thanks to Beth Sheppard for co-hosting today's episode.

Show Notes:

https://www.klcc.org/environment/2026-02-08/university-of-oregon-research-overturns-long-held-ideas-about-forest-fires-in-the-western-cascades

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.70474

https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-trump-administration-orders

https://www.instagram.com/coastrangeradio/

As I’m recording this in mid-April, we are coming out of the one of the warmest and driest winters on record in the Pacific northwest, and snowpack is at catastrophically low levels.

Add in the Trump administration’s intentional sabotage and decimation of FEMA, the Forest Service, NOAA, and other federal agencies, and it is hard not to think that we are in for an unprecedented fire season.

Aside from the threat of homes and communities burning, and smoke potentially blanketing vast swaths of the country for months, we in the conservation and climate communities need to prepare for all out propaganda blitz from the timber industry and their allied politicians as they use people’s fear to open up public lands for industrial extraction.

Wildfire is a fact of nature, and we do have to learn again to coexist with it.  But far too often environmentalists focus only on the science, ignoring or downplaying the lived experience and real fears the general public has.

It’s not enough to be right.  We need to be more strategic about the stories we tell and what we focus on.  And that is what today’s show is all about.

The Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance has just released a new wildfire messaging guide designed to cut through the confusion and misinformation about fire, offering simple and effective messaging to reframe the wildfire narrative in a way that centers forest health and community safety over backcountry logging interventions.

Alex Budd is an organizer with the forest climate alliance and one of the main authors of the new guide, and he joined me to talk through it. 

Links:

https://forestclimatealliance.squarespace.com/wildfire-guide

Roads increase risks of wildfires:

Home Hardening Tips: https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/hardening-your-home/

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I’m so excited to be back with a new interview after taking a little time off.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of bad news to come back to, but as ever, I am inspired by all the great work being done by activists and organizations to fight for a better world.

One of those people is Len Montgomery, Director of Environment America's Great Outdoors Campaign and one of the leaders of the coalition to protect the Roadless Rule.

Len has been working tirelessly to hold the line against the Trump administration’s assault on public lands, and one the the most important fights is the campaign to save the Roadless Rule, which protects tens of millions of acres from commercial extraction.

Since you are reading this anyway, please consider leaving the show a rating and review so more folks can find the show!  As always, my email is [email protected]. 

Show Notes:

Roadless Area Maps:

 - https://oregonwild.org/resource/oregon-inventoried-roadless-areas-interactive-map/

 - https://outdooralliance.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=bffb3fe5fdfb43519a84c6a0cf4f8ff5

More roads cause more fires: https://www.wilderness.org/sites/default/files/media/file/Summary%20NFS%20roads%20fire%20paper%20-%202025.pdf

Roadless Area Conservation Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3930/text/ih?overview=closed&format=xml

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Dr. Robert Michael Pyle is a pioneer and legend in invertebrate conservation research and advocacy, as well as an accomplished author and poet.  In 1971, he founded the Xerces Society, which has grown into the most influential invertebrate conservation organization in the world.

He is also the author of many books of prose and poetry, and a great storyteller.  This is part one of our conversation, part two will be out next week.

This episode was researched and co-hosted by Coast Range Radio volunteer, Griffin Reim!

Show Notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Michael_Pyle

https://www.xerces.org/

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide:  https://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/where-bigfoot-walks/

The Dark Divide: darkdividefilm.com 

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The word fascism gets tossed around a lot these days, but what does that term even mean, and what does it mean to call, for instance, the Trump regime fascist as opposed to, or in addition to, authoritarian, or autocratic?  And what about terms like eco-fascism or petro-fascism?

Last fall I interviewed University of Oregon Professor Sarah Wald and we touched on the term ‘eco-fascism’.  That sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole on that term and the dangerous myths that many environmentalists may be unwittingly buying into.

Sarah was kind enough to connect me with the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative, a collective working to expose eco-fascism ideas and myths that permeate our culture and media.

Maybe this sounds like an esoteric subject, but I think it has real world importance, because our beliefs and actions are often shaped by stories and myths that are so subconsciously ingrained in us, they become like the air we breathe.

My guests are two of the co-founders of the Anti-Creep Initiative, co-presidents of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and professors at the University of Connecticut, April Anson and Alex Menrisky. 

Send me an electronic mail sometime at [email protected] and let me know what you think of the show!   

Show notes:

• https://english.uconn.edu/person/alex-menrisky/
• https://april-anson.com/
• https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517918682/everyday-ecofascism/
• https://www.asle.org/wp-content/uploads/Against-the-Ecofascist-Creep.pdf
• https://spencersunshine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/40ways.print_.pdf

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Today I’m featuring the second half of my conversation with author, speaker, entrepreneur, and wearer of many more hats, Jamie Workman.

Jamie is most recently the co-author, along with Environmental Defense Fund executive director, Amanda Leland, of the new book, “Sea Change: Unlikely Allies and a Success Story of Oceanic Proportions”, which highlights the under reported success of collaborative, rights-based management in restoring decimated oceanic ecosystems, and the human communities who rely on them, around the world.

It’s an inspiring story. and you can learn all about it in part one of our conversation.

Today in part two, we get into other aspects of his work, including  so-called water credit trading systems, his experience as a wildland firefighter and how that shapes his work on bringing more fire (and chainsaws) back to forests, and whether we should, in his words, “Own The Wild”.

Show Notes:

https://www.jamesworkman.com/

https://www.edf.org/sea-change

https://www.instagram.com/coastrangeradio/

Of all the myriad harms modern society is inflicting on our oceans, overfishing is right up there with climate change itself as one of the biggest threats to both marine ecosystems and the billions of people who rely on seafood as a major source of nutrition and income.

The authors of the new book, “Sea Change: unlikely allies and a success story of oceanic proportions”, argue that there is a proven policy that has been working around the globe to rebuild fish populations while also creating sustainable and economically just commercial fisheries.

My guest today is Sea Change co-author, Jamie Workman.  Jamie is an activist, author of multiple books, a speechwriter to U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and an all around raconteur.

Jamie and I covered so much ground (or water??) that I am breaking our conversation into two parts.

In part one, we go deep on the devastating impacts of overfishing and why he believes that a collaborative, rights based approach is the path towards recovery and sustainability.

In part two, we’ll get into other aspects of his work, including  so-called water credit trading systems,  his experience as a wildland firefighter and how that shapes his work on bringing more fire (and chainsaws) back to forests, and whether we should, in his words, “Own The Wild”.

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I have been a vocal critic of the so called “Fix our Forests Act” or FOFA, that is making its way through Congress. I think it is a cynical, bad faith bill that at best, doesn’t address the wildfire issues it purports to solve, and could actually make those issues much worse.

Combined with the attempt to repeal the ‘roadless rule’, which protects vast swaths of public lands from road construction and extraction, and the Trump administration’s Executive Orders on dramatically increasing timber production on public lands, I fear we are in danger of the kind of rampant ecosystem destruction that we haven’t seen since the darkest days of the timber wars.

And I am not alone.  The vast majority of environmental and conservation organizations are fiercely opposed to FOFA. 

So I was really surprised to see some organizations that I respect lobby hard in support of the bill.  One of those orgs is Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non partisan climate advocacy group that I respect and have worked with before.

I think that disagreeing respectfully and really listening to conflicting perspectives is a key part of civic engagement in a pluralistic society, so I invited them to come on the show and talk through the bill and some of our differences.  

Before we get started, I would love to hear from you, yes you!  Send me an email sometime at [email protected]

Show Notes:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/471

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1462

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fix-our-forests-name-only

Benefits of Home Hardening for Wildfire 

https://grist.org/wildfires/logging-doesnt-prevent-wildfires-but-trump-is-trying-anyway/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/policy/our-fix-our-forests-advocacy-in-2025/

https://www.instagram.com/coastrangeradio/

It is plain for anyone to see that the short rotation, financialized plantation management practiced by the Wall Street investors who own the vast majority of private timberland is destroying our communities and ecosystems.

Coast Range Radio has been highlighting the need for an alternative model of forest management that sustains both economies and ecosystems for years.  So when I heard about today’s guest’s research into community forests, I was all ears.

Alexander Harris is the Land and Water policy manager at the bellingham based non-profit ReSources.   Alexander recently completed a graduate program in Environmental Policy at Western Washington University, where his research explored how community-driven forest stewardship can help restore watersheds.

(Originally aired 2/26/24)

Research Links/Show Notes:
Restoring The Nooksak Through Community-Driven Forest Stewardship: https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2151&context=wwuet

Referenced in this episode:
https://www.nwcommunityforests.org/
https://stewartmountaincf.org/
https://nisquallylandtrust.org/our-lands-and-projects/nisqually-community-forest
https://www.dnr.wa.gov/Teanaway
https://co.chelan.wa.us/natural-resources/pages/nason-ridge-community-forest
https://www.sightline.org/profile/kate-anderson/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBKlofDmdpo&pp=ygUOamVycnkgZnJhbmtsaW4%3D

https://www.instagram.com/coastrangeradio/

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!

https://greatpeninsula.org/

https://www.instagram.com/coastrangeradio/