Natural World

Volunteers conducted a fish rescue operation over several days in mid-October, after reduced flows stranded fish in a mile-long side channel at Lava Island Falls along the Upper Deschutes River. The event was organized by the Deschutes River Conservancy, with help from volunteers and staff from fisheries and environmental consulting firm Mount Hood Environmental. Several […]

By day, southern Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands stuns visitors with its colorful rock formations, vibrant wildflowers and bountiful wildlife species. But at night, when darkness falls over the rock spires and canyon walls illuminated only by the glow of starlight, the shadows of bats silently flittering through the air is a truly delightful sight. Although fabled […]

Last week, I participated in the Olympics…the Odolympics, that is — better known as the “Odonata Olympics.” Sponsored by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, Sociedad de Odonatalogiá Latinamericana and Odonata Central, this week-long Olympian citizen science effort focused on recording dragonflies and damselflies, members of the Odonata order, to provide a snapshot of distribution […]

A combination of botulism and bird flu has led to estimates of thousands of birds dying in the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex this summer. Birds are dying at the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in far Northern California. Last week, refuge staff deployed in a boat and collected 500 dead birds from Sump 1A, […]

On a quiet night in June, about 20 of us volunteers with the OSU-Cascades Audible Bat Project sat on the rim of the Crooked River as it wound its way beneath the towering cliffs of Smith Rock, listening intently for the audible echolocation calls of spotted bats as they hunted for insects. The amazing part […]

What is so tiny that you can hold hundreds of them in a single handful, yet holds the key to restoration and climate resiliency in Oregon’s high desert? A seed. Or rather, millions of tiny seeds, each of which holds the potential to grow into a native bunchgrass and help restore resilient, thriving desert grasslands. […]

What happens when you empower students to undertake a project of their own design and implementation? Multiple possibilities. Such is the case with Crook County High School students, who recently took on an Earthwin Challenge along the Crooked River in Prineville. But let’s start at the beginning. “One of the first things when I came […]