Barbara Bernstein

In what may be a first in the nation, the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis o... Read more

The idea that birds are not particularly smart is so culturally ingrained that we refer to someone who is not intelligent as “bird brained.” But researchers have found that birds are actually incredibly smart and have some abilities that far surpass that of humans. The Clar... Read more

Last month coal giant Peabody Coal filed for bankruptcy. Despite Donald Trump's vow to reopen coal mines if he is elected president, the coal industry needs a lot more than hollow campaign promises to stay alive. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Clark Williams-De... Read more

No one can predict when the next earthquake will strike. But according to Bob Yeats, a retired geology professor at Oregon State University, a knowledge of geology can help us predict where. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver. Like the recent seismic d... Read more

Mountains have played a major role in the American psyche and the history of our country. Once perceived as places of evil or barriers to progress, the conquest of their peaks became a key component of westward expansion in the 19th century. Our fascination with mountains a... Read more

Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent’s most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pac... Read more