Think Out Loud

In the 1990s, a beloved high school teacher in Seattle was rumored to be sexually abusing a student. Students at the school newspaper started investigating. The teacher later died by suicide. A new podcast from KUOW dives deep into the story - exploring what really happened back then. Isolde Raftery, managing editor at KUOW, was also a student in that high school in the 90s. She brings us the story.

Nearly a century ago, fish traps were banned on the Columbia River. The practice had been used by indigenous communities of the Northwest for a millenia, but when European settlers expanded west, they set up their own industrial versions, catching as much as 73 tons of salmon a season. Voters would ban these traps in Washington and Oregon in 1934 and 1948, respectively. But now some permitted experiments are being conducted using traps to sustainably harvest fish. Zach Theiler is a freelance writer who covered this issue for the Smithsonian Magazine. He joins us to share more.

Historic-low snowpack and drought in the West this year has come with a myriad of complications for the agricultural industry. As irrigation season begins, this winter’s drought combined with record-high temperatures is creating a stark reality for Oregon’s farmers, ranchers and water managers as they look to the coming summer.

We’ll hear from Jeremy McCulloch, a rancher in Wallowa County, and Gordon Jones, an agronomist with Oregon State University’s Extension Service, to discuss the challenges of this year’s irrigation season.

When you think of a donkey, you might think of some stubborn, more dangerous version of a horse. But the couple that runs the state’s only donkey sanctuary in Oregon City say, if so, you’d be dead wrong. The myths and folklore about these animals is one reason they need special care in the first place. Jim and Rhonda Urquhart formally incorporated their nonprofit five years ago, but the sanctuary has been growing since they took in their first donkey in 2010. They now have 160 volunteers who facilitate visits from the public to spend peaceful time with the donkeys. The Urquharts say educating people about donkeys and creating the space for them to spend time with the animals has become an integral part of their mission. We’ll sit down with the couple to learn more about the Oregon Donkey Sanctuary — and how people respond to these donkeys, which they say are actually more like dogs than horses.

Typically, new WNBA teams have five to six months to acquire players and practice as a team before the season starts. The Portland Fire have only five weeks.

With the WNBA expansion draft on April 3, the Fire were finally able to start building their team roster. The draft was delayed several months due to tense contract negotiations between the WNBA and the players’ union. The season is set to tip off May 9 at the Moda Center.

Kimberly Veale is the senior vice president of communications for the Portland Fire. She joins us to talk about the draft and the team’s upcoming season.

The Portland Clean Energy Fund was passed by voters in 2018. The 1% tax on retail sales of companies that make a billion dollars or more has generated a fund much bigger than expected. Many non-climate projects have asked for some of this money. Now the mayor and other officials want to spend $75 million in PCEF funds to go toward Portland’s share of the $600 million in total taxpayer money for the Moda center remodel. We talk with Portland City Councilor Steve Novick, who is opposed to this plan, about how he’d like to see the fund spent, and what he thinks of the city’s current approach to climate change.

Laurie Marker has spent nearly half a century with cheetahs. Her career began when she moved to Oregon in the early 1970s to open the third winery in the state. She began working at Wildlife Safari in Winston, OR to help support her business. This move would start a decades long career working with cheetahs. She eventually found the Cheetah Conservation Fund and moved to Namibia to create a dedicated wildlife reserve and research center for these large felines. Today, cheetahs are considered to have a vulnerable status, with less than 7,000 in the wild. Marker joins us to share more on her life and work with the fastest mammal on the planet that is racing to extinction.

On Tuesday, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation signed an agreement with Fred Mitchell to acquire his vast collection of Columbia River Plateau tribal artwork and artifacts. The collection includes 15,000 stone points and tools, 1,250 historic photographs, 800 beaded bags and pouches, baskets and other items. Mitchell is a retired former mayor and firefighter from Walla Walla, Washington who started collecting arrowheads when he was 5 years old and amassed other tribal items over the past seven decades. 

The Fred L. Mitchell & Family Collection also includes objects collected by Mitchell’s parents and other relatives, according to Bobbie Conner, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and director of the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute. The museum has featured several temporary exhibits in recent years with items loaned by Mitchell, including one that showcased beaded depictions of horses made by Columbia Plateau tribes. Conner joins us to discuss the cultural and historical significance of the items within Mitchell’s collection, including Native American cradleboards, or infant carriers, that will be featured in an exhibit at TCI in June.

Last spring the U.S. Forest Service cleared out a large number of people living in the forest south of Bend in an area known as China Hat. More than 100 vehicles and numerous personal effects were left behind. According to a new story from Investigate West and FORJournalism Lab, the Forest Service may have fallen short of constitutional obligations to give China Hat residents a “reasonable” opportunity to retrieve their belongings. David Dudley, a special project reporter with the Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions FORJournalism, joins us to discuss the story.

California condors, the largest land bird in North America, almost went extinct in the late 1980s. But successful breeding programs such as the one at the Oregon Zoo have helped raise their worldwide population from a low of 22 birds to roughly 600. 

Since 2022, the Yurok Tribe has partnered with Redwood National and State Park to release condors bred in captivity into the wild. A pair of those birds are believed to be tending the region’s first egg in more than a century. The nest is too remote for wildlife managers to see the egg itself, but they say the birds’ behavior is consistent with nesting and incubation.

Marti Jenkins is the lead keeper at the Oregon Zoo’s Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation, which hosts its condor breeding program. Chris West is the manager of the Northern California Condor Restoration Program and a senior wildlife biologist with the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department. They both join us to talk about the significance of returning California condors to the Pacific Northwest.