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We interview people in Oregon about our environment. Interviews are played every other Saturday and Sunday morning on the Umpqua Watersheds community radio, KQUA.
Frances Etherington asks who controls Winchester Dam; suddenly, your scenic river view has paperwork.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A longtime wilderness advocate connects public-land protection to maps, ranger stations, trail memory, and local knowledge.
Joe Wallachy's conversation with host Frances Etherington traces a life in wilderness advocacy across Douglas County, from volunteer guidance for Umpqua Watersheds to roadless areas near Crater Lake National Park and within the Umpqua Willamette National Forest.
A focused look at how Winchester Dam became a flashpoint for fish protection, private control, and the North Umpqua River's future.
Winchester Dam sits at the center of a tightly focused dispute over private control, fish protection, and public access on the North Umpqua River.
Kai Huske links rights of nature to property, timber ownership, and community organizing.
Conservation Today frames environmental law as a dispute over who has the power to draw the boundaries around human activity. Frances Etherington's conversation with Kai Huske, a senior staff member at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, follows legal work that also…
A Lane County water campaign turns rights of nature into a question of local power.
Rights of Nature in Lane County brings a big legal idea back to local watersheds, where water protection is also a question of who gets to make decisions for a community.
A pointed look at disputed numbers, grazing policy, and the harms surrounding wild-horse roundups.
Wild Horses on Public Lands, Part 2 carries the policy argument into the practical consequences of managing horse management areas beside livestock.
Joe Wallachy describes decades of wilderness organizing in Douglas County, including the Umpqua Wilderness Defenders' push that led to Boulder Creek, Rogue-Umpqua Divide, and Mount Thielsen being protected in 1984.
["Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River is framed as a private-lake dispute, a fish-passage problem, and a water-quality issue north of Roseburg.", "Frances Etherington speaks with Mike Rooley and Adam Miller of Community Rights Douglas County, who focus on 99 district owners and the dam's long-running control structure.", "They say the dam was built in 1890, raised to 16 feet in 1907, sold to the Winchester Water Control District in 1969, and condemned by Oregon in 1976 as a high-hazard dam.", "The discussion centers on a 2023 repair window, lamprey deaths, a nearly $27.6 million lawsuit, and the possibility that Roseburg's drinking water intake sits downstream of the dam."]
["Frances Etherington interviews Kai Huske of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on Conservation Today about Oregon environmental fights, from the Jordan Cove Pacific Connector pipeline to timber practices.", "Huske says the common problem is a top-down legal structure that gives fossil fuel projects, factory farms, timber permits, and worker-rights disputes the same corporate advantage.", "He connects that structure to capitalism, extractivism, corporate personhood, and the way nature is treated as property instead of a rights-bearing part of the community.", "The conversation turns to rights-of-nature examples in Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Mexico City, India, and New Zealand, plus the question of how communities can organize beyond elections."]
Lane County's Watersheds Bill of Rights is framed as a response to government failure, with Michelle Holman saying the measure would recognize a right to clean water for animals and "nature herself." Holman, who has served on the Mapleton School Board for 35 years, says the campaign filed through Protect Lane County Watersheds and now faces a ballot-title challenge from the same timber interests that opposed an earlier spray-ban effort.
Conservation Today's part two on native wild horses on public lands opens with Linda saying cattle grazing on public lands is less than 3% of U.S.
Host Frances Etherington interviews Will Falk about his occupation of a proposed lithium mine site in Nevada, discussing environmental, tribal, and political concerns.
Host Frances Etherington interviews Dr.
Interview with Jason Gonzalez about the Oregon Forest Practices Act and its impact on forest management.
An interview with the president of the Umpqua Valley Chapter of the Native Plant Society about the importance of native plants and their conservation.