WACD Reading List

Scientists are now monitoring what they call an unusual mortality event that’s been reducing their population again. But, a small group is surviving the die-off by taking an annual detour into Puget Sound. Researches call this group the Sounders. Normally, gray whales wait till they get to the Arctic to eat. They feed on tiny crustaceans, all summer long. But for about 30 years now, researchers have observed this small group in North Puget Sound every spring, feeding on ghost shrimp that burrow beneath the sand. The Sounders are made up of a core group of about 12 known individuals.

Lin Warfel puts farmland owners in central Illinois into two categories: Those with a deep connection and desire to preserve their land, and those obsessed with short-term money. The 80-year-old still owns the land that’s been in his family since his great-grandfather arrived in Champaign County in the 1800’s. After farming it for decades, he now rents the corn and soybean operation to his neighbors down the road.

The Indigenous Photograph database gives a platform to indigenous storytellers, whose perspectives are often missing in the media

The last time you voted, you may have seen “Soil Conservation District” on the ballot but not known why. These positions are frequently uncontested and local townships or counties can even have trouble finding candidates to run. Different states operate their conservation districts differently, but they are often the first line of defense in ensuring that our succeeding generations will inherit an abundant earth.

“Bees in particular are the most productive pollinators, serving as a key player in the food chain,” says Brent Jones, head of GO SEED’s Iowa Research Farm. “Yet in the last couple of decades, the bee population has significantly suffered, directly threatening global food production.” According to the USDA, this decline is largely due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), resulting in colonies abandoning immature bees and food supply. A wide range of factors such as diseases, nutritional deficits, habitat loss and climate variability has been attributed to this. The intensification of agricultural production leading to the decline of crop diversity has also been attributed to CCD.

Earlier this Spring, Oregon’s Peter DeFazio and Washington’s Dan Newhouse joined Rodney Davis of Illinois, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Jimmy Panetta of California and Chellie Pingree of Maine, introducing the Continuous Improvement and Accountability in Organics Standards Act, better known as the CIAO Act. Newhouse noted this bipartisan legislation will provide assistance to the industry, as well as the USDA, in efforts to advance organic standards. “It’s going to help improve oversight, enforcement of new rules, it’s going to give guidance and hopefully this is going to clear some of that regulatory red tape so that does not hamper innovation within the industry.”

If an organization truly wants to support women transitioning back into the workforce, use the interview process as a chance to learn what potential candidates bring to your team, including creativity, problem-solving skills or independent judgment. These skills will be particularly useful as government organizations continue to be challenged to innovate. Instead of treating the interview process as a tool to reinforce the status quo, consider the following,,,

Of the 802,000 acres that burned in Washington in 2020, some 725,000 were scorched within the boundaries of the Columbia plateau, including around 600,000 acres of shrubsteppe habitat — an area nearly three times the size of Mount Rainier National Park. That was a lot to burn in a landscape already reduced by half from the original 10 million or so acres in Washington, lost in conversion to farmland and development. The acreage that just burned isn't "lost" in the same sense as ground permanently converted to other uses. It will recover, in different ways and in different places over time. Just what that recovery looks like is something the state Department of Fish and Wildlife is still working to understand.

Crews battled several small wildfires around the Inland Northwest over the weekend, many of them burning dry brush and whipped up by brisk winds. “I feel like we’ve been chasing fires, and particularly human-caused fires, since January. March and April have been, of course, the fourth-driest spring we’ve had since 1895. As such, it’s caused drought conditions for us in a lot of the counties in Washington and you know that Ecology has issued a drought advisory," said Angie Lane, the assistant division manager for the wildfire division in the Washington Department of Natural Resources.

Public agencies aim to provide service delivery in a professional, unbiased manner to the entire community. Generally, they do well providing services to the majority, but they might not always be serving the needs of all equally. This may be a form of benign neglect in pursuit of economies of scale. Attempting to tailor services at an individual level would be costly and time-consuming, based on what Alvin Toffler referred to as, “Diseconomies of complexity.” However, public agencies might be well served in achieving this mission if they altered their approaches in identifying socially vulnerable groups.

The 18 million trees to be planted over the next decade will increase woodland cover in the region from 17% to 20%.

Code Red alerts keep you informed by email, text, social media or even by phone. The alerts will inform you of emergencies like fire or flood, power outage or chemical spill. Also, non-emergency info that really helps plan your day like road closures, etc. Sign up and you choose which alerts you want to receive.

Manson Fire crews responded to two fires Sunday, both put out in a short period of time.

VANTAGE, Wash. — Firefighters have contained a fire that was burning along I-90 eastbound on Sunday afternoon.

As the state prepares for a difficult wildfire season, Avista Utilities has said it doesn’t currently plan to shut off power in efforts to prevent fires.

COVID-19 positivity rate is lowest among those who always wore a mask

Virtually no mandatory cybersecurity rules govern the millions of food and agriculture businesses that account for about a fifth of the U.S. economy. And now, the risk has become real.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington is set to reopen fully on June 30, or when the percentage of residents age 16 and older who have initiated vaccination reaches 70%, whichever comes first. The Washington State Department of Health said on Thursday that 63% of eligible adults have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah said he hopes the new incentives Gov. Inslee announced on Thursday will help push the state closer to the 70% reopening goal.

The Inland Northwest got a double whammy of grim news recently as forecasters predicted significant wildfire risk through this summer and the Washington Department of Ecology issued its first-ever drought advisory for much of the state. The period from February through May 24 saw the least amount of rain in Spokane since record keeping began in 1881, says Jeff Marti, water resources planner at Ecology. March and April specifically were the fourth-driest those months have been since 1895. "That is alarming," says Angie Lane, assistant wildfire division manager for the state Department of Natural Resources. "That area in Central and Eastern Washington is going to be above normal temperatures, below normal precipitation, and that sets us up for potential for significant fires all through the summer."

U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley warned that difficult days are ahead for Oregonians after they emerged Friday from a wildfire briefing with federal and state officials. Fire season is picking up speed as higher temperatures and severe drought conditions have already contributed to at least three wildfires that burned in different parts of the state. That has federal, state and local fire officials on high alert, as Wyden said “They have been working around the clock now for months to deal with the very difficult days that are ahead for Oregonians.” Both U.S. senators said they have shifted their priorities this wildfire season. They said they want to make sure federal money set aside for fire prevention funds does not get tapped for other uses, as unprecedented events like last year’s wildfires are costing the state more and more money to fight.

“The more lead time people have to be aware of what’s likely to come their way, the more lead time — we think, we hope — they have to protect themselves and their health,” Dhammapala says. When smoke is incoming, Seattleites can plan to purchase equipment like box fans, filters and N95 masks; reschedule activities; or even plan to evacuate. Less than a year later and just in time for wildfire season, Ecology has a new tool in its toolbelt. The new five-day automated smoke forecast is accessible as part of Ecology’s online smoke map, with days three through five similar to the existing two-day forecast, but using slightly different streams of information. Users can anticipate average daily air quality conditions in 53 separate zones across the state, each pegged to real-time air quality monitors (measuring things like health-affecting ozone and fine particulate matter) and air quality management regions. When it soft-launched with the five-day forecast Tuesday, the map became the first available automated five-day smoke forecast tailored to Washington.

But beneath fields covered in tightly knit rows of corn, soybeans, wheat and other monoculture crops, a toxic soup of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides is wreaking havoc, according to our newly published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. The study, the most comprehensive review ever conducted on how pesticides affect soil health, should trigger immediate and substantive changes in how regulatory agencies like the EPA assess the risks posed by the nearly 850 pesticide ingredients approved for use in the U.S.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said while the source of the patient's exposure to the H10N3 virus was not known and no other cases were found among the local population, there was no indication of human-to-human transmission yet. Yet avian influenza viruses that have little impact on birds can be much more serious in people, such as the H7N9 strain that killed almost 300 people in China during the winter of 2016-2017. The WHO has said there had been only rare instances of person-to-person spread of the H7N9 virus.

Joe Del Bosque is leaving a third of his 2,000-acre farm near Firebaugh, California, unseeded this year due to extreme drought. Yet, he hopes to access enough water to produce a marketable melon crop.

“You can learn more from speaking to someone in 15 minutes than spending your life doing something. I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do by watching other people,” he said.

Our natural tendency to add rather than subtract stems, in part, from it being much harder to “demonstrate competence by subtracting,” Klotz explains. Monumental feats of architecture, like the Great Pyramids and Great Wall of China, stick in our minds because of their grand scale, and are integral to how towering civilizations demonstrated their superiority.

Nearly all of Washington is in moderate to severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Eastern Washington is mostly a dryland farming region. Producers don’t divert water or irrigate their fields with sprinklers. Their plants can’t grow without rain. “We can’t turn on the irrigation,” Whitman County farmer Gary Bailey said. “Mother Nature does that for us, and she seems to have taken a break this year.” Farmers can see signs of the drought already.

Berg is a dryland wheat farmer in the sweeping Horse Heaven Hills of south-eastern Washington. She shows off one head of half-turned golden wheat amid a sea of them. Besides being too short, the plant’s kernels didn’t fill out properly. “See how the wheat head is curled like that?” Berg asks. “And then you break into it, you might have some berries down here, but this will be empty. There is no wheat inside the wheat head. It’s a sad situation. It’s farming though. You know, thank goodness for crop insurance.”