Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
BLED, Slovenia — They're not identical, but Crater Lake National Park and Triglav National Park in Slovenia are officially "brothers" following "twinning" ceremonies at Triglav's main information center in the lakeside town of Bled. While most formal agreements between national parks in the United States and other countries are known as "Sister Park" agreements — Crater Lake formalized such a compact with the Wuyishan National Scenic Area in China last year — Slovenian offic
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
More than 125 residents in the Prospect, Shady Cove and Trail area have signed a petition against a proposed pumice sand mine that they say will create a safety risk plus unwanted noise, traffic and dust. Prospect resident Cynthia Gibson presented the signatures during a Jackson County land-use hearing in Medford on Monday. Mine backer Matt Ropp says the sand can be combined with compost to create a beneficial soil amendment for clay-heavy, depleted farm land. He said he's also given the sand to
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Federal authorities want to add more hatchery-raised fish to the 28 Pacific Coast salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act. The National Marine Fisheries Service in a document made public Friday said 23 hatchery programs could produce fish genetically similar to their wild but struggling cousins and should have the option of receiving federal protections. The agency recently completed a five-year review required for listed species and plans n
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A permanent ban on suction dredging in Western Oregon's wild salmon habitat championed by the late Democratic Sen. Alan Bates passed out of the Oregon Senate on Monday and is headed to a House committee. Senate Bill 3 garnered bipartisan support in Monday's 21-9 vote, including Republican Sen. Alan DeBoer of Ashland, who now holds Bates' former Senate seat and promised support for the bill in this round of the Oregon Legislature. It bans suction dredging within wild salmon and steelhead spawning
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
The small black bear that drew a considerable crowd while loitering in a tree behind a southwest Medford bar Thursday has hit the road. Medford police Sgt. Justin Ivens said the bear climbed down from the tree shortly after dark Thursday between 9:30 and 10 p.m. and left the area on its own. "Obviously our goal is that this resolves itself and nature takes its course," Ivens said. "Luckily that's what happened here." The animal was first seen Wednesday night by Medford patrol officers. It lounge
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
TRAIL — A wet winter and once-plentiful snowpack have recharged Jackson County's two reservoirs enough that both the Rogue and Applegate rivers head into summer with the first near-normal forecasted flows in three years. The newly forged water-release strategies for Lost Creek and Applegate reservoirs boast flow levels that will help keep the Rogue high and cool for migrating chinook salmon while providing midsummer flows for river recreators and keeping Lost Creek Lake's main boat r
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Conservation groups plan to sue the federal government for backtracking on more than a decade's worth of studies when it failed this spring to list the Pacific fisher as a threatened species, saying isolated populations, including those in southwest Oregon, warrant protection. The groups Monday filed an intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its April 16 decision against listing fishers under the federal Endangered Species Act, a decision the service said it made because voluntary
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
State Sen. Alan Bates claims his bill to extend and broaden a suction-dredging moratorium in place on wild salmon streams — including most of the Rogue River Basin — has died because of delay tactics from mining interests who insist the bill imploded from its own weight. Bates, D-Medford, said he pulled Senate Bill 1530 after attempts to add amendments in the hopes of gaining bipartisan support ended with mining interests still opposed to extending aspects of the dredging moratoriu
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
TALENT — An old slab of concrete and wood boards that diverted some of Wagner Creek into a ditch was one of those many proverbial paper cuts inflicted on wild salmon and steelhead eking out a living in the Bear Creek Basin. Under most conditions, it blocked adult upstream migrants from three miles of new spawning grounds. And in critical hot summer periods, it blocked all juvenile salmon and steelhead desperately seeking cold-water refuges above Wagner Creek. After a century of snubbing w
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Structural changes at two Snake River dams in Washington state are helping more endangered sockeye salmon make the trip upstream to central Idaho this year, federal officials say. The permanent system at Lower Granite Dam and a temporary system at Little Goose Dam pull up cold, deep water for fish ladders to combat high temperatures that discourage fish from completing their journey. The success of the new systems could lead to similar changes at other dams on the Snak
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Kids and adults can learn how to capture and count wild bees from an Oregon State University professor at Pollinators Appreciation Day Saturday in Phoenix. “We have about 500 species of bees in Oregon that are wild. We really would like to get the public involved in counting these different kinds of bees and actually taking a role in how they are doing,” said Andony Melathopoulos, who is part of a joint OSU Extension Service and Oregon Department of Agriculture effort to learn more
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
After years of striving to reach “carbon zero,” Southern Oregon University has won more national recognition — this time honorable mention from Climate Leadership Awards at the 10th annual Presidential Climate Leadership Summit of the nonprofit Second Nature. The recognition came at a conference in Arizona Feb. 14, and SOU was one of just four colleges or universities so named, out of 600 in the nation, says SOU spokesman Joe Mosley. Two years ago SOU was one of the top
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Some trails and roads in the western portion of the Ashland watershed will close for two months starting Monday because of helicopter log-hauling operations in the area. The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project is thinning Forest Service lands within the watershed, and the closures that will run through July 1 are for public safety, forest officials say. A five-month closure of trails elsewhere in the watershed ended April 30. Helicopters will be flying on the west side of the watershed
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A new report about a natural gas pipeline and export facility proposed in Southern Oregon says the project's in-state emissions would make it the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon. Additionally, the report by Oil Change International says the whole project — from gas extraction in North America to the burning of the exported natural gas in Asia — would produce 15.4 times the emissions of Oregon's last coal-burning plant, which is slated to close in 2020 due
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Oregon fishery managers are quietly embarking on a plan to ban new commercial fisheries on several species of small ocean fish considered diet staples for salmon and sea birds. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has drafted a plan to ensure that certain smelts, squids, sand lance and other so-called "forage fish" remain prey for larger fish like salmon and myriad sea birds in Oregon's near-shore waters. The draft plan does not restrict any current commercial fisheries. But it does addres
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Pacific fisher will not get federal Endangered Species Act protection after wildlife managers deemed threats to this rare backwoods weasel and its habitat won't lead to the animal's extinction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today reversed course from its earlier stance of 18 months ago and declined threatened-species protection for fishers in part because of voluntary and proactive wildfire and conservation measures improving forest health and fisher habitat. They include efforts such
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
The Rogue River Basin's Cole Rivers Hatchery will be the only Oregon hatchery — out of seven federally owned hatcheries in the state — to see its operations put out for competitive bid next week. Federal officials have determined five others likely qualify to remain under state operation, while a sixth — Leaburg Hatchery in the Willamette Valley — will be shuttered and its trout production put out for public bid to be raised for the U.S. Army Corps of Engine
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
TALENT — Deep in the recesses of the Siskiyou Mountains lies a unique place where a bunch of twenty-somethings are keeping a piece of the present from degrading a relic of the past. A Northwest Youth Corps crew this past week turned a cache of juniper logs into a rustic-looking fence to keep illegal off-road vehicle drivers from further trashing a small meadow at the historic Wrangle Camp along the forested slopes of Big Red Mountain west of Talent. The fence is structured to fit the smal
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
EAGLE POINT — The Rogue River Preserve is on the cusp of becoming reality as the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy heads into its final month of fundraising. SOLC so far has garnered $3.315 million in grants and donations to buy the 352-acre McArthur Ranch and will learn next weekend whether it will secure a $100,000 grant from the Portland-based Collins Foundation, SOLC Executive Director Diane Garcia said. The group has a $3.5 million goal for buying the ranch. The Collins gran
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A small army of citizen-scientists will help Rogue Valley residents learn whether the creek or swimming hole they hit this summer is a good place to cool off or might be a staph infection in the making. The Rogue Riverkeeper organization is amassing a group of volunteers to regularly collect water samples from area creeks, lakes and rivers this spring and summer for tests to determine whether these popular swimming and wading waters have unhealthful levels of bacteria. The information will be po