The Jefferson Exchange

How do you make an old-growth forest?  Start with a younger forest, for one thing. 

The Redwoods Rising Project aims to create old-growth redwood forest where lands have already been logged. 

It joins the forces of the Save the Redwoods League, California State Parks, and the National Park Service to help turn what is now mixed forest into true redwood forest. 

Emily Burns is science director for SRL, Jay Chamberlin works for the state park system. 

Siskiyou County's representative in Congress, Doug LaMalfa, introduced a bill to restore federal status to a group of Native Americans in the county. 

And some of the most outspoken people opposing the move are representatives from other tribes. 

The Ruffey Rancheria would gain the benefits of restoration if the bill passes, but the Karuk Tribe and others question whether the people seeking restoration are even related to members of the original rancheria. 

Biochar is gaining ground as a way to sequester carbon in the ground. 

Is it as simple as burying charcoal in the ground?  Not quite... charcoal and biochar are a little different, and we invited several guests to help us understand the differences and the process. 

Johannes Lehmann at Cornell University is well-versed in biochar; he joins us by phone. 

And we welcome Kelpie Wilson of Wilson Biochar into the studio, along with a rep from Oregon Biochar Solutions in White City. 

Hydraulic fracturing to get oil and gas out of the ground--"fracking"--troubles a lot of people.  Including a majority of the city council in Lafayette, Colorado. 

The council adopted a Climate Bill of Rights and Protections last year, and is making other moves to keep fracking activities from starting within city limits. 

City Councilor Merrily Mazza is one of the fracking opponents, and she's taking her message on the road, to Medford last night (May 22), and to North Bend and Eugene Wednesday and Thursday. 

The "conventional wisdom" on firearm deaths is that the rates are higher in urban areas.  In California, the conventional wisdom is wrong. 

The Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis studied firearm deaths--homicide and suicide--from 2000 to 2015. 

The overall rate of firearm homicide dropped 30% over that time... almost all of it in urban areas.  Rural areas have seen no such decline. 

Down the valley with the sound of a whisper.  That might be overstating the plan for electric buses running between Redding and Sacramento. 

But the plan was attractive enough to bring in a grant of $8.6 million for battery buses to shuttle back and forth, with electric feeder lines for local communities as far north as Siskiyou County. 

The Shasta Regional Transportation Authority is in the driver's seat of the project. 

Maybe it happened to your son: a friendly, chatty kid turned into a sullen, silent adolescent.  What IS it with boys? 

They require some special treatment, says psychologist Dr. Adam Cox. 

He interviews young people for hundreds of hours each year, and he's got ideas for approaching young males in his book Cracking the Boy Code: How to Understand and Talk with Boys. 

We eat differently in the summertime.  Lots of great seasonal flavors are there to be consumed, but there are cautions to take. 

Just because there's plenty of ice cream and hot dogs and wine (together?) doesn't mean you have to partake. 

Felicia Stoler, nutritionist and author (and congressional candidate, but not here) has a few ideas on avoiding summer foods that can turn on you. 

The beauty of the Rogue River is best enjoyed from a boat.  Highways and hiking paths just don't get to all of the stunning views of the river and its canyons and rapids. 

Many people enjoy the river from rafts, others prefer motorized accommodations.  That's where Hellgate Jetboat Excursions comes in. 

The boats have been skimming the river for 59 years now.  Current general manager Travis Hamlyn succeeded his father Robert, and knows the story of the company's rise well. 

One of our country's leading car-hire companies does not own the cars it hires.  Likewise, some of the major players in the overnight lodging business do not own lodging. 

Owning assets or money is less important in today's economy than owning information.  That's what makes Uber and AirBNB so successful. 

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger considers this new landscape in his book with Thomas Ramge, Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data. 

What lies ahead, prosperity, calamity, or something in between? 

There's a constant debate about proper levels of spending at all levels of government. 

But how much do you actually know about government spending, and how easily can you lay your hands on information?  The public watchdog group OSPIRG gave Oregon a grade of B- in the transparency of its data on spending. 

Could be worse, the scale runs from A to F.  But what does Oregon need to do to improve its grade? 

Coral is more than a pretty color, it is an ecosystem that represents a tiny fraction of the planet, but a huge proportion of its marine life. 

Oregon State University's marine science efforts include studies of coral, even though the closest reef is thousands of miles from Oregon. 

OSU is a partner in the creation of the documentary film "Saving Atlantis," which puts the steep decline of coral in our warming oceans into perspective.  Justin Smith is producer and co-director of the movie; Rebecca Vega-Thurber is the primary investigator. 

It's a constant drumbeat at this point in history: read to your kids, read to your kids.  It makes a difference in the development of their languages skills and their brains. 

Is there a benchmark to hit?  Pediatric surgeon Dr. Dana Suskind says yes.  Thirty Million Words is the name of her initiative and the book she wrote on it. 

Opioid painkillers work like magic, their users say: the pain they suffered just disappears.  Then comes the drawback: the drugs are addictive, and higher doses are needed over time to get the same effect. 

A researcher at OHSU, Oregon Health & Science University, studied pain levels in patients both before they began using opioids, and after they successfully kicked the addiction. 

His main finding: the pain is no worse, and can be even less. 

At times it seems like the different levels of government are at war with each other: states sue the federal government to enforce certain laws (or not to); the federal government sues states (like California) over its approach to immigration "sanctuaries." 

And several Oregon counties have now joined efforts to block the state from enforcing gun control laws. 

The Committee to Preserve the Second Amendment is concerned that state laws are overstepping the bounds of the second amendment.  Coos and Klamath County groups are active. 

Grabbing a gun and shooting something to eat used to be a much more common thing in the United States.  More than that, the image of the hunter was once part of the national self-image. 

But only about six percent of the population hunts anymore, down from ten percent in the mid-1950s.  How did we get here from there? 

Historian Philip Dray provides answers in his book The Fair Chase: The Epic Story of Hunting in America. 

It stands to reason that an ecosystem that has been altered by non-native and invasive species should be restored to its original condition.  Not so fast, some scientists suggest. 

The "novel ecosystems" created by alien plants still provide habitat for some key species.  Like the birds that find nesting places on the Zumwalt Prairie in northeastern Oregon. 

Early white settlers planted non-native grasses and grazed livestock, then abandoned some of the sites.  And some birds are just fine with the landscape that resulted. 

Patricia Kennedy is the director of the Eastern Oregon Agriculture & Natural Resource Program and a researcher of local conditions.