Grazing without public input, and the week's news

Happy Saturday, Oregon!

As we look forward to the (ideally soon!) end of the 2026 fire season, Alex Baumhardt and Mia Maldonado had stories this week on environmental and fiscal policy that could affect future fire years.

In broad strokes, the Trump administration wants more grazing and more logging, which it says will reduce wildfire fuels (remember “raking the forest”). Scientists say fire prevention isn’t as simple as removing fuels — in fact, overgrazing by cattle can lead to native plants being replaced by invasive grasses and shrubs that exacerbate drought and wildfire, and most fires start near roads because humans, intentionally or not, cause most fires.

As Alex reported, conservationists are suing to stop grazing on 24 million acres that the administration wants to open up. And on Tuesday, the administration moved ahead with its plans to open logging, road construction and mining on nearly 45 million wild acres, mostly in the West. The U.S. Forest Service’s research shows the majority of human-caused ignitions occur on roadsides, and 20 years of monitoring data does not support assertions that repealing road prohibitions will improve forest health, Alex wrote.

Mia, meanwhile, continues tracking transportation funding and this week reported on how Oregon Department of Transportation crews help with fires and other natural disasters. Each summer, some crews trade their usual jobs of patching potholes and clearing culverts for coordinating evacuations, moving heavy equipment and closing highways to serve as fire breaks. As the department stares down the prospect of budget cuts if lawmakers don’t figure out a funding solution that can withstand a ballot referral, it could lose some ability to respond to severe weather.

In non-fire news, Oregon lawmakers do not want to talk about their colleague’s ethical lapses that led to one of the biggest fines the Oregon Government Ethics Commission has ever imposed. Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, lost his position as co-chair of one budget subcommittee after the ethics commission fined him $12,000 for abusing his position as director of an eastern Oregon public development authority to dramatically increase his annual salary and approve weeks of his own paid vacation time. But he remains a vice chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee and in House leadership.

Alex reached out to all Republican members of the House and Senate, as well as Speaker Julie Fahey and Majority Leader Ben Bowman. Three senators, who have little sway over Smith as members of the other chamber, responded. House Minority Leader Lucetta Elmer, R-McMinnville, did not respond to a call, text or email from our reporters but after the story published told the Statesman Journal that she supports Smith and was happy to see that there were no criminal findings in the report. (While the commission’s investigations sometimes run parallel to criminal investigations, it’s purely a civil body and cannot determine whether an investigation subject committed a crime. That’s up to the court system.)

Oregon fishermen can start using a new kind of crabbing gear meant to protect whales next year, Mia reported. Traditional commercial crabbing gear requires hundreds of traps to sit on the ocean floor, each attached to a vertical line connected to a buoy on the surface. Whales can easily get entangled and injured, often fatally, in those lines. The new gear, already in use in California, keeps the lines and buoy on the ocean floor with the pots and allows fishermen to trigger its rise, leaving the ocean free of vertical ropes unless fishermen are actively harvesting.

Mia also previewed new bills in Congress and the Legislature, where state Sen. Lisa Reynolds, D-Portland, is trying to limit kids’ access to marijuana. Reynolds failed to pass a bill this year limiting individual edibles to no more than 10 mg of THC. In Congress, U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas is pushing for funding for first responder mental health.

On the health front, Shaanth Nanguneri looked at high insurance rate increases for marketplace purchasers and a report that found that Oregon’s private health equity law seems to be working.

Two programming notes before our Saturday story, a deeper look at efforts to expand grazing acreage from ProPublica and High Country News. I’ll be part of a Sept. 11 panel with the Portland City Club previewing November elections. And if you only get the weekend wrap and not our daily newsletter, Alex will have you covered next week while I’m off in the woods somewhere turning 33.

Enjoy the weekend!