Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A free pesticide and container collection event for agricultural, commercial and industrial users will be held from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 4, in Grants Pass, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 5 in White City. Registration is required by Thursday, Feb. 18. The Grants Pass event will be held at the Redwood Transfer Station, and the White City event will be held at the Rogue Disposal Transfer Station. Organizers say the events will help large farms and commercial or industrial pesticide applicators clean
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
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Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
ASHLAND — Opponents to the proposed doubling of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument say their concerns about taking federal timberlands out of production, the loss of backwoods grazing and increased wildfire risks have been improperly left out of expansion discussions. Though clearly in the minority of a packed Southern Oregon University ballroom cloaked in a sea of blue "Oregon is Monumental" T-shirts, opponents Friday questioned the science used to create the expansion footprint
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
ASHLAND — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said his Saturday tour of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument reveals that "a lot of the use is heavy recreation," but he stopped short of saying some of those lands should be downgraded from monument status. In the midst of reviewing whether 27 national monuments are appropriately sized and created under the Antiquities Act, Zinke said that some lands now within national monument boundaries are "better suited" under National Recreation Area
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Three years of drought are taking their toll on Southern Oregon forests now dotted with dead and dying trees hit hard by lack of water or by insects in seemingly worse fashion than in past droughts, and the death likely will continue. The dead trees are primarily Douglas firs that are showing their vulnerability, while even some of the more drought-tolerant trees such as Ponderosa pines have lost in the competition for water in denser stands, experts say. The burnt-orange stain of dead conifers
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Locals concerned about the environmental impacts of a natural gas pipeline through Oregon and an export facility on the Oregon Coast rallied outside Rogue Regency Inn this afternoon.{br class="hardreturn" /} The rally was held prior to a public open house at the hotel organized by the Oregon Department of State Lands to take comments on permit applications for removal and fill-in of natural waterways for the Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline and Jordan Cove Energy Project.{br class="hardreturn
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A dozen weather-modification professionals from as far away as North Dakota and Arizona observed Medford's contribution to their science Thursday morning. Airport staff demonstrated the cloud-seeding CASPER system, used to clear fog above the runway, for the North American Weather Modification Council members in town for a biannual conference. The Cable Attached System Providing Effective Relief, which was designed to clear fog in below-freezing conditions, was introduced in 2010. An 18-foot, he
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
U.S. Rep. Greg Walden touched on early efforts to reach across the aisle and across legislative branches to change the way forests are managed at a meeting with local business leaders. At the meeting Saturday with a group of locals who formed in Medford last fall concerned about repeats of the thick wildfire smoke that choked Southern Oregon last summer, Walden said he's had some "very productive" conversations with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, hoping to find common ground for draft legislation th
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
BROOKINGS — A fall commercial season as well as a popular recreation season that both target chinook salmon bound for Southern Oregon's Chetco River could be halved amid concerns over low fish returns to the Chetco this year. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is proposing cutting the fall seasons in half to ensure an in-river fishing season and allowing enough chinook to spawn this year. Historically, the recreational season off Brookings runs the first 11 days of October an
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A conservation group that has worked to solve water problems in the Klamath Basin since 2002 has joined forces with the nation's oldest and largest organization dedicated to saving trout and salmon. The Klamath Basin Rangeland Trust, founded by Sabroso President Jim Root and cattle rancher Kurt Thomas, has merged with Trout Unlimited, the two groups announced this week. KBRT launched a successful federal water bank program in 2002 that paid cattle ranchers not to irrigate their land so there wou
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
ASHLAND — When hikers and mountain bikers return Saturday to a place called Lamb Saddle in the Ashland watershed, they won't recognize it as the place they left last fall. Lamb Saddle was a clearing in the trees, a jumping-off point for several popular trails. But for the past four months, it's been a landing site for some of the commercial logging at the heart of the continuing Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project, and left behind is a rutted roadway, huge piles of slash an
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
After a summer of raging wildfires and smoke, some Oregon counties are considering whether to pass no-confidence resolutions targeting the U.S. Forest Service. Jackson County commissioners discussed the idea during a work session this morning but said they wanted to gather more information before joining in. Commissioners in neighboring Josephine County have drafted a no-confidence resolution, saying the Forest Service's management practices were substantial contributing factors in the spread of
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Angler groups seeing red over the rampant introduction of non-native fish into Southern Oregon waterways are hoping a little green will curb the practice and perhaps lead to someone getting caught in the act. Three nonprofit organizations of bass anglers — Oregon BASS Nation, The Bass Federation and Oregon Black Bass Action Committee — have created a fund called Turn In Illegal Introductions, or TI3, to provide cash rewards of up to $3,000 for information leading to convictions for
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Near the end of design week for the Lithia Park master plan, Ashland Parks and Recreation Commission members, along with lead consultant M.I.G., reviewed their ideas with the public Thursday at the Ashland Community Center. Parks and Recreation Director Michael Black said the master plan is intended to be implemented over the next 100 years, but will ultimately take place within the next 20 to 50 years because a century into the future is nearly impossible to predict. “The reason that we’re goin
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
APPLEGATE — Some Applegate Valley activists are vowing to appeal a new multi-unit timber sale and fire-reduction project proposed by the Bureau of Land Management, saying the BLM "gave the finger" to residents trying to collaborate with the agency on the project. The group Applegate Neighborhood Network is at odds with the BLM's Nedsbar Forest Management Project, which includes logging on O&C lands, after the agency rejected the group's community-generated alternative. The Apple
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
An Oregon regulatory agency is proposing that agricultural workers be allowed to shelter inside farmworker housing while certain pesticides are being sprayed, but advocates say the state should instead create no-spray buffers around housing.  Representatives from the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration took public comments during morning and evening hearings Tuesday at the Medford library. Statewide, 309 worker camps house 9,283 people. Jackson County has 21 worker camps tha
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Underwater barriers in Crater Lake are being floated as one idea to slow the invasion of millions of non-native crayfish that are threatening a salamander known as the Mazama newt. “It’s still early in the invasion,” said Dr. Sudeep Chandra, a biology professor at the University of Nevada in Reno. “We’re talking about millions instead of hundreds of millions." Crayfish were introduced to the lake by humans in 1915 to provide food for non-native fish. An explosi
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Erosion of the Bear Creek streambed beneath the Jackson Street bridge in downtown Medford is forcing the creek to flow underground, one of two potentially major new barriers to fall chinook salmon now migrating through Medford. The creek now tumbles about three feet over an exposed city sewer line encased in concrete that previously had been all but buried in the streambed just beneath the bridge's south side. The water then flows completely under a 15-foot-wide rock and concrete mass spanning t
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Environmental groups have filed petitions to allow them to defend last month's expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in federal court, saying they can't rely on the federal agencies nor the Trump administration to defend their interests in keeping the expansion intact. The motions request to allow the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council and other groups to intervene and legally argue against two lawsuits seeking to scuttle the 47,624-acre expansion of the monument signed by President
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-28
OCEAN OUTLOOK COASTWIDE:  Ocean conditions are much better than they've been most weekends so far this spring. Winds are forecast to be 10 knots today with 7- to 8-foot swells, followed Saturday by 10-knot winds and 5- to 6-foot swells. Sunday is forecast for 5-knot winds and wind waves up to 3 feet. Good lingcod catches have occurred recently out of Brookings when the weather has allowed. Black and blue rockfish catches have been good to very good.  Rockfish anglers have new bag limit