An unidentified Oregon man is hospitalized in critical condition with what doctors believe is Oregon’s fifth case of plague in the last 15 years, according to a report in The Oregonian. The rural Crook County man was bitten on the hand on Saturday, June 2 as he tried to take a struggling mouse away from a neighborhood cat. He fell ill several days later and was admitted to St. Charles Medical Center-Bend in Bend, OR. It’s not clear which animal bit the man or gave him the disease. Even in our m...

Out here on the Oregon High Desert local businesses and environmental conservation groups are partnering to conserve water, improve the fish and wildlife habitat and make the heart of the region's Deschutes River more attractive to recreation and tourism. The Deschutes River Conservancy's (DRC) popular ten year old effort to provide incentives to landowners to conserve Deschutes River irrigation water by "leasing" their paid for but otherwise wasted water in order to leave that water in the riv...

As the Fukushima radiation hits the West Coast, we would do well to recall that Cascadia, The Pacific Northwest, is no stranger to the intercontinental pollution: new study With radioactive debris starting to wash up on the shores, and the Japanese burning radioactive materials instead of disposing of them, radioactive rain-outs will continue for some time … even on the Pacific Coast. Looking at the body of scientific research examining the ways that smokestack emissions cross oceans to cause...

We oft hear from those who doubt the climate is changing or the world is older than a mere six thousand years that it is arrogant to presume that we mere humans could possibly have an affect upon our planet. It is, after all, a big place that has experienced many changes down through the eons, and the thought that we could "destroy" it, or make uninhabitable to humans, is generally unfathomable. Fathom this, climate change and pine bark beetles... For the past (at least) twenty-five thousand ye...