Ten Springtime Adventures
Have the longer days and warmer temps led you to experience bouts of day-dreaming and window-gazing? Put that wanderlust to work! Plan on your trip to the desert, and get out there! With flowers blooming, birds migrating and roads drying out, spring is just about the best time to explore southeast Oregon. Here, we...
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Meet Michelle Smith and Sam Beebe
These ONDA members gave the classic American West road trip a public lands twist Inspired by a desire to see public lands across the West, Michelle Smith and Sam Beebe took a nearly 5-month and 16,000-mile road trip last year to better understand public lands and the current issues and communities around them. They...
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How to Take Better Images of Oregon’s High Desert
Conservation photographers share their advice: knowledge, persistence, patience The arid landscape that covers 27.6 million acres of Oregon is packed with opportunities to make interesting photographs. You can fill your frame with impressive canyons, alkali flats that tend toward abstraction or gnarled ancient juniper trees rich with character. Each year, Oregon Natural Desert Association’s...
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A New Plan for 5 Million Acres
5 Reasons to Care, 3 Topics to Understand, 1 Way to Get Involved. How would you manage 5 million acres? This spring, you have a once-in-a-generation chance to answer that very question. The Bureau of Land Management will be seeking input from the public on the Southeast Oregon Resource Management Plan Amendment (SEORMP), a...
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Going Public: Becoming a Public Land Leader
Brittany Leffel hosted a Public Land Leader gathering in December and wrote about her experience “going public”. Behind every beloved trail is a crew of stewards working to preserve the trail. Likewise, behind every wilderness area and national forest are people speaking up for our public lands. I’ve always taken pride in my...
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Species Spotlight: Mountain Mahogany
Written by LeeAnn Kriegh Trees live their lives on a different timescale than ours, so it helps to slow ourselves down to fully appreciate them. Certainly, a shrubby little tree like curlleaf mountain-mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius) isn’t going to catch our eye if we’re racing past along the trail. But take time for a closer...
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Ten Winter Adventures in the High Desert
Five for No Snow, Five for Snow. Winter in Oregon’s high desert can look and be quite different from one year to the next. In winter 2017, copious snowfall covered much of the sagebrush sea with feet of fun for skiers and snowshoers. The 2018 winter season, so far, has lent itself more to...
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Soundscapes
ONDA Volunteer John Hartog Tells High Desert Stories Through Sounds, Not Words. By John Dulzo Oregon Natural Desert Association volunteers are as diverse as the land they work so hard to protect. Here is a story about one of our most active volunteers who brings his audio artistry to his high desert devotion. Read...
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Ursula Le Guin, author and desert lover
Ursula Le Guin, author and desert lover, dies at 88 On Monday, January 22, 2018, author Ursula LeGuin died at her home in Portland, Oregon. Le Guin is best known for her widely read and critically acclaimed science fiction novels, including The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea chronicles. In addition to her...
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What Now for Sage-Grouse
Our Efforts to Protect an Imperiled Species Greater sage-grouse, a symbol of the Intermountain West, are in trouble. Despite the clear evidence of the species’ decline the Department of the Interior has signaled that it intends to roll back the vital protections established in the BLM’s 2015 sage-grouse plan. We’re deeply concerned that this...
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