Think Out Loud

Butte Falls is a small town in southern Oregon, about an hour northeast of Medford. The 400 or so residents there are surrounded by a ring of what was until recently privately owned forest. But a decades-long effort to buy and manage the land itself has finally come to fruition, with the help of state, federal and private funding - and too many agencies and elected officials to list. As reported by Inside Climate News and Columbia Insight, Butte Falls will be making forest management decisions that preserve old-growth trees, clear wildfire fuel, and directly encourage outdoor tourism. Trish Callahan is the mayor of Butte Falls. She joins us to talk about the effort and its implications for the future of the town.

On June 20, four skateboarders gathered together to ride from Virginia to Oregon. They began the journey in Williamsburg, and on Friday, the group arrived in Newport and dipped their boards into the Pacific Ocean. The team set out to break the record for the fastest skateboarding relay across the U.S.  The trip clocked in at 17 days and six hours. Andrew Andras, Rick Stubblefield and Paul Kent were part of the relay. They join us with details of the trek. 

Last summer, an invasive and highly destructive forest pest was first spotted in Oregon at an elementary school in Forest Grove. Oregon is the first state on the West Coast and the 36th in the nation where the emerald ash borer has been detected. The small, shiny green beetle is native to Asia and has killed over a hundred million ash trees nationwide since its arrival in the U.S. roughly 20 years ago. In June, the Oregon Department of Agriculture reinstated a temporary quarantine on ash and white fringe tree products from Washington County, including untreated lumber, nursery stock, firewood and wood chips greater than one inch in size. The department also began releasing several species of wasps that are natural predators of emerald ash borers at tree locations where they’ve been observed. Cody Holthouse, manager of the Insect Pest Prevention & Management Program at the Oregon Department of Agriculture, joins us to talk about the quarantine and other efforts to combat the spread of emerald ash borer.

A new investigation from Washington news outlet KNKX has found that allegations of a culture of sexism, racism, and abuse at a premier youth soccer club mirror the behavior alleged at the professional level. The investigation found allegations of racial and sexual harassment, player endangerment and inappropriate touching of underage players at one of Washington’s premiere youth leagues. Reporter Grace Madigan joins us to talk about what they found.

Cooler temperatures have brought some relief to the Willamette Valley and a large swath of Western Oregon which were under heat advisories from the National Weather Service earlier this week. The hot, dry conditions coincided with three straight days of the hottest global temperatures ever recorded. Farmers and ranchers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change as they contend with hotter and drier weather conditions, particularly during the summer months. Oregon produces more than 225 agricultural commodities which can be impacted differently by heat and water shortages depending on their growing seasons, according to the Oregon Farm Bureau.  We hear from Lauren Poor, Vice president of Government & Legal Affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau, about what is being done to help farmers and ranchers mitigate the effects of hotter and drier conditions on their livelihoods, and what the impact could be for them in the coming weeks and months.

There’s a lot that researchers still don’t know about volcanoes. But they do expect volcanic eruptions to coincide more often with other natural disasters, like floods and wildfires, as the climate continues to warm. Research from Portland State University shows that the increasing frequency of extreme weather events means they’re more likely to occur at the same time as a volcanic eruption – creating “compound disasters” that will challenge emergency management officials. The study is part of a new collection of scientific essays that assesses how volcano science has evolved over the past 30 years, and where it might go next.

Jonathan Fink is a professor of geology at PSU. He co-edited the collection, and joins us to talk about how volcanic eruptions might factor into future disaster management.

Last Saturday, news broke that seven-time All-Star point guard Damian Lillard wants to be traded from the Portland Trail Blazers. Lillard is the all-time leading scorer for the Blazers and has spent his entire professional career playing for the team which chose him as the sixth overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft. Lillard unanimously won the NBA Rookie of the Year award his first season in the league but has yet to win a championship title after 11 seasons with the Blazers. Mike Richman is the host of the Locked on Blazers podcast. He joins us to share more on Lillard’s legacy and what his potential leaving could mean for the future of his career, and the Blazers. 

One of the best-known strategies to prevent dune erosion is to introduce plants whose roots will help hold sand in place and stabilize the dune. But experiments conducted at Oregon State University show that may not always be the case. Researchers found that newly planted vegetation can actually accelerate erosion in the face of extreme storms. Meagan Wengrove is an assistant professor of civil and construction engineering at OSU. She was involved in the experiments, and joins us to talk about what the findings could mean for coastal management.

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a web designer refusing to make a website for same-sex marriages, despite a Colorado law that prohibits discrimination against gay people. In another case involving a mail carrier who was refusing to work on his Sabbath, the courts unanimously decided to broaden religious protections, creating a new standard for testing religious accommodations. Jim Oleske is a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. He joins us to break down the two cases and dig into the complicated intersection of religious freedoms and other constitutional values.

A church in Monmouth was exploring the idea of creating micro shelter housing for people experiencing homelessness. The housing would have been located on a grassy field owned by the church. The idea was scrapped after community backlash against the proposal. We hear more from Bill Poehler,  a Statesman Journal reporter, who has covered the issue.