In the rural West, geography defines us
Category: Healthy Planet
Fishing for Life
Every spring, the Umatilla people of northeastern Oregon join other Columbia River tribes in celebrating the return of the salmon. Growing up on the reservation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains east of Pendleton, Patrick Luke learned to appreciate the bond between fish and people. When he wasn’t helping to tend the family’s horses, he was fishing with his dad for salmon and steelhead on the Columbia and the Umatilla rivers.
A Student’s View
“They have offered me every opportunity a graduate student would ever need. They have picked me up when I was down, and they have pushed me to become my best and to go beyond what I thought I was capable of. I feel lucky to have been able to work with them.”
When Marcy Cottrell Houle headed to the Zumwalt Prairie in the 1980s with her topo maps, tree-climbing gear and raptor leg bands to study hawks, she assumed wildlife and cows were incompatible. After all, that was the prevailing view — and there were millions of overgrazed acres across the West to prove it. So when the OSU grad student found hawks flourishing alongside cows in the northeastern Oregon rangelands, she was stunned.
High Alert
In our research, we’re seeing a significant behavioral shift among deer and elk resulting from this fear of being preyed upon by large carnivores.”
The Ice Sages
For millennia the people of King Island have depended on the walrus hunt. But as Arctic ice recedes in response to a changing climate, hunters have to go further to reach their quarry. OSU anthropologist Deanna Paniataaq Kingston leads a team documenting the culture, language and natural history of her ancestral homeland.