Columbia Insight

10/09/2026

Join a panel of regional experts and stakeholders–Alex Johnson, current Gorge Commissioner, Washington State Representative David Stuebe, and Gabe Sheoships, Executive Director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge–for a robust discussion and debate on the past, present and future of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Link in messages below:

10/06/2026

Have you ever wondered what’s next for the Columbia Gorge?

REMINDER: Tuesday October 13th is coming up fast! Join Columbia Insight on for our annual Susan Hess State of the Columbia River Basin Lecture/Dialogue with panelists Gorge commissioner Alex Johnson, Washington State Representative David Stuebe, and Friends of the Columbia Gorge Executive Director Gabe Sheoships. We’ll explore the present and future of Gorge protections, pressures on the Gorge Commission and the region, and the challenges of a changing climate.

The event will be held at the Ecotrust Building, Billy Frank Jr. Meeting Room 721 NW 9th Ave., Portland 97209.

Admission is free; advance registration is required. Click below to reserve your ticket.

Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area at Risk: 40 years after its creation are protections of the Gorge Scenic Area in danger? Get Your Tickets Here! Date: October 13th, 2026 Location: Billy Frank Jr. Meeting Room (2nd Floor), Ecotrust Building, 721 NW 9th Ave., Portland OR 97209

10/05/2026

House investigates 19 conservation groups it calls ‘radical,’ ‘extremist’.

Seven Pacific Northwest and Montana groups are called out for alleged “fee-shifting” abuses.

If you’re on the mailing list of any major environmental organization, you likely receive occasional emails reporting their court victories over the federal government. It’s legal actions like these that NGOs use to challenge federal agency decisions like approving permits, rolling back conservation rules or failing to act within statutory deadlines.

And it’s legal actions like these that are now a subject of scrutiny by the majority-Republican House Committee on Natural Resources, which has singled out 19 environmental groups—including seven in the Pacific Northwest and Montana—it claims are abusing laws meant to provide equal access to the judicial system.

Characterizing these organizations as “radical,” “taxpayer-funded law firms,” the HCNR contends in a Sept. 4 press release that the groups have been incentivized to bulk-file litigation regardless of case merits thanks to federal rules that place financial responsibility for the legal costs of such actions on the government no matter how vestigial the plaintiff’s victory.

“They employ a simple yet lucrative profit model built on the backs of hardworking American families,” the committee said in the release. “They collect taxpayer-funded reimbursements for their attorneys’ fees to fund litigation often brought before activist judges and aimed at blocking pro-growth and pro-natural resource management activities.”

The Pacific Northwest and Montana groups named in the investigation are Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Cascadia Wildlands, Montana Environmental Information Center, Native Ecosystems Council, Oregon Wild, Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch.

The key phrase at the heart of the committee’s probe is “fee-shifting.”
Full story at Columbia Insight

Seven Pacific Northwest and Montana groups are called out for alleged “fee-shifting” abuses Radicals everywhere: House Committee on Natural Resources jurisdiction ranges from fisheries

10/02/2026

Is it fair, or even possible, to put oil companies—the so-called “carbon majors”—on the financial hook for the damaging impacts of climate change? Our story below highlights a developing legal strategy that aims to do just that.

Columbia Insight

Litigants try to pin climate damages on fossil fuel corps with a novel method of attributing blame High and dry: Spring and summer snowpack isn't

09/30/2026

Last week, the state of Washington completed the final piece of state rule-making needed to link its cap-and-trade carbon market with markets in California and the Canadian province of Québec.

The move sets the stage for what’s being called the world’s largest subnational cap-and-trade system to begin operating as soon as next year.

“States and subnational governments are stepping up and leading at a time when the federal government is trying to dismantle U.S. climate policy,” Wash. Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a written statement. “Linkage isn’t just good climate policy—it’s smart economics. Linking will unlock greater emissions reductions, lower the cost of clean technologies, and create good-paying jobs in high-growth industries. We’re excited to be moving forward.”

The announcement builds on a linkage agreement Washington, California and Québec signed this summer at a Seattle ceremony Ferguson attended.

Last week’s regulatory changes finalize Washington’s side of the agreement.

Under Washington’s 2021 Climate Commitment Act (CCA), the state’s Department of Ecology is required to establish “linkage” agreements with other government entities running cap-and-trade programs.

The CCA requires large, carbon-polluting businesses to enter the state’s cap-and-trade carbon market and acquire “allowances” to cover their emissions. Allowances can be purchased either from state-run quarterly auctions or from secondary markets.
Full story at ColumbiaInsight.org

09/29/2026

Washington is getting closer to a massive carbon-market deal.

This historic pact with California and Quebec comes as the “federal government is trying to dismantle climate policy”.

Last week, the state of Washington completed the final piece of state rule-making needed to link its cap-and-trade carbon market with markets in California and the Canadian province of Québec.

The move sets the stage for what’s being called the world’s largest subnational cap-and-trade system to begin operating as soon as next year.

“States and subnational governments are stepping up and leading at a time when the federal government is trying to dismantle U.S. climate policy,” Wash. Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a written statement. “Linkage isn’t just good climate policy—it’s smart economics. Linking will unlock greater emissions reductions, lower the cost of clean technologies, and create good-paying jobs in high-growth industries. We’re excited to be moving forward.”

The announcement builds on a linkage agreement Washington, California and Québec signed this summer at a Seattle ceremony Ferguson attended.

Last week’s regulatory changes finalize Washington’s side of the agreement.

Under Washington’s 2021 Climate Commitment Act (CCA), the state’s Department of Ecology is required to establish “linkage” agreements with other government entities running cap-and-trade programs.

The CCA requires large, carbon-polluting businesses to enter the state’s cap-and-trade carbon market and acquire “allowances” to cover their emissions. Allowances can be purchased either from state-run quarterly auctions or from secondary markets.
Read full story at ColumbiaInsight.org



Columbia Insight

Historic pact with California, Quebec comes as “federal government is trying to dismantle climate policy” Gotta smoke? As part of a new deal, carbon savers in

09/25/2026

Thirty years after the legendary Warner Creek protest, activists gather to keep public engagement alive.

In a black and white image, a young man sporting a pair of long, thick braids stands beside a woman holding a baby in a white blanket. The pair are activists and a couple, Tim Ingalsbee and Catia Juliana, who took part in a year-long blockade of U.S. Forest Service Road 2408 in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest in the mid-1990s in an effort to block a proposed timber sale.

Thirty years later, on Aug. 24, Ingalsbee is standing beside an enlargement of the image on the stage at WOW Hall in Eugene, Ore., where about 300 activists old and young have gathered for the Warner Creek 30th Anniversary Celebration commemorating the Warner Creek blockade of 1995-1996.

The braids are gone—Ingalsbee bristles at a question posed about them.

“I’d rather talk about the issues than my braids,” the 66-year-old tells Columbia Insight.

For the Warner Creek activists, forest defense is as pressing today as it was in the 1990s.

“Picture yourself 30 years ago. It was the peak intensity of the Timber Wars,” Ingalsbee tells the crowd. “The battle over old-growth clear-cutting and ‘Earth First!’ was, in the region, putting bodies on the line, trying to slow down the machine.”

At the time, what Ingalsbee calls “liquidation logging” was eating up old-growth in the region. Then came a dramatic court intervention.

In spring and summer 1991, U.S. Federal District Court Judge William Dwyer made a series of rulings directing the U.S. Forest Service to comply with National Forest Management Act standards to maintain viable populations of northern spotted owl, which had been designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990.

Clinton’s “salvage timber rider” inspired activists to head into the forest and build a blockade.

Dwyer imposed an injunction against timber sales in old-growth owl habitat across 17 national forests in western Oregon, western Washington and northern California. (The injunction was lifted in 1994, following the adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan.)

In October 1991, arsonists lit fire to one of these reserves, just an hour’s drive from Eugene in the Willamette National Forest. The culprits were never caught—nor were their motives ascertained—but roughly 9,000 acres of old-growth burned in about two weeks.

“It was a big fire at the time, wildfire activity was much lower at the time, so it was kind of a big deal,” recalls Ingalsbee.

The fire was eventually put out by a heavy snowfall. Afterward, and just months after it had been protected as owl habitat, the Forest Service announced it would open the area for logging.

“Because of the arson fire, overnight it shifted into one of the largest timber-sale proposals in the country,” says Ingalsbee.

Ingalsbee was appointed to a federal public participation group helping the Willamette National Forest design what was called the Warner Fire Recovery Project.

Columbia Insight

Thirty years after the legendary protest, activists gather to keep public engagement alive High spirits: An event in Eugene recalled Cascadia Free State, seen

09/21/2026

Why not lead shot?

growing group of influencers is promoting the idea that incentives, not mandates, is the best way to get hunters to start using non-toxic am******on.

After 35 years evaluating them, Lynn Tompkins can tell pretty quickly what malady brought eagles, hawks and owls to her bird rehabilitation center just south of Pendleton, Oregon.

Charred talons are a sign the bird tried to roost on high-tension power lines, including the web of wires that radiates away from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River. Impact injuries like broken wings are commonly caused by collisions with cars, picture windows or wind-turbine blades. Others come in with gunshot wounds. Lacerated heads and legs generally suggest encounters with domestic pets or wire fences.

But a surprising number of raptors come to Tompkins’ Blue Mountain Wildlife with no external injuries at all. Instead, they’re lethargic, disoriented or have clenched talons that make them teeter like amputees.

Many of these birds are brought to the rehab center by game wardens, bird watchers or passersby who thought the dazed birds didn’t look or act right, and managed to nab them in fish nets or winter coats. The fact that a bird of prey—among the most unapproachable of our wildlife species—can be captured at all suggests it’s not particularly fit.

Birds that arrive at Blue Mountain with no obvious injuries are immediately poked with a syringe. Tompkins wants to test their blood.
Full story at ColumbiaInsight.org

A growing group of influencers is promoting the idea that incentives, not mandates, is the best way to get hunters to start using non-toxic am******on Spot the difference? A mix of calibers and brands, each of these boxes contain lead-free ammo.

09/21/2026

Governor Bob Ferguson’s response to WDFW investigation sows more discord.
Disappointing. That’s the general sentiment surrounding the Aug. 31 letters from Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office to Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioners Lorna Smith and Melanie Rowland, following a months-long independent investigation into their conduct.

Disappointing to the hunting groups that petitioned the governor to dismiss Smith and Rowland from the commission, because the letters do not dismiss them.

Disappointing to the conservation groups that support Smith and Rowland because, even though the governor decided not to remove them, the tone and language in the letters accept the premise of wrongdoing.

And disappointing to Smith and Rowland because, after long careers working to protect natural resources, the final years of their service are culminating not with recognition for their contributions, but with warning letters that come with no documentation backing up the allegations that they violated the state’s open public meetings or public records acts.

Smith and Rowland were the only two commissioners to receive letters from the governor’s office following the $80,000 probe into their conduct, and the conduct of commissioners John Lehmkuhl, Barbara Baker and Woody Myers, and former commissioner Tim Regan. The investigation’s final report was released in August.

The investigation was launched in August 2025 after the Sportsmen’s Alliance, an Ohio-based advocacy group for hunters, trappers and fishers, expressed dismay at a WDFW commission decision to end the recreational hunting of black bears in spring. After seeking the commissioners’ emails, texts and other communications, the group petitioned Ferguson to remove four commissioners—Smith, Rowland, Baker and Lehmkuhl—alleging misconduct and malfeasance.

Smith, Rowland and Lehmkuhl are all serving or finishing six-year terms that expire at the end of this year.

Read full story at ColumbiaInsight.org

09/14/2026

The personal and environmental costs of our supplication to AI are high. Here’s proof