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At Coast Range Radio, we interview folks who work to build just communities that provide for people and the natural world. We are particularly interested in the connections between Pacific Northwest forests, social justice, and the climate crisis.
Coast Range Radio is an independent radio show and podcast hosted by Michael Gaskill. Michael is a lifelong rural Oregonian and climate justice organizer.
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I just got back from a really amazing backpacking trip in the wilderness of Wyoming, and I’ve been reflecting on how nature, wilderness, sacred lands, whatever you want to call them, have always been a source of refuge, spiritual rejuvenation, and healing for humans. But a question I and so many others are grappling with right now is, how do we continue to find inspiration and healing in a world that is being so deeply harmed. My guest today is author, travel writer, and speaker, Adam Sawyer....
Just keeping up with the Trump administration’s all out war against our environment is exhausting. Fortunately, we in the northwest are blessed with incredible activists, organizers, and more relevant to today, environmental attorneys to help us understand the attacks so we can fight back effectively. One of the best of those attorneys is Brenna Bell, formerly of 350pdx and now with the Crag Law Center. This episode features a recent presentation Brenna gave along with Laure...
I’m delighted to be joined today by Rebecca Heisman, freelance journalist and the author of “Flight Paths: how a passionate and quirky group of pioneering scientists solved the mystery of bird migration”. Flight Paths is a fascinating and engaging deep dive into the history and science of bird migration research, and how understanding bird migration matters for effective conservation efforts. My 'emailbox' is always open coastrangeradio@gmail.com, drop me a line with show ideas, guest suggest...
I’m off this week, so you’re going to hear the second half of one of my favorite interviews, with author and activist Rand Schenk, which I first released in July of 2024. I loved this conversation, but I feel like it needs a little context at this point, since 2024 seems like a millenia ago, and the fierce arguments forest defenders and policy makers were having about forest management now seem like friendly disagreements. Obviously our politics have undergone a cascadia megathru...
(I’m off this week, so I’m featuring one of my favorite interviews, which I first released in July of 2024. I hope you like it!) Today’s episode is part one of a two part interview with Rand Schenk, author of a fascinating and timely new history of the Forest Service, its founder, Gifford Pinchot, and over 100 years of forest management and mismanagement in the Pacific Northwest. The book, “Forest Under Siege: The Story of Old Growth After Gifford Pinchot”, explores the Forest Service’s...
I’m recording this in the aftermath of what I consider a largely failed Legislative session in Oregon and the passage of what will likely be remembered as one of the most extreme and destructive pieces of legislation in modern history at the federal level, aka the One Big Bill. On the state level, Democrats failed to pass their major priority, a much needed transportation funding overhaul, despite having supermajorities in both chambers, and also failed on a number of other legislative fronts...
Earlier this year, I did an episode on the Legacy Forest Defense Campaign in Washington. Since then, that campaign has only heated up, and in May, activists took to the forests in the Olympic peninsula to set up tree sits and road blockades in protest of State Land timber sales in the Elwha Watershed. To learn more about protecting the Elwha watershed, Earth Law philosophy, and more, I’m delighted to be joined by Elizabeth Dunne, the director of legal advocacy for the Earth Law Center....
One of the things I try to do on this show is get away from the binary good vs bad framing that so many of us fall into, and explore the messy complexities and grey areas within the environmental and conservation movement here in the northwest. That’s why I enjoyed today’s conversation so much. My guest today is Tabatha Rood. Tabatha is a former Forest Service National Environmental Policy Act planner and currently leads the Wild Rivers Coast Forest Collaborative in Southwest Oreg...
I’m willing to bet that most Oregonians don’t know who our State Treasurer is, much less what the State Treasury does. But we should. The office of State Treasurer, currently Elizabeth Steiner by the way, is a powerful position, and invests a huge amount of public money. How that money is invested matters, and it really matters that our public dollars and pension funds are deeply invested in the fossil fuel industry. The statewide coalition Divest Oregon has been calling out the treasur...
An absolute gem of a conversation with Oregon author M.L. Herring about her new book, “Born of Fire and Rain: Journey Into a Pacific Coastal Forest”. Born of Fire and Rain is one of the best books I’ve ever read on our bioregion. It is a masterfully guided hike through virtually every aspect of the Pacific Coastal rainforests, seamlessly weaving in geology, ecology, timber politics, personal narrative, and more into a beautiful tapestry of this place we call home. M.L. is the pen...
Today’s episode is all about one of the most charismatic of all charismatic megafauna, the sea otter! Sea otters are a crucial part of nearshore marine ecosystems, but they were wiped out along the Oregon coast over 100 years ago. The Elakha Alliance has been working tirelessly for years to bring them back, and I’m so excited to be joined by Jane Bacchieri and Chanel Hason to learn more. As a note, we did an episode with Elakha co-founder Bob Bailey a few years ago, but I’ve been wantin...
As of this recording on May 6th, we are well into the 2025 Oregon Legislative session. And I, like many others, am still struggling to find a coherent throughline to the session. And many climate justice advocates are increasingly wondering whether Oregon’s Democratic led government has given up on meaningful climate action. But there is still a lot that can happen in the next two months of the legislative session, and your voice really does matter. To walk me through where things...
All of us in the northwest love our ocean, but we often don’t show it the love that it truly deserves. Ocean conservation is chronically underfunded and under prioritized, but the newly formed Oregon Ocean Alliance is aiming to change that and bring much needed attention and resources to our ocean and coastal ecosystems. To talk about all of that and more, I’m joined by two great guests, Annie Merrill of Oregon Shores, and Joe Liebezeit with Bird Alliance of Oregon. They are also co-cha...
Note: This is the second part of the interview that didn't make it into the radio version. The podcast version includes the entire interview. ----- Biomass energy, that is, burning pelletized wood for electricity generation, is a classic false climate solution. It has been devastating forests and communities in the Southeast for years, and the Biomass industry is dead set on expanding into the Pacific Northwest. We did a deep dive into Biomass a couple of years ago, which yo...
Biomass energy, that is, burning pelletized wood for electricity generation, is a classic false climate solution. It has been devastating forests and communities in the Southeast for years, and the Biomass industry is dead set on expanding into the Pacific Northwest. We did a deep dive into Biomass a couple of years ago, which you can find in the Coast Range Radio podcast feed. But with the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans (along with some Democrats) attempting t...
This show has been pretty Oregon-centric, but I’m told there is a large landmass just north of us that also has a lot of amazing people doing environmental and climate justice work. So I’m putting my Oregon bias aside for today to learn more about one of the most exciting and effective climate forest campaigns in the Pacific Northwest - Washington Legacy Forest Defense Campaign! To find out what a legacy forest is, and how folks are working to protect them, I’m joined by Joshua Wright ...
Today, to celebrate the first independent episode of Coast Range Radio, we are going to try something new! Sometimes its important to step back and place our work, and ourselves, in a larger context. And even amidst the relentless assaults we are currently facing, I think this is one of those times. So I am thrilled to be joined by bestselling Oregon author, John Larison, to talk about his transcendent new book, The Ancients. It is, among many other things, a deeply moving a...
On March first, the president issued two executive orders designed to dramatically increase commercial logging on our public lands. These executive orders are bad news on their own, but the situation is actually even more dire. These orders are part of a decades-long effort by industry, the ultra wealthy, and radical right wing anti-government legislators to privatize our public lands and extract maximum profit for the wealthy few. And look, I know that there are a million attacks...
The Forest Service is using the threat of wildfires to justify a drastic expansion of commercial logging on our public lands. That is the contention in an investigative reporting series from Nathan Gilles at Columbia Insight. Many of us in the environmental world have long thought this to be the case, and this series brings the receipts, including internal Forest Service documents, emails, and more. The Forest Service has received billions of dollars in recent years on top of thei...
This episode is part three of our deep dive into the Forest Service’s proposal to amend the Northwest Forest Plan, which covers 24 million acres over 17 nation forests spread across Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. As I've said before, it is one of the primary reasons we have any intact or recovering forests left in the Pacific Northwest. So, kind of a big deal… What we haven’t gone in depth with yet is the conservation and environmental perspective. So for a completel...
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