Nearman refused to resign in the face of overwhelming evidence he would be ejected from the Legislature. The four-term Republican lawmaker becomes the first person ever expelled from the Oregon House. Continue Reading Oregon House Expels Read More
A fire grew across state lines in Northeastern Oregon over the weekend, becoming the region’s largest blaze so far this year. Continue Reading Northeast Oregon Wildfire Jumps Into Southeast Washington In Difficult Read More
Wildlife advocates are pressing the Biden administration to revive federal protections for gray wolves across the Northern Rockies after Republican lawmakers in Idaho and Montana made it much easier to kill the predators. Read More
Five counties voted in favor of leaving Oregon in Tuesday elections, the latest push by a coalition that wants a large chunk of Oregon to join Idaho instead. That border shift is not likely to happen anytime soon. Read More
The state’s new fuel standards will slowly lower the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses coming out of vehicle tailpipes through 2035. That means cleaner technologies biodiesel or renewable natural gas will get a boost over gasoline and diesel. Read More
Seven cattle have been found mutilated over the last three months in Crook County and the sheriff’s office is actively investigating and hoping for a break in the case. This follows several recent cases in the past few years in rural Oregon. Read More
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several Read More
Idaho legislators gave a sympathetic ear Monday to an Oregon group that wants to redraw state lines so that conservative eastern and southern Oregon would become part of the expanded state of "Greater Idaho." A separate group formed by Washington state farmers is pursuing the same idea for eastern Washington. Read More
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are opening a two-day mass vaccination event to any resident age 16 and above who resides in the 11 counties that span the tribes’ ceded territory. The offer is open to anyone, not just tribal members. Read More
If you have half-used paint cans piling up in your garage and just don’t know how to get rid of them, you’re in luck. Washington has started a new paint recycling program. It follows a similar, decade-old program in Oregon. Read More
A look at all-electric busses hitting Beaverton, OR. Continue Reading Electric Busses Enter Public Transportation SystemsRead More
Military cleanups, federal Superfund sites, firefighter training facilities — all are among reasons cited by Chemical Waste Management, or CWM, to expand its hazardous waste operation outside the Columbia River town of Arlington. Continue Reading Read More
Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to preserve protections for 3.4 million acres of northern spotted owl habitat from the US-Canada border to northern California, the latest salvo in a legal battle over logging in federal old-growth forests that are key nesting grounds for the imperiled species. Read More
Residents of the Northwest will have to set their clocks ahead by an hour this weekend to move onto daylight saving time. The Oregon and Washington legislatures voted nearly two years ago to stay on daylight time year-round -- joined later by Idaho and British Columbia -- but still the biannual time change ritual and associated grumbling persists. Read More
The COVID-19 vaccines are here, but if it's your turn to get vaccinated, how are you supposed to sign up? The answers vary by place, so NPR created a tool to help you understand how things work in your state and connect you with local resources. And we're sharing guiding principles and advice for navigating the process below. Read More
Fishing and hunting license sales jumped in 2020 across the Pacific Northwest as more people flocked to outdoor activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Total license purchases rose even though part of last spring was crimped by stay-home orders and in some states by the suspension of non-resident permits. Read More
Cody Levi Melby, 39, reportedly climbed over the temporary security fence erected this summer to keep racial justice protesters outside the federal courthouse before he opened fire on the building, the documents state. No one was injured in the attack. Read More
The federal government has proposed awarding grazing allotments to an Oregon ranching family whose members were convicted of arson in a court battle that triggered the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge by right-wing extremists. The Dec. 31 action by the Bureau of Land Management in favor of Hammond Ranches angered environmental groups. Read More
In rainy Oregon, communities tap a network of streams and creeks to supply millions of residents with cold, clean water. The problem is that the land surrounding drinking water streams is, in many cases, owned not by the towns or the residents who drink the water, but by private timber companies that are now logging more intensively than ever, cutting trees on a more rapid Read More
In the decades since government restrictions reduced logging on federal lands, the timber industry has promoted the idea that private lands are less prone to wildfires, saying that forests thick with trees fuel bigger, more destructive blazes. But an analysis by OPB and ProPublica shows last month’s fires burned as intensely on private forests with large-scale logging Read More
The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area. This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa. Read More
Western state governors and state health officials are now reviewing a finalized recommendation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for how to prioritize future vaccination phases. The initial deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines to Oregon, Washington state and Idaho are spoken for — at least well into next month. High-risk health care workers, Read More
In a one-day special legislative session called to address a number of pandemic-related crises, lawmakers also voted to protect schools from lawsuits related to COVID-19 and to bolster bars and restaurants by allowing cocktail sales to go. Those proposals all passed relatively speedily. The real tumult was happening outside. Read More
It stands to reason that all the stress, anxiety and isolation of the pandemic could lead more people to take their own lives. But newly obtained data for Washington and Oregon show this is one bad thing that 2020 has not delivered. Public health agencies and suicide prevention groups have been keeping an eye out since spring for a possible rise in suicides. Read More
Since early in the pandemic, rapid contact tracing has been considered one of the keys to controlling the spread of the coronavirus. But in recent weeks, an overwhelming surge in new cases has let thousands of COVID-positive people and their close contacts fall through the cracks. Read More
You can add a new term to your lexicon: "Zoom towns." These are scenic places experiencing a surge of house hunters. Booming demand comes from workers freed by the pandemic to work from home long term. Continue Reading Migration To Read More
In April the justices said future split verdicts in criminal trials are unconstitutional. Now the question is what about such verdicts in the past — potentially several thousand of them. Continue Reading Supreme Court Weighs Read More
Washington’s latitude about late-arriving ballots stands in stark contrast to Oregon, and more than half of states, where ballots must arrive by Election Day. In fact, by allowing ballots to still be counted nearly three weeks after the election, Washington has the most generous policy in the nation, according to a recent analysis. Read More
Malden is a tiny farming town amidst eastern Washington's "oceans of wheat fields" in Whitman County. Or it was. The 2020 wildfire season is a grim reminder that disasters unfairly hit the poor and the elderly. Thousands of people on the West Coast still lack even temporary housing. Read More
Nearly 300,000 acres in Washington burned in just one day over Labor Day weekend. That is almost unfathomable. But it happened. Why? What were the conditions that made for that explosive situation? Continue Reading Before Labor Read More
With at least two dozen Oregon dairies threatened by raging wildfires, farmers are grappling with the delicate task of moving them to safer ground — or staying put. Continue Reading Milk-Shaken: Moving Northwest Dairy Cows Out Of Read More
At least seven people have died in wildfires that are raging in Washington, Oregon and California, adding to the horrible toll from record-setting fires in 2020. "This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfires in our state's history," Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said. Read More
Over the past week, thousands of lightning strikes have sparked more than a dozen large wildfires in Oregon. For example, five fires are burning around the Warm Springs Reservation. Continue Reading Lightning Sparks Dozens Of Large Oregon WildfiresRead More
A 2017 analysis that looked at historic versus recent distributing areas of the species and found that the populations have declined by almost 50% of its historic range and it has been accelerating in recent years. Continue Reading Read More
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act late Wednesday night in response to the fire, which was burning about 500 acres at the time in the Mosier Creek area of the Columbia River Gorge, between Hood River and The Dalles. Read More
Oregon Forest Resources Institute, created in the early 1990s to educate residents about forestry, has acted as a public-relations agency and lobbying arm for the timber industry, in some cases skirting legal constraints that forbid it from doing so. Read More
Multiple sources tell OPB, federal officers are watching closely to see if the delicate peace holds through the weekend, in what some describe as a key moment for determining how many federal officers will remain in Portland. Read More
Two more cattle have been mysteriously killed in rural eastern Oregon. Last summer, five bulls were mysteriously slain in Harney County, Oregon, outside of Burns. Although there are many theories ranging from payback, cults or aliens, there have been few leads on the case despite the offer of a $25,000 reward by Silvies Valley Ranch. Read More
The federal lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service, the United States Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protective Service, agencies that have had a role in stepped-up force used against protesters since early July. The state filed the lawsuit late Friday night. Read More
Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off. Read More
The land management plans, known as the “Eastside Screens,” came about in 1995 to protect old growth trees east of the Cascades. The rules were meant to be temporary. The Forest Service wants to amend a section of the policy called the “21-inch rule,” which prohibits harvesting trees that are greater than 21-inches in diameter. Read More
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed several would-be initiative campaigns in Oregon because organizers can’t send canvassers out to gather the tens of thousands of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot. Read More
A Baker County judge has invalidated Brown’s restrictions on businesses and social gatherings, along with every other executive order Brown has issued under a state of emergency she ordered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue Read More
Across the Northwest, small and mid-sized farms are grappling with a range of challenges brought about by coronavirus. Continue Reading COVID-19 Considerations Sprout Confusion, Uncertainty To Northwest Family FarmsRead More
We felt a stroke of luck two weeks ago, when our local theater chain in Tri-Cities handed out bags of popcorn over the weekend. But that night, as we chowed down and watched one of the many movies we’ve streamed recently, we realized we really missed seeing movies with our friends. Little did we know, the Milton-Freewater Drive-IN would fulfill our wish. And that of about Read More
The independent book business has been battered in recent decades, as locally owned sellers strained to compete with the online-giant Amazon. But the COVID-19 crisis has forced many to close their doors, depriving both readers and writers the spaces they thrive on. Read More
Fresh numbers of initial claims for jobless benefits showed some moderation in the past week in the staggering wave of layoffs across the Northwest caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the level of unemployment claims continues to hover at record levels, as reported Thursday by the state labor and employment departments of Washington, Idaho and Oregon. Read More
Around a million beef cattle are born each spring in the Northwest — about 228,000 in Washington, 533,000 in Oregon and 495,000 in Idaho last year. It takes a large crew working close to get through hundreds of cattle at a time, and ranchers say the job can’t wait — coronavirus or not. Read More
As the coronavirus forces people to keep their distance, a humanities program in Oregon brings residents together in an old-fashioned way. Continue Reading ‘Dear Stranger’: Connecting People 1 Letter At A TimeRead More
There are hundreds of thousands of additional jobless workers waiting in the wings to file claims, including part-time and gig economy workers and self-employed who qualify under expanded federal benefits. But they are temporarily frozen out. The wait for overloaded unemployment systems to catch up is leaving some of them frustrated or anxious. Read More
