SPRINGFIELD — Thousands of people around the globe last weekend participated in the 2024 City Nature Challenge. During the four-day challenge, citizens upload photos of wild plants and animals in a competition that contributes to a database of urban biodiversity that informs environmental research, land management practices, and conservation efforts[Read More…]
Outdoors
Gardening enthusiasts still growing after four decades of sharing passion
What started as an informal way for plant-lovers to gather and learn from each other has steadily grown over the past four decades into a group with about 400 members who share the same passion: gardening. The Willamette Valley Hardy Plant Group (WVHPG) was founded in 1986 by Roger Gossler[Read More…]
Warming climate, budget cuts among most serious challenges
I’ll leave it to my readers to determine the cause, whether our changing climate is the result of a cycle or human activities. There is no doubt, however, that our climate is warming. The warming has become so acute that according to climatologists the number of days we now experience[Read More…]
Troubling times for anglers as hatchery production dips
I concluded my most recent column for The Chronicle with what I had hoped would be a specious rumor. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Corps of Engineers that provides funding for hatchery trout and summer steelhead in the upper Willamette River Basin, under a compensatory mitigation program with[Read More…]
Sustainable landscaper’s business is blooming
Morganic Roots owner, a former point guard, finds true outside game COTTAGE GROVE — A couple of decades ago, the Morgan family was known as a basketball family. After graduating from South Eugene High School in 2005, point guard Arnold E. Morgan Jr. – better known as J.R. Morgan – moved[Read More…]
Anglers facing a variety of weather challenges
It’s been a mixed bag of good and some not-so-good news for local anglers during the past few weeks. Work at the Junction City Pond has wrapped up after a major overhaul to the parking surface, fishing dock, and improved general access to the banks of the water in general.[Read More…]
Anglers Log: Steelheaders to take riverways
It was a tough start for winter steelhead season this year in the Northwest. Snow and ice swept over large parts of the Willamette Valley, followed by a series of warm Pacific storms that accelerated the melt of much of the low-level frozen precipitation. The rapid runoff took rivers in[Read More…]
Anglers Log: Oregon avoids major flooding
The recent heavy rain that swept across the state brought moderate flooding to many coastal rivers and streams. But nowhere in Oregon was the flooding critical. It was a good flushing, and as the waters began to recede, anglers were delighted to find the first push of winter steelhead had[Read More…]
Paying it forward for our managed lands
Way back in the day, it was pretty easy. With your fishing license in hand, you’d head out, park anywhere you wanted, and recreate on public lands that, for the most part, were free of fees and access restrictions. Unfortunately, all of us and the other thousands of[Read More…]
Winter steelhead, free fishing highlight the outdoors calendar
In decades past, it was about Thanksgiving of each year that hatchery winter steelhead would begin to quietly slip into our coastal rivers and by the middle of December we would be well into a season that still runs into the spring of each year. It was pretty common[Read More…]
Obituaries & Tributes
Death Notices: Duncan, Loftus, Fritz, Howarth, Elam, Knees, Book
■ William Leroy Duncan Jr. 62, of Eugene, died March 5. Arrangements: Sunset Hills. ■ Michael D. Loftus, 73, died March 5. Arrangements: Sunset Hills. ■ Susan Dru Fritz, 65, of Eugene, died March 7. Arrangements: Sunset Hills. ■ Donald Ralph Howarth, 75, of Eugene, died March 7. Arrangements: Sunset[Read More…]
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