Eric Flowers

For an apex predator that can grow up to 20 pounds or more, range over hundreds of miles and has been called the river wolf, the bull trout has had a tough time of it.
First, there's the name. The trout-looking fish with bright orange spots and a brown torpedo-like body is really no trout at all – it's actually part of the char family.
Once widespread across the Rockies and Northwest, the bull trout has been reduced to a fraction of its historic population and range, surviving in a few strongholds, like the Metolius River where the combination of clear, cold spring-fed flows and minimal human impacts allow the fish to thrive. But these types of refuges have become few and father between as human development and related impacts encroach on the few remaining corners of the West, a challenge for bull trout who are particularly sensitive to water quality and temperatures. The bull trout's need for pristine habitat has earned it the reputation of an indicator species, the proverbial canary in the coal mine, as Sierra Club conservation director and fishing guide Jeff Hickman puts it.

The city of Bend plans to crack down on downtown parking scofflaws by boosting fines for repeat offenders. The city council voted last week to jack up fines by as much as four times for repeat violators who are caught abusing the two hours of free parking by hopscotching around downtown parking spaces. The practice has drawn the attention of the city council, which has invested millions of dollars into the downtown parking garage to free up spaces for customers along the streets and in the remaining surface lots.
Under the proposed system, parking offenders would see their fines increase over the course of the year as they rack up parking tickets. Anyone with five or more violations would see their parking tickets double, from $22 to $44. Those with more than 10 violations would see their tickets triple to $66 and those with 15 or more violations would see their fines go from $22 to $88 per ticket.

The thing that strikes me first about the John Day River canyon in winter is the silence. With no whitewater or even riffles to speak of for long stretches, the river slips through the open canyon without so much as a ripple. It's a consuming quiet where only the dip of the oars punctuates the solitude. The clanking of a thermos off the steel hull of our weathered drift boat reverberates down the canyon. The thought of a landscape so oversized with so little in it – save what the forces of time have deposited here: rock, a few gnarled junipers and stiff, brown desert grasses – is almost difficult to comprehend. Massive basalt pillars and canyon walls climb hundreds of feet from the valley floor, crowding the horizon and lending a prehistoric feel. It's probably no coincidence that some of North America's richest fossil beds are located in this river valley that stretches almost 300 miles from its headwaters in the Elkhorn Mountains to its confluence with the Columbia. It's one of the longest un-dammed rivers in the western United States and one of the most remote in Oregon where much of the river winds through historic homesteads and sprawling ranches.

Anybody who has followed the Bend City Council for any length of time knows that the seven-member body doesn't agree on much. But when state land-use planners flatly rejected the city's proposal to expand Bend's urban area after five years of planning work, public meetings and countless hours of staff time, the city council took exception.
It voted unanimously earlier this month to put the planners back to work immediately crafting an appeal to the state, which the city expects to file by Friday outlining the defense of its ambitious 20-year growth plan that would potentially increase the size of Bend's urban area by almost a third by 2030.
It's a plan that not everyone agrees upon, including, ironically, some of its biggest supporters in the building and development community. It turns out the politics of drawing lines on a map run deep. But as the city prepares for a legal battle with the state over its proposal, some wonder whether the ambitious plan is worth defending, particularly in light of the current economic climate with housing and other economic activity at a virtual standstill.