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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes News: News: Happenin' Biz: Tsunami Books
NANCY OFF THE AIR Popular local progressive radio talk show host Nancy Stapp of "Breakfast With Nancy" has left the airwaves of Air America-affiliate KOPT 1600 AM radio following a rumored dispute with station management over editorial content and control. Stapp was recently honored with the EW Best of Eugene Award for "Best Local Radio Show or Host."
Station owners John Musumeci and Suzanne Arlie deferred comment on the reasons for the breakup to Churchill Media and KOPT Program Director Liz Kelly. Kelly, in a press release Nov. 10 said, "We are saddened to announce that morning show host Nancy Stapp has left KOPT. … We appreciate Nancy's contribution to our community and our organization as the morning show host on KOPT over the past year. While we are sorry to see her leave Eugene, we wish Nancy the best in her future endeavors as she returns to Taos, New Mexico." Stapp was also reluctant to talk about why she left the station so abruptly. "What I can say," she said, "is that the folks in Eugene are very intelligent, engaged people and they will draw their own conclusions. In life and not just in work, I find that people definitely judge you by your actions rather than your intentions, and my hope is that people will look at the work that I've done and the work that we were able to do. And when I mean 'we' I really mean this community, because I'm nothing without the voices that I was able to bring on the air." She will be taking her old job as morning talk show host at the solar-powered KTAO radio (www.ktao.com) in Taos. She was at the station previously for 10 years, and has known station owner and DJ Brian Hockmeyer for 28 years. When asked if she would like to stay in Eugene, she said she loves Eugene, but she signed a non-compete agreement with Churchill Media, and talk radio is what she does best. Taking her place on the KOPT morning slot is Brian Shaw, who recently left Diamond Peak Media's SUCCESS FM radio. — Ted Taylor
DEFENDING WILD COHO The Pacific Rivers Council (PRC) and Oregon's Native Fish Society are asking citizens to speak out in defense of one of Oregon's most vulnerable native populations: wild coastal coho salmon. While the ecology-focused nonprofits agree with the ambitious goals outlined in The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's recently released draft recovery plan, they find the proposal lacking in enforceable state and federal protections for the dwindling fish population. "This is all happening in the context of a controversy, a federal lawsuit around the listing status of coho," said Mary Scurlock, senior policy analyst at the PRC. "The state would very likely have to consider stronger measures in the plan if the coho were federally listed as a threatened species. But the timber industry is lobbying to keep the fish off the list." A sample letter available at the PRC website asks Gov. Kulongoski to amend the plan to include enforceable habitat protections and guaranteed funding to support state recovery efforts. As it stands, the plan relies on voluntary land use measures that vary widely between landowners. Spurlock laments that the fish's status has been under litigation or threat of litigation since 1992. "There is a real lack of urgency in this plan," she said. "The way it is now, it will take a long time to show benefits." According to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council Preseason Report, the coho population has fallen by 50 percent over the last three years. Send comments to cohoplan@state.or.us or visit the Pacific Rivers Council website (www.pacrivers.org)for more info. The deadline for comments is Friday, Nov. 17. — Adrienne van der Valk
THREE TIMBER SALES HALTED Once again, teeny red tree voles — and their intrepid human defenders — have kicked chainsaws ou of old growth forests. On Nov. 7, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Bureau of Land Management violated two federal environmental laws by failing to perform required vole surveys before selling the Cow Catcher and Cotton Snake timber sales in the Roseburg and Medford districts, respectively. The next day, a district court applied the same logic to the Willy Slide timber sale in the Medford district. The decisions halted all three timber sales, although 30 acres of Cow Catcher had already been cut. The tree vole, which lives in the upper canopy of mature forests, is a major food source for the endangered northern spotted owl. Under the Northwest Forest Plan, the Forest Service and the BLM are required to survey for tree vole nests and leave 10-acre no-cut buffers around each one. But the BLM had illegally relied on an internal memo that took the tree vole off the survey and manage list for the timber sales, the federal judge ruled. Luckily for environmentalists, activists with the Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team did the job the BLM had neglected. In summer 2003 NEST volunteers climbed old-growth trees at the Cow Catcher and Cotton Snake timber sales, locating and mapping red tree vole nests, then passed their data along to attorneys for nonprofit plaintiffs Cascadia Wildlands Project, Umpqua Watersheds and Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center. "These surveys were critical in compelling the decisions that were handed down this week," a CWP press release stated. When the BLM completes the court-ordered vole surveys, the three timber sales — and others in the Roseburg and Medford districts — could get "buffered out" completely, according to CWP Director Josh Laughlin. "We could see thousands of acres of old growth protected because of this ruling," he said. "This is a red tree vole colony." But BLM spokesperson Jody Weil is less certain that the ruling will kill the logging projects, emphasizing that the court only ordered the agency to re-assess logging impacts on the vole. "If the only way the red tree vole could survive is no cutting at all, and we had to maintain the tree vole at its current population, then we would have to consider a different decision," she said. "Maybe the red tree vole would be okay with a different kind of logging." — Kera Abraham CALC LOOKS BACK OVER 40 YEARS The Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC) has served since 1996 as a training ground for peace and justice leaders and organizers who have "graduated" to play key roles in other local, regional and national organizations. In celebration of 40 years, CALC is planning an anniversary dinner this weekend. The event begins at 5:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 18 at the Eugene Hilton. Dinner is at 6:30 and festivities follow at 7:30. Cost is $45 and reservations are nearly full. Call 485-1755 or email calc@efn.org for information. CALC Board member Marcy Middleton will emcee the evening program. Iana Mathews Harris will perform spoken word, Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin and Joan Bayliss will sing music from the Jewish tradition, and Marion Malcolm, who's been involved with CALC for 32 years, will tie the organization's history to its future. CALC will showcase its history in a PowerPoint presentation of historical flyers and photos. CALC has a long history of working collaboratively with groups that have historically and systematically been kept apart, and will honor these allies at the event. CALC (originally Clergy and Laity Concerned) has its roots in mobilizing opposition to the Vietnam War, but has "evolved from a white peace group into a multi-ethnic, multi-issue force for peace and justice," says Michael Carrigan, CALC's development director. CALC today organizes opposition to military recruiting in schools, provides draft counseling, defends human rights, fights bigotry in all its forms, helps organize peace rallies, and work to establish multicultural programs in public schools. See www.calclane.org
KILLING FOR OIL The eyes of the world are on the war in Iraq, but Nigerians are facing human rights violations, pollution and militarization due to oil extraction. In Nigeria alone, human rights groups estimate that in the last 10 years, military factions acting on behalf of multinational oil companies have killed more than 2,000 people in the Niger Delta. Thousands more have been imprisoned and tortured. One of them is Nigerian Omoyele Sowore.
Sowore will be in Eugene this week to talk about "Nigeria: The Other Oil War" as part of a speaking tour sponsored by the human rights group Global Exchange. The free talk will begin at 7 pm Friday, Nov. 17 at PLC 180 on the UO campus. Excessive oil consumption and climate change are the most pressing issues of our times, according to Brian Frank, a Cascadia regional organizer with Global Exchange, and in addition to environmental damage, he says, the oil industry is taking a heavy human toll as well. Sowore has been imprisoned eight times and tortured for promoting democracy in Nigeria. "We've had supposed democracy for six and a half years and people still can't eat," he says in a statement from Global Exchange. "Who has benefited? There's no basic health care. There's no basic education. Shell and Chevron are among the biggest corporations in the world and their work in Nigeria has benefited only a few people, the clique that runs the country. The Niger Delta area is polluted, occupied and heavily militarized. People get killed on behalf of the major oil companies if they voice protest; that cannot be right."
Scott Landfield & David Rhodes of Tsunami Books
After three years of college in his home town of Quincy, Ill., Scott Landfield moved to Eugene in 1978. "People were coming out to plant trees," he says. "I planted trees for 20 years." Chicagoan David Rhodes was a student in Berkeley when he hitchhiked to Eugene for a 1984 Grateful Dead concert. "It was a hippie wonderland," he says. "I knew I'd live here one day." After a few years back in Chicago, Rhodes made the trek west in 1993. He played saxophone in several bands and worked days at the Black Sun Bookstore, where he met Landfield, a part-time employee when he wasn't in the woods. Black Sun owner Peter Ogura helped Rhodes open Tsunami Books in 1995, and Landfield joined the business a year later. More than just a bookstore, Tsunami has become a cultural center, hosting writing classes for adults and kids, literary readings, theater, political events and concerts. Nearly bankrupt in early 2005, Tsunami was rescued by an impromtu "cabal" of investors. "Mostly poets," Landfield observes. "Now we're a community-owned business. This is the first year we've made a profit." — Paul Neevel
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