Ian Rose

In 2020, we all took some solace in the Nature is Healing memes, even the silly ones. But the thing is, with even the slightest nudge in the right direction, even the smallest relief from our boot on its neck, it does. Nature does heal and reclaim.

We knew salmon were returning to Upper Klamath Lake after the dam removal there. But now we know they are breeding, and making the first natural hatchlings there in over 100 years. This is great news.
#salmon #oregon #rivers

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/25/upper-klamath-river-chinook-salmon-naturally-hatching/

If you tell the story of the burnt ballot boxes in Portland and Vancouver this week (an important story that warrants attention), also tell how good fire-suppressant design saved all but three ballots in the Portland box, and the efforts of the election workers who contacted those three voters and arranged for replacement ballots.

Things are scary and bad, and often literally on fire. But there are good people and good systems too. Making us forget that is always a win for the worst ones.

It was reasonably pretty this weekend on the Oregon coast. If you like that sort of thing.
#oregon #OregonCoast #pnw

Good news for basically everything alive in my state.

Today, HB4134, the 1.25% for wildlife bill, passed the Oregon Senate after previously passing the House. It now heads to Governor Kotek's desk to be signed into law.

It will raise tens of millions of sorely needed dollars for wildlife conservation in our state. It's a huge win. I'm going to celebrate it.

#oregon #nature #orpol #SomethingGood

People in security and computing have been saying for years - there's no cloud. There's just someone else's computer.

Right now, there's no AI. There's just someone else's work.

Stop calling generative text and image programs AI. It's inaccurate and insulting. They are just the evolution of corporate creative theft that's been going on as long as media corporations have existed.

This makes me so happy. I knew coyotes were around, but this is my first direct evidence of them on the farm. I hope you stay and get fat on mice and moles, my friend. You are most welcome.
(I hope you can see the look back at the end at this resolution.)
#coyotes #oregon #trailcam

Ten seconds of calm, courtesy of Beazell Memorial Forest just outside of Philomath, Oregon.

#oregon #pnw #water

Ready to cut my first micro green crop of the year. This is a tray of mixed spicy greens, and it's the 23rd tray of greens I've grown on a small apartment shelf with a LED light.

#gardening #GrowFood

My favorite Oregon wildflower, and an important First Food for many Northwest Indigenous peoples, has returned to bloom. This today was my first Camas sighting of the year. There will be many more in the coming weeks, one of my favorite times of year. Happy Camas season.
#bloomscrolling #flowers #oregon

Only one thing has ever deserved the name sora, and it is this excellent nearly spherical marsh bird. May today be the beginning of the end of the era of AI slop.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sora/id

I had a breakthrough at work and it's a huge relief and also, I have so little space in my head for anything but grief for the world that I can't really enjoy it. How do we savor the small things, or even the nice medium-sized things when the big ones are so bad? But also, what's the damned point of any of it if we don't?

Two big reasons to celebrate April 9.

1) It's #LocalNewsDay! Find and read and support your local paper, public radio station or news site. Help stop news desertification.

2) It's also Confederate Surrender Day here in the US. A reminder that the Confederacy existed for less than five years. The Spin Doctors lasted longer. Prohibition lasted longer. *The Microsoft Zune* lasted longer. It is no one's heritage, and the most historically accurate Confederate flag is all white.

#uspol #April9

Yesterday I saw this, my first open daffodil of the year. Today there are tons of them open around town. I'm not personally quite ready for spring, but nonetheless, it is coming.
#corvallis #oregon #bloomscrolling

Sabrina Imbler's How Far the Light Reaches is certainly my favorite book I've read so far this year. The natural history memoir is a tiny subgenre, one of my favorites, probably most famous recently for H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. But my favorite people who write it are, very uncoincidentally, queer. Riley Black does it so well for paleontology, and now Imbler is in that same stratum for marine biology. I loved this book. If you haven't read it, go do that.

#books #bookstodon

In the short term, this year's historic snow drought in the West is already hurting communities and economies that depend on winter recreation. But in the long run, it could hit our farms, forests, fish and power supply even harder.

My latest for Sierra Magazine:
#ClimateCrisis #SnowDrought #winter

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/western-snow-drought-threatens-ski-season-and-much-more

Good morning, Corvallis. The way the heat is coming around the West, I don't know how many more mornings in the 40s I have left. I'm going to enjoy the chill while it lasts.
#oregon

Today, the U.S. Drought Monitor upgraded my town, Corvallis, Oregon, from Abnormally Dry (D0) to Moderate Drought (D1). We have a nasty summer coming, and very likely a bad fire season too. If you live in the West, prepare.
#oregon #drought #pnw

Certainly the most time- and work-intensive thing that I make or grow, per gram, but 100% worth it. What used to be a waste product (chicken bones) becomes beige gold for my garden (bone meal fertilizer.)
#gardening #wasteless

As we approach the end of a nearly snowless winter in much of the American West, I climbed our tallest local mountain in search of actual freeze.

This is the only ice we want or need in Oregon. I wish we had a lot more of it going into spring.

If someone tells you not to vote, suggests that not voting is a meaningful protest, or posts about the uselessness of voting, they are engaging in voter suppression, and they are not your friend.

We think of voter suppression as a set of partisan policies, and in large part it is, but it is a very big toolbox, with more in it than that. I've already blocked one person I agree with on a lot of things today, because I won't sit and watch folks do the worst people's work for them.

#uspol

The so-called God Squad is supposed to be a last resort, the nuclear option of endangered species law. Trump is using it preemptively, to give his fossil fuel industry supporters a gift on an unprecedented scale. Oil in the Gulf of Mexico is flowing as freely as it ever has, and we are not in an energy emergency. The lie that we are may cost us the rarest whale in the world.

My latest for Sierra:
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/trump-uses-god-squad-slash-endangered-species-protections