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Articles written by Alex Baumhard


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  • New wildfire hazard map will be released with few changes after yearlong makeover

    Alex Baumhard, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jul 18, 2024

    A statewide “wildfire risk map” that drew the ire of many Oregonians will return in several weeks with few changes but with a new name following a yearlong makeover. The new “wildfire hazard map,” set to debut in mid-to-late July, will not differ in substance too much from the previous map published in 2022, according to lead researcher Chris Dunn, an Oregon State University forestry professor and wildfire expert. That first map was quickly taken offline in August 2022, just months after i...

  • Northwest ecosystems changed dramatically when wolves were nearly exterminated

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jul 11, 2024

    Ecosystems in the Northwest were heavily shaped by wolves before they were nearly wiped out of the region, a new study finds. By the 1930s, gray wolves were nearly gone in Oregon and the rest of the West, leading to the multiplication of animals the wolves hunted and creating an imbalance in the environment, researchers at Oregon State University found. However, the full impact of their disappearance isn’t fully understood because ecological research from the last century largely left out the r...

  • Firefighters are hard to hire and retain - and often lack of housing

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jun 27, 2024

    Oregon is likely to face fewer big wildfires this summer than in previous years, but a lack of rural housing, coupled with unstable and often low pay, continues to create firefighter workforce challenges across the state and region. That was a big part of the message from state and federal fire and emergency response officials, who discussed this year’s fire outlook and what they need at a meeting Monday at the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. The Portland-based center is part of a l...

  • Federal government acknowledges dams devastated Northwest tribes and fish stocks

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jun 27, 2024

    The federal government this week acknowledged that the construction and operation of 11 hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers during the last century has had a devastating effect on eight Northwest tribes and more than a dozen native fish stocks, some of which have gone extinct. The acknowledgment came in a report, “Tribal Circumstances Analysis,” that was published Tuesday. It represents the first time that the U.S. government has comprehensively detailed the harm that fed...

  • No longer considered predators, Oregon beavers get new protections from state

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jun 27, 2024

    Oregon’s state animal has for years been classified as a “predator” by the state fish and wildlife agency, and that’s meant that the North American Beaver has lived largely unprotected from private landowners who can kill them at will. That will change on July 1 when new rules go into effect under House Bill 3464, the “beaver bill.” The bill passed the state Legislature in 2023, and the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, which crafts regulations for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife,...

  • In push to thin forests to prevent wildfire, concerns grow over loss of old growth

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jun 20, 2024

    It was a mountain biker on a trail in Bend in 2022 who first spotted the pod of large old Ponderosa pines marked for cutting. The biker alerted local environmental groups, including the Bend office of the nonprofit Oregon Wild, where Erik Fernandez works as a wilderness program manager. Fernandez went out to photograph the trees in the Deschutes National Forest, some of which he and others figured were more than 80 years old after measuring their circumference. More than a dozen were marked...

  • Curbing severe wildfire in Oregon depends on urgency, scale of controlled burns

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|May 30, 2024

    Jesse Jackson stands proudly, flute in hand, on several hundred acres of forest near Roseburg that the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians fought to get back from the federal government in 2016 after more than 160 years of private and federal management and decades of heavy logging. Jackson, the education programs manager for the tribe, offers gratitude to the land through his music and the indigenous Takelma language once spoken widely by the tribe. He describes huckleberries,...

  • Oregon wildfire, smoke experts weigh in on future risks and 2024 season

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|May 2, 2024

    Oregon’s getting better at preventing and responding to wildfires, experts said Thursday, but much more still needs to be done. A panel of University of Oregon professors who study climate change, smoke, and wildfire discussed the 2024 wildfire season in an online forum with journalists as the West braces for summer fires. Wildfire risk in the West and Oregon this year is not abnormally higher than in recent years, said Daniel Gavin, a professor in the geography department who specializes in pal...

  • Homeowners face soaring premiums

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Feb 29, 2024

    Nancy Matela co-owns a vacation home in a wildfire zone northwest of Bend that has a new, annual property insurance premium of $9,000. It’s more than nine times what the company Safeco charged her a year ago. That policy remains her only option as well: Her broker couldn’t find her another one. Matela is among a growing number of homeowners in central, southern, and eastern Oregon who have faced higher annual premiums or had their policies canceled when they came up for renewal, with some ins...

  • Studies find nearly all salmon hatcheries hurt wild salmon populations

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Dec 21, 2023

    For much of the last century, fish hatcheries have been built in the Northwest, across the U.S., and around the world to boost fish populations where wild numbers have gone down. But an analysis of more than 200 studies on hatchery programs meant to boost salmonid numbers across the globe – including salmon, trout, and whitefish – shows that nearly all have had negative impacts on the wild populations of those fish. Most commonly, hatchery fish reduce the genetic diversity of wild fish, lea...

  • Habitat plan could cost counties $18 million a year

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Dec 14, 2023

    To avoid major lawsuits under the federal Endangered Species Act, state and federal agencies have crafted a plan to reduce the amount of timber logged from Oregon’s western state-owned forests annually by up to 40%. Officials in some counties that have relied on those timber revenues for the past 80 years are angry and worried about the impact that could have on their budgets and social services. Last week, the Oregon Department of Forestry released its long-awaited projections showing how m...

  • Will wells go dry?

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Nov 16, 2023

    The Oregon Water Resources Department must update its 68-year-old rules for permitting new wells or double down on regulating existing ones, department officials said. If it doesn’t, the growing problem of the state’s depleted groundwater reserves “is going to get very expensive,” said department director Doug Woodcock. Many of Oregon’s 20 groundwater basins are being sucked dry faster than water can naturally be replaced, according to the agency. This is an issue across the West, where dro...

  • Two dozen school districts will split $53 million for summer, after-school programs

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Sep 7, 2023

    Thousands of kids across Oregon are guaranteed summer and after-school programs in the coming school year with millions in new federal funding. The Oregon Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that 25 school and education service districts around the state, along with the Boys & Girls Club and United Way, will share more than $53.5 million during the next five years to provide summer and after-school programs. The money is from the federal 21st Century...

  • Oregon to sue woodstove sales

    Alex Baumhard, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jul 13, 2023

    Oregon’s attorney general plans to join nine attorneys general in suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ensure newly manufactured wood-burning stoves and fireplaces don’t contaminate the air and harm public health. Ellen Rosenblum and the attorneys general from Alaska, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington notified the agency on June 29 of their intent to sue, giving it 60 days' notice to take action or neg...

  • $120 million for student literacy

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Apr 6, 2023

    A $120 million initiative to boost literacy would be one of the single largest investments of its type in Oregon history if it passes. But during a public hearing for the proposal at the House Committee on Education on Monday, critics said it doesn’t go far enough and risks wasting money without stricter spending rules. At the end of the hearing, the committee unanimously approved the initiative, moving it to the budget-writing Joint Ways & Means Committee. It would be the seventh major initiati...

  • Logging - good or bad?

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jan 19, 2023

    More than 40% of Oregon adults say the state’s forests are over logged, but most also believe that harvesting timber is part of maintaining healthy forests, according to a recent survey. In November, the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Oregon Values and Beliefs Center sent an online survey to residents statewide to learn about their attitudes toward logging and the health of state forests. More than 1,550 people responded. They were asked about their “gut feelings” toward logging in Oregon, and whe...

  • Oregon's new watersheds director to prioritize effects of climate change

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Jan 6, 2022

    Lisa Charpilloz-Hanson learns best out in the field, which is how the new director of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board found herself, first month on the job, standing over a bridge in Tillamook watching salmon and steelhead swim upstream. In her new role, Charpilloz-Hanson now has a hand in how to spend $170 million each year for projects that improve fish and wildlife habitat across Oregon’s waterways. The money, issued in grants, comes from state lottery profits, the sale of salmon l...

  • Senators want scrutiny of Indian School

    Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle|Nov 4, 2021

    It's been six years since the Chemawa Indian School in Salem was last reviewed by the federal Department of the Interior, which found then that "the school did not have an adequate plan in place to ensure students' educational achievement." Now U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden have asked the department to look into what progress has been made in the six years since, and to demand greater transparency of the school's finances. Chemawa opened in 1880 as a residential boarding school, founded...