A few "No War on the West" signs can still be seen in the Wallowa Valley. They are fading, but the sentiment in certain circles remains unabated. 

If we want—and society does want—to restore streams, bring back salmon, un-endanger species, restore soil productivity and reduce government spending; then livestock must go from our public lands.

Thanks to 50 years of indoctrination, 98% of Americans can finish this sentence: "Only you...." While we humans can and should be careful with campfires, we can't prevent lightning from starting fires, nor should we want to.

The classic "park-like" stands of ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests that once blanketed the interior West from British Columbia to New Mexico have changed dramatically for the worse since the Euro-American invasion.

To hear the cattle industry tell it, the Clean Streams Initiative will be the end of livestock grazing in Oregon. Only in my dreams, I'm afraid.

The ballot measure to once-again allow the use of dogs and baiting in the hunting of bears and cougars gets to the heart of human attitudes toward large predatory wildlife.

One is always biased by the view from where one sits, so it's somewhat understandable that many Oregonians outside the Willamette Valley might feel that environmentalists only target issues centered outside the urban growth boundaries.

Let's compare the first world state of Oregon with the third world nation of Costa Rica. The population is similar in number.

Americans pay some of lowest gasoline prices anywhere. However, the pump price fails to reflect all the costs of gasoline, from harm to the environment, tax-subsidized corporate welfare for the oil companies, to the American money and blood spent to keep oil supplies open.

Foresters incorrectly use an agricultural economic model (plant, harvest, plant, harvest ...). The first clue that something was amiss is the model is reversed (cut, plant, harvest, plant, harvest ...). You cannot reap what you do not sow.

Wolves may well be approaching Oregon from the Washington and Idaho. A wolf litter was born in Idaho, about 60 miles from the Oregon border.

With the movement of the nation to the right, environmentalists have no choice but to diversify their political alliances beyond the Democratic Party. 

The world has greatly changed since the Great Depression and bureaucracy no longer serves the public interest. The most important role that BPA serves today is as a production and delivery mechanism—not for electricity, but for pork.

What do the terms "forest health," "world peace," "national security," and "strong America" all have in common? While everybody is for them, they don't agree on what they mean.

The federal government subsidy of public land livestock grazing is one of the more notorious examples of corporate welfare, which harms the taxpayers and the environment.

The National Forest System contains at least 370,000 miles of roads. It's probably more, but the Forest Service hasn't documented them all. That's at least eight times more than the Interstate Highway System or all the way to the to the moon and half-way back.

Recreationists don't pay for the roads they drive on or the trails they hike on. Nor do they pay for protecting and conserving the fish and wildlife habitat that they enjoy.

If non-game species were being better taken care of, we would see less need to put them on the endangered species list; and less need for litigation and conflict over these species.

Hemp can displace wood fiber and save forests for watershed, wildlife habitat, recreation and oxygen production, carbon sequestration (reduces global warming), and other values.

The most well-known of cowboy folk song does not contain a single reference to cows. Instead, it extols the natural richness of the Western landscape, mentioning a number of species now in decline. environmentalists should reclaim this folk song, sing it around the campfire and teach it to their children.