Trojan Wars

Season 3: Trojan Wars ... coming in 2027

The scramble to meet the energy demands of AI and data centers is leading to what some are calling a "Nuclear Renaissance," and the Pacific Northwest is at the heart of i

Bonus Episode: Celilo Memories

We hear the voices of tribal elders who remember Celilo Falls before The Dalles Dam silenced this sacred fishing spot. Many of the voices you hear in this episode were sh

Ep 6: The Future

Salmon hatcheries set up by the federal government prioritized ocean fishermen over river tribes and created genetically inferior fish. In this final episode, we visit a

Ep 5: The Crime

Salmon have been on the decline for more than 100 years. The federal government knows why. It knows who killed the salmon. And how. But for decades it’s been telling a ta

Ep 4: The Salmon’s Struggle

Salmon used to be plentiful and they’ve been a staple of tribal diets for centuries. Since the early 1900s, salmon populations in the Columbia River have steadily decline

Bonus Episode: LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot

You heard from Randy Settler’s cousin, LiaDonna Lopez Whitefoot, in the most recent episode of Salmon Wars. She’s the one who was fearless in the face of a blockade of bo

Ep 3: The Court Battles

Federal officials took away a way of life that had sustained Pacific Northwest tribes for centuries. So some tribal members became outlaws. During the 1960s and beyond, N

Ep 2: The Treaties

To understand the war over salmon, we have to go back to 1855. That’s when chiefs from the Yakama Nation and other Pacific Northwest tribes signed treaties that are still

Ep 1: The Family

Host Tony Schick introduces us to Randy Settler and his family. The Settlers, members of the Yakama Nation, have been deeply affected by the Northwest’s salmon policies f

Season 2: Salmon Wars ... coming soon

 “Salmon Wars” tells the story of salmon in the Northwest in a way you haven’t heard before – through the voices of one Yakama Nation family who have been fighting for sa

Bonus Ep: Suzanne Simard and the Social World of Trees

What if, instead of competing with each other, trees work together? What if they even communicate? Renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has spent her life digging int

Bonus Ep: Wildfire

In 2020, wildfires swept across the West, consuming millions of acres of forest and destroying thousands of homes and even whole communities. And sadly, this is just the

Bonus Ep: Big Money Bought the Forest

In 'Timber Wars,' we've talked about how the northern spotted owl took the blame for a lot of other things that cost jobs and hurt timber-dependent towns, like automation

Ep 7: A Way Forward

Is the Northwest fatally divided, or can we overcome our differences and work together? We tell the story of one group of loggers and environmentalists who have found som

Ep 6: The Backlash

Before the Northwest Forest Plan had a chance to succeed, Congress seized upon the threat of wildfires to create a loophole and throw the plan out the window. With old gr

Ep 5: The Plan

The Timber Wars grew so hot that one of President Clinton’s first acts in office was to fly half his cabinet to Portland to resolve the conflict. The result was the North

Ep 4: Mill City

Mill City was one of dozens of flourishing timber towns, where a job in the woods or at the local sawmill could support a good life. But protests and court cases upended

Ep 3: The Owl

Throughout the 80s, environmentalists lost in the woods and in the courtrooms. There just weren’t many laws that protected trees. But there were laws that protected anima

Ep 2: The Ancient Forest

For most of America’s history, trees were seen as crops, and the plan was to log the country’s last virgin forests and make them de facto tree farms. We see forests very

Ep 1: The Last Stand

When loggers headed into the forest on Easter Sunday in 1989, they found a line of protesters blocking the road. The ensuing battle would help catapult old-growth forests