The health and vitality of forest ecosystems in the Northwest, and how much timber should be cut from those forests, is laid out in the Northwest Forest Plan. But that plan was created in the mid-1990s, and has not changed substantially since then, says Norm Johnson, one of its developers. He and his longtime colleague, Jerry Franklin, recently penned an opinion piece in The Register-Guard newspaper, opposing the planned logging of about 2,000 acres of mature trees in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest.

Umatilla County’s vaccination rate is about 23%, according to the Oregon Health Authority’s data dashboard. That's the lowest vaccination rate in the state. And Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced earlier this week that the county will move back into the COVID-19 “high risk” category. Still, the county has seen a decline in residents attending mass vaccination sites. It has told the state that it does not need additional Moderna doses. We hear from Joseph Fiumara, the county’s public health director, about the challenges facing the region.