As I sat down at my computer yesterday morning and looked at my overflowing email inbox, a new unread email subject line caught my eye: “Secretary Salazar to Announce Decision on Pacific Northwest Forest Management.” The day had come! The Obama Administration would finally decide the fate of Oregon’s ancient forests, which have been under serious threat from a Bush-era plan that proposed to more than double the amount of logging on some 2.6 million acres of Bureau of Land Management forests. more

Just six months into Obama’s presidency, we’re already beginning to see just how much we can get done with an administration that values strong scientific evidence. Last week, after years of foot-dragging by the Bush Administration, the White House released a landmark multi-agency government report on the effects of climate change on the U.S. Just a day later, a scientific report from the U.S. more

I can still remember the smell of dog food and peanut butter mixing and melting beneath Kentucky’s July sun. My vertebrate zoology class was preparing to trap the Southern flying squirrel and my group received a special assignment: “make raccoon bait.” So, while my other classmates assembled cages and rolled up squirrel-sized peanut butter and oat balls, I tucked my nose under my shirt and stirred our thick concoction with a broken branch. more