One of Elk Island's homeless camps in July 2025. (Jane Vaughan / JPR )

Three homeless camps operate in Roseburg, but not by the city. The camps are owned and operated by Elk Island Trading Group, a landowner that flips blighted real estate.

Under an overpass in Roseburg, Oregon, six-foot privacy fencing surrounds a cluster of tents. In some ways, it looks like an average homeless camp: wooden picnic tables, bikes, port-a-potties. But this camp is different. It’s cleaner than most. It has a shower, trash bins and a game table. There’s even a library.

JPR reporter Jane Vaughan joins the Exchange to discuss her reporting on this story.

Some of the mammals from RANP present remarkable morphological features, such as this new species of Marmosa (Stegomarmosa) that has a bright reddish fur and a super long and delicate rostrum which promptly distinguishes it from its closest relatives.(Pedro Peloso)

Dr. Silvia Pavan was on a search for a squirrel that was missing from the genealogy tree when she and her team stumbled upon a new species of opossum in Abiseo River National Park on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes, at the edge of the Amazon Basin. They found the squirrel they were looking for and more. Dr. Pavan joins the Exchange to discuss her adventure and what the discovery means.

View from Archeological site - Los Pinchudos, in Rio Abiseo National Park.(Pedro Peloso)

Extremely remote and difficult to access, the 3000 square kilometer UNESCO World Heritage site contains significant archaeological sites revealing the presence of pre-Incan Chachapoya civilization, as well as signs of pre-Chachapoya occupation.

The Marmosa chachapoya’s is a small mammal with a delicate body about 4 inches in length and a long tail. (Photo by Pedro Peloso / Cal Poly Humboldt)

It is also home to a wide variety of of known and unknown fauna, including the the recently discovered unknown marsupial, dubbed the Marmosa chachapoya. Measuring just four inches long (approx. ten inches including the tail), this small member of the opossum family has reddish fur, a mouse-like face with a a long pointed nose and distinctive, black, goggle-like rings around the eyes.

( Annie Bloom's Books)

Jonathan Bach joins the Exchange. He’s a reporter covering housing and commercial real estate for the Oregonian. He previously wrote for The Portland Business Journal, which featured a cover story he wrote about the rising cost of housing in Bend several years ago. That story became the basis for Jonathan’s new book titled: “High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West.”

OPB interview: New book examines Bend's housing crisis

Central Point, Oregon Mayor Taneea Browning( City of Central Point)

In our new weekly series JX Meets Local Leaders, Central Point Mayor Taneea Browning joins the Exchange.

Taneea Browning is the mayor of Central Point, Oregon. She joined Jefferson Exchange host Mike Green in the JPR studio on Sept. 2, 2025.(JPR Senior Producer, Natalie Golay)

Voters are weighing Proposition 50, a redistricting measure on the November ballot that would merge rural inland and coastal areas into new congressional districts. (Photos taken October 2025)
(Sarah Bohannon & Sarina Grossi / NSPR)

KQED is an NPR member in California with in-depth coverage of Prop 50, a controversial voter referendum on the Nov 4 ballot. Californians will be asked to decide whether the current congressional district voting map can be redrawn by state legislators for a temporary time period. KQED provides insight into arguments in favor of a new redistricting map and those arguing against it.

Pacific Fisher(National Parks Service)

Joining the Exchange is George Sexton, Conservation Director at KS Wild. The issue: The Southern Oregon/Northern California Pacific Fisher has been seeking protections under the Endangered Species Act, which requires being listed by U.S. Fish and Wildlife. The latest ruling strikes what might be a final blow to efforts to access funds and legal protections for the Pacific Fisher.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has denied listing for the Northern California/Southern Oregon population of Pacific fishers. Fishers are relatives of mink, otters, and martens. Fishers once roamed West Coast forests from Southern California through British Columbia, however trapping and habitat destruction have reduced the species to two native populations: one in Southern Oregon/Northern California one in the Southern Sierra Nevada mountains.

Pacific Fisher being release back to the wild( KS Wild)

Conservation groups including EPIC, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Center for Biological Diversity first petitioned to list the species in 2000. Consideration of that petition has been repeatedly stalled. Getting the Pacific Fisher listed on the Endangered Species List is a crucial step toward applying for federal funds needed to support efforts to protect the species and implement a recovery strategy.

The Pacific Fisher is under threat from numerous stressors, each compounding the effects of the other: climate change, including larger and more severe wildfires; rodenticide exposure; logging of the mature forest habitats required by the species; and enhanced predation from changes to forest ecosystems.

( SOU)

Carey Jean Sojka and Kylan Mattias de Vries – both faculty members in the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Southern Oregon University, and both previous recipients of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award – have co-authored a new book about the identity experiences of transgender people.

Their book, “Transgender Intersections: Race and Gender through Identities, Interactions and Systems of Power,” was published this summer by Polity Books, an international publisher in the social sciences and humanities, with offices in Cambridge and Oxford in the U.K., and in Boston and New York in the U.S.

Carey Jean Sojka and Kylan Mattias de Vries both join the Exchange.

Carey Jean Sojka (left) and Kylan Mattias de Vries (right) are both faculty members in the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Southern Oregon University. Both are recipients of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award and co-authors of a new book, “Transgender Intersections: Race and Gender through Identities, Interactions and Systems of Power.” The professors joined Mike Green in the JPR studio on Oct. 30, 2025.(JPR engineer and associate producer Maddie Peterson)

( Trip Advisor)

In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, a free community event will be held at Blue Heron Park in Phoenix, Oregon to honor Tribal stewardship and five years of ecological recovery since the Almeda Fire.

Hosted by the Lomakatsi Restoration Project and the Inter-Tribal Ecosystem Restoration Partnership, the event features reflections from Tribal and community leaders, live restoration demonstrations, and guided walks along the “Miracle Mile,” where 16 natural springs were uncovered by fire.

Joining the Exchange are Belinda Brown, Director of Tribal Partnerships at the Lomakatsi Restoration Project and Marko Bey, Executive Director of the Lomakatsi Restoration Project.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Title: Elevating Tribal Stewardship Event

Date: November 1st 9 AM - 1 PM

Location: Blue Heron Park, 4385 S. Pacific Hwy, Phoenix, OR

Admission: Free and open to all ages

Activities Include:

• Learn about restoration work with Lomakatsi’s Inter-Tribal Crew
• Demonstrations of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
• Guided Miracle Mile spring walk (16 natural springs uncovered by fire)
• Reflections on restoration, community renewal, and peace
• A food truck from Las Palmas will be onsite from approximately 11 a.m to 1 p.m. with food available for purchase.

Co-hosting organizations include:

• Ashland Culture of Peace Commission
• Lomakatsi Restoration Project
• Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library
• Phoenix Art and Culture Council
• Save the Phoenix Wetlands
• Rogue River Watershed Council
• Red Earth Descendants
• Inter-Tribal Ecosystem Restoration Partnership.
  

(KATU)

More than half of the 750,000 Oregonians who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are seniors, children and people with disabilities. All face the risk of losing the monthly support due to the extended shutdown of the federal government.

According to a report by OPB, the Oregon Department of Human Services last week began notifying more than 750,000 people currently receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP — informally known as food stamps — they will not get new benefits after Oct. 31.

Joining the Exchange to offer more insight is Alejandro Figueroa a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) who co-authored the report.

An adult Umpqua chub measures less than 3.5 inches.( ODFW)

Jeff Miller joins the Exchange. He's the Senior Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. Petitions for protection benefits were submitted by the Center to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Umpqua chub in southwestern Oregon and the Northern Roach in northeastern California and southern Oregon.