Barbara Bernstein

The American Southwest is a land that echoes with mystery, stark beauty, and a history of brutality. On this arid landscape civilizations have risen and fallen for thousands of years. Some were wiped out by changing climatic conditions, others by the brutality of Spanish... Read more

On the afternoon of September 2, a group of teenagers thought it was exciting to hurl lit firecrackers into the Eagle Creek canyon in the Columbia River Gorge. Shortly after a number of hikers witnessed and heard the firecrackers, a wildfire erupted in the Eagle Creek ar... Read more

This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries. On this episode of Locus Focus we present SACRIFICE ZONES, Barbara's latest documentary, originally broadcast on KBOO on June 5, 2017. As the fossil fu... Read more

This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries. On this episode of Locus Focus we present FIGHTING GOLIATH, produced and broadcast in 2014. The Canadian Tar Sands is the largest industrial project on e... Read more

This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries. This week we present Sculpted By Fire, produced and initially broadcast in 2007. In mid July of 2002 a series of lightning strikes ignited a number of sm... Read more

This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries. This week we present SALMONLANDS, produced in 2005. Without the Salmon there would be no Pacific Northwest as we know it. Yet since 1991, most of the sa... Read more

This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries, beginning with RIVERS THAT WERE, produced in 2002, at a time when no one would have imagined that coal and oil trains would threaten the Columbia River ... Read more

As the fossil fuel industry targets the Pacific NW for massive fossil fuel development, communities across the region have drawn a thin green line of resistance. Most of these proposals are being vehemently opposed, but on either side of the Lower Columbia River, the lar... Read more

On July 19, 2017 the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) ruled that Portland’s Fossil Fuel Terminal Zoning Amendments, passed unanimously in December of 2016, is inconsistent with the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Portland’s fossil fuel policy intended to... Read more

It's been nearly six months since Trump became president and over seven months since George Polisner, an Oracle senior executive, publicly resigned from the company after his boss joined Trump's transition team, pledging her support to the president-elect. Since then Geo... Read more