Monica Drost and her friends have been backpacking together since they were in college. But now in their 50s, they can’t carry their heavy packs anymore. Luckily, they found a llama outfitter and can now enjoy the wilderness without the aches and pains.

Portland has the second largest Christmas Bird Count in the Americas as volunteers dedicate one concentrated day to taking a census of area birds. The CBC provides the nation’s best record of the rise and fall of bird populations.

There’s only one place in Oregon where you can find wild elk, mountain beaver and pygmy owls in the middle of a city - it’s Portland’s Forest Park. But these, and a myriad of other species, remain hidden from most Portlanders. During the Spring of 2012, over 150 wildlife experts and volunteers converged on the park for 24 hours to search streams, trees, and undergrowth for anything that moved.

A beautiful tour of Oregon's rivers in Autumn.

Outdoor School has been a rite of passage for sixth graders in the Portland metro area since the mid-1960s. Recently, we spent a week at Camp Namanu outside Sandy with a group of students. We interview founder Warren “Gil” Gilfillan, and see film of students, educators and Mr. Gilfilan from the first Outdoor School in 1966.

Condor recovery efforts face serious setbacks when dozens of birds released to the wild get sick or die from lead poisoning. Scientists link the lead found in the condors to bullet fragments from hunters’ carcass discards. Producer - Vince Patton Videographer - Todd Sonflieth Editor - Lisa Suinn Kallem Video Courtesy - Jeff McLoughlin & "Shadow of the Condor", Michael Durham, Oregon Zoo

Stormwater is a toxic cocktail of sediment, grease, road grime, tire wear and any litter small enough to slip into storm drains. And that’s just what can be seen. There’s much more.

Every other year, Oregon biologists dangle a device below a helicopter and drop young fish into high mountain lakes for the pleasure of Cascade anglers. The state takes precautions to sterilize many of the fish because most of the fish planted in Oregon lakes are not native to the region.

After 7 years of scouting, Jim Thayer of Portland has plotted a hiking route from Portland to the Pacific coast without using highways. Since trails don’t cover the entire path, he has found logging roads open for public access. Here he shows us two segments, one along the Salmonberry River and its washed out rail line and another near Saddle Mountain suitable for biking down to Seaside.

In 1889, visionary pioneers built the Cloud Cap Inn on the north shoulder on Mt Hood as a destination resort. They were ahead of the their time, but despite the vicissitudes of man and Mother Nature, the venerable inn endures today, lovingly preserved by the Hood River Crag Rats as their “open to the public” clubhouse.

Take a dive into the chilly Wilson River as we hunt for Salmon, Steelhead, and Trout as part of a research project to see how well they're doing.

Jim Rogers is one of the most influential people you’ve probably never heard of. He’s a mountain man who lives deep in the woods. Yet his influence extends all the way to Washington DC. He helped create not one, but two official wilderness areas in Oregon. Some people call this environmental logger the “John Muir of the Elk River.”

If there’s one thing that makes the Columbia River Gorge stand out, it’s the waterfalls. But did you know that one of those waterfalls is not natural. One waterfall lover wants that man-made waterfall closed down in order to restore Warren Falls, which has been blocked for more than 70 years.

As George Washington was winning the revolutionary war, a deluge of volcanic debris was killing trees on the Sandy River. Mount Hood erupted for nearly a decade, just a few years before Lewis & Clark came through. The mountain many Portlanders regard as part of the city skyline is actually an active volcano with a more recent history of activity than many people realize.

A new invasive species from Europe has been introduced in the Illinois River valley. Botanists say yellow tuft alyssum poses a threat to dozens of rare endemic Oregon wildflowers, but there's still hope it could be eradicated.

A historic cattle ranch in southeastern Oregon moves cows every day. In many ways, cattle drives there have changed little since a century ago. The ranch herds cattle from one end of a million acre range to the other over the course of a year.

Oregon’s Timberline Lodge was part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration - a program that not only put people to work, but also preserved some of the finest of the Northwest’s indigenous arts. Despite the museum-quality art and hand-made furnishings, Timberline is still open to the public today. Could a large-scale public works project like Timberline, focused on recreation be built today?

The Columbia Gorge is one of our favorite playgrounds. But recreational use brings in noxious weeds that crowd out native species and upset the area’s ecological balance. We take a look at the challenges state agencies, land managers and non-profit groups face in trying to control the influx of these invasive “game-changers” and their efforts to coordinate these efforts.

Citizen scientists survey bugs in Portland backyards, measure rainfall and track the lifecycles of plants. A study questioned the reliability of crowd-sourced science, so scientists are improving training and new tools, like mobile apps.

Award-winning photographer Ben Canales takes us on a photo-safari to Olympic National Park to track down the swirling stars and boiling clouds that populate his amazing time-lapse videos.