This week on @opb.org's The Evergreen: The 2020 Labor Day Fires burned 4,000+ homes & a million+ acres in Oregon. What happened next? What do you... do? How do you recover from a catastrophe like a wildfire, in a home changed forever? We explore, w @aprilehrlich.bsky.social & Cassandra Profita:

As is, the "big beautiful bill" would increase logging on federal lands. But timber counties that have historically received a chunk of timber sales won't see any of that new money. www.opb.org/article/2025...

FEMA did not answer ProPublica’s questions about its missed application deadline or the impact of funding cuts and delays, instead responding with a statement that Secretary Noem is focused on bringing accountability to FEMA’s spending

Oregon lawmakers will not advance a bill that would have required Facebook’s parent company and Google to pay money to local newsrooms for profiting off news content on their platforms.

The small community of Rowena outside The Dalles is in the early stages of recovery after a wildfire destroyed 56 homes last week. Half the residents are over 60, and more than half are below the poverty level. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Admittedly, I know very little about sports, but could we not come up with something better than Portland Fire? It's a bit too on the nose, considering, you know, the fires all over the state. portlandtribune.com/2025/06/19/w...

"Trump signed an executive order in April to 'restore American seafood competitiveness' but in revoking the Columbia River agreement has canceled millions of dollars to support the programs that seed the ocean with fish to catch." www.propublica.org/article/trum...

This is extraordinary. We must defend #publicradio. Long live KEXP. www.seattletimes.com/entertainmen...

In a 45-minute phone interview with the Capital Chronicle last Friday, Rep. Cliff Bentz defended the Republican tax and spending bill, adding that middle and low-income families, small businesses and the timber industry would be particularly pleased.

The House narrowly voted Thursday to cut about $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress as President Donald Trump’s administration looks to follow through on work by the Department of Government Efficiency when it was overseen by Elon Musk.

Today, the Rowena Fire in the Columbia River Gorge has grown to an estimated 3,500 acres. With wildfire season already underway, OPB created a special wildfire section to help you stay prepared and informed. Visit opb.org/wildfires to check it out.

The Trump administration has frozen a key disaster funding grant. That will likely impact how we respond to — and recover from — wildfires this year. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Over 9k people in SE Portland are without power in the middle of a heatwave after what appears to have been a transformer explosion at a substation.

In more devastating news to people who craft & sew — The four major patternmakers have been sold to the same liquidator that helped with the Joann Fabrics bankruptcy. craftindustryalliance.org/parent-compa...

Environmental groups are asking a court to reverse a permit for a proposed renewable diesel refinery in Columbia County, over concerns it could pollute the Columbia River and disrupt working farms.

BREAKING NEWS: President Trump formally asks Congress to take back the $1.1 billion it has set aside for all public broadcasters for the next two years.

Chuck Sams, the most recent National Parks Service director, will help Oregon invest Monsanto settlement funds on restoration projects around the state. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Oregonians are paying 50% more on power bills than they were in 2019. Renewable energy could help bring costs down — but we lack the infrastructure (transmission lines) to support it. From my colleagues, Monica Samayoa & Tony Schick: www.opb.org/article/2025...

Now, the Yakama Nation will co-own and co-manage parts of the 3,600-acre Springwood Ranch with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. This will be the first land in Washington to be co-owned and co-managed by a tribe and the state.

OSU is buying a 3k acre timber plantation near Portland’s Forest Park to turn into a research forest. It’ll eventually be open to the public for recreation. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Just delighted to see the phrase "who is himself a giant pickle" in a lawsuit story.

In a statement Friday, CPB President Pat Harrison said that “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority.” current.org/2025/05/in-e...

The president signed an order last night seeking to end educational programming through PBS and news programming through NPR. Public media is independent, and that threatens some people I guess. Just a reminder that it's membership drive right now at OPB, if you're so inclined: www.opb.org/give/

Here's the TLDR on what we know about the cyberattack the temporarily shut down Oregon's environment department. www.opb.org/article/2025....

The big sweep of a camp in the Deschutes National Forest is underway and it's drawing attention. But OPB has been covering this story for years, and there's some very helpful context in this story about how this camp came to be by strict urban policies.

Oregon's streams are threatened by the emerald ash borer. The pest kills ash trees, which grow along streams and provide shade necessary to keep water cool. Learn more from this mini documentary by my talented coworkers. www.youtube.com/live/sYJ44_v...

The Fix our Forests Act is getting a hearing in the Senate Ag Committee next week:

Earlier this month, DEQ warned its staff not to click a hijacked link it included in a statewide press release. If they clicked it, it would install malware on their computers. It didn’t share the same warning with the general public who also received that email. www.opb.org/article/2025...

A ransomware group has released over 2.5 terabytes of files it says it stole from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s internal servers. The agency has provided little info on the attack that happened two weeks ago. www.opb.org/article/2025...

NEW: Western officials are scrambling to make sure they're prepared for fire season. “Forest fires aren’t going to take four years off just because of who’s in the White House,” @govofco.bsky.social told me earlier this month. w/Jordan Wolman: www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

The Bureau of Land Management is no longer being shy about prioritizing logging in Oregon’s forests. I can’t say I ever noticed it using the hashtag #TimberDominance at the end of a press release before.

I'm deeply curious how this was organized, if not through the city or port. It includes several city of Portland employees (including PBOT director), the head of the Metro chamber, and nonprofit advocacy leaders.

American Meteorological Society (@ametsoc.org) just issued a (fully justified) dire statement regarding rapidly accelerating & potentially disastrous efforts to decimate weather & climate enterprise in U.S. If implemented, this would cost many lives & cause major/ long-term economic harm.

The Medford weather service office, which provides forecasts for portions of Northern California, including Mount Shasta, is suspending its daily 5 a.m. weather balloon launch. "We launch our radiosondes from our office on site. We are temporarily suspending our 12Z launch due to reduced staffing."

There’s now a rap video promoting PDX’s wooden ceiling and how it’s“giving sustainability.” This video (according to the O) was not a paid ad by the Port. youtu.be/WTt7x8KRTS4?...

Great rundown from @carlosfuentes.bsky.social on a bill requiring Google, Meta pay Oregon news outlets for content/info those tech companies take for free and profit from. $122 million est. annual damages is less than 1/3 of 1% of Alphabet’s $350 billion revenue. www.oregonlive.com/politics/202...

​Federal budget cuts have hindered repairs on the Pacific Crest Trail, leaving hikers to face rougher, potentially unsafe terrain due to unaddressed storm and wildfire damage.

Environmental groups in Southern Oregon got a win in court this week in a lawsuit over old-growth forests. #oldgrowthforests #forests

The lawsuit claims the creamery’s marketing led consumers to believe its milk is sourced from small, family-owned, lush-green pasture-based dairies in Tillamook County, when in reality, it sources two-thirds of its milk from east of the Cascades near Boardman.

PacifiCorp is appealing the massive 2023 class-action lawsuit that’s expected to award billions of dollars to up to 5,000 Oregonians. An appeal could reverse judgements for wildfire victims who have already gone through trials. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Chile’s lithium boom promises jobs and money — but threatens a critical water source. grist.org/energy/chile... #AtacamaDesert #Chile #Water #Lithium #Mining

Last week BLM released its environmental review of a lithium project that involves drilling across thousands of acres of sagebrush desert. It only gave 5 days for public input. People submitted over 1,500 comments. Now they’ve got more time. www.opb.org/article/2025...

Oregon is completely free of drought and abnormal dryness for the first time since November 2019, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Some fun weather stats and what it actually means here: tinyurl.com/4r3rhbzt

Insurers are increasingly using drones to take aerial photos of people’s homes & make policy decisions. Two Oregon lawmakers are asking them to stop using this type of data to drop homeowners’ policies based on wildfire risk. www.opb.org/article/2025...

If you care about wildfire, I HIGHLY encourage you to read this paper. Some of the findings are eye-popping, but here are the the big ones (www.nature.com/articles/s41...):

The BLM has been reviewing this proposed lithium project in Oregon since 2022. It released its environmental assessment today — and gave the public less than 5 days to comment. www.opb.org/article/2025...

California is one of the few states with building codes for wildfire protection, because using fire-resistant materials helps homes survive. Now, more than 500 additional homeowners rebuilding after Los Angeles' Eaton Fire are being required to use them.

I learned recently that it’s not uncommon for a local court to have a “knife bush.” That is, a bush outside where people temporarily stash their pocket knives so they could get through security.

Someone is buying stuff using my info (but not my accounts?) & now I’m searching through property records, plat maps, social media accounts, pinpointing exactly who it may be & trying to know everything about them. I have one practical skill in this life, and it’s being a creep.

Oregon’s fire officials didn’t cite any evidence presented in a jury trial that found PacifiCorp was not only liable, but reckless for starting the deadly 2020 wildfire. www.opb.org/article/2025...