A 12-year-old girl from La Grande is the World Elk Calling Champion! Learn more here.

Elk sounds vary from grunts, screams and coos to something like an excited chimpanzee – a sound human elk callers refer to as “chuckling.” None of it sounds like something that would emanate from a 12-year-old girl. But the new, youngest ever Women’s World Elk Calling Champion is Ella Lees, a middle schooler from La Grande.

She won the title in July at the Utah competition put on by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a conservation and hunting organization.

The annual event brings together the best callers from around the globe, though most…

Deschutes County’s population has a grown nearly 29% since 2010. Read more here.

SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) — Central Oregon’s counties have been three of the four fastest-growing in the state since 2010, with Deschutes County’s nearly 29% growth rate more than twice that of the Portland area, a state economist said Monday.

Here’s the report from Oregon Employment Department economist Jessica Nelson:

In 2021, Oregon’s population increased by 22,769 to 4,266,620. This marked growth of 0.5% over the year and growth of 11.4% since the 2010 Census, close to the rate of growth over the prior decade from 2000 to 2010 as well. Portland State University’s Population Research Center recently released more detailed information on why this population growth has…

Rising prices take a toll on the new housing market. Learn more here.

By Anna Bahney, CNN Business

New home sales plunged in July as high prices and mortgage rates pushed buyers to think twice about closing the deal.

Sales of newly constructed homes fell by 12.6% in July from June and were down 29.6% from a year ago, according to a joint report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Census Bureau. It was the second consecutive month of declines.

Only 511,000 new homes were sold last month, at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, down from a revised 585,000 in June. That’s the lowest sales number since January 2016. A year ago, 726,000 newly…

The Cascadia bullet train could connect British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Learn more here.

By Tom Banse (Northwest News Network)

For more than five years, Washington state, Oregon and British Columbia have collaborated on studies of a possible Cascadia bullet train to run between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, Canada. This winter, the Washington Legislature approved money for yet more studies. But state lawmakers also set aside a much bigger sum to attract federal support that could advance the bullet train dream toward being shovel-ready.

Project supporters envision a train with a top speed of at least 250 mph operating on a dedicated track. That could whisk travelers…

According to a top meteorologist, the Pacific Northwest will be cool and wet this spring and summer. Find out more here.

SPOKANE — Spring and summer will be cool and wet in the Pacific Northwest as the La Nina weather pattern lingers, a top meteorologist told attendees at the Spokane Ag Show.

Art Douglas, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., presented his annual weather forecast Feb. 1.

“You guys are going to be kind of the lucky folks as we go towards the spring,” Douglas told farmers. “You all have a better sense of how well your crop is established. My feeling is, you’re going to have a pretty good turnaround with that crop because…

Helena Linnell stood outside the Coquille Indian Tribe headquarters on a chilly morning in October diligently picking out countless pieces of seaweed tangled in a net.

The previous day, Linnell and a handful of others, wearing waders and raincoats, had jumped in the frigid waters and stretched the gill net across the mouth of Ferry Creek in the Coquille River watershed near the southern Oregon coast in the hopes of catching fish. All they caught, however, was seaweed.

Linnell and many of the…