KING COUNTY, Wash. — King County Public Health announced a major milestone in COVID-19 vaccination rates on Tuesday, bringing an end to the countywide mask directive by the end of the month. Tuesday marked a big day for King County, as 70% of residents ages 16 and older received their final dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Now that vaccination rates have gone up, the mask directive is set to come down — in two weeks, that is.

“It’s important to reconnect to the water, the land, the elders, but also to call the salmon home,” said Peone, who organizes the Spokane tribe’s canoe and often serves as its skipper. “But we need a good, clean home for the salmon to come home to.” The tribes have been making strides toward that goal. Late last year, Colville tribal biologists observed the first spawning chinook salmon in the Upper Columbia river system in a generation. This spring, Spokane tribal biologists found a newly hatched salmon in Tshimakain Creek, also spelled Chamokane Creek, on the eastern edge of the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Think you can summarize Washington’s geologic history in one page? It’s not easy. Washington has a very rich and diverse geologic history spanning hundreds of millions of years. From the Methow ocean to the highlands of the Okanogan, to the Selkirk Mountains, to the Puget Lowland, every square inch of Washington’s land has a story to tell.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now calls the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus, also known as B.1.617.2, a "variant of concern." The variant of concern designation is given to strains of the virus that scientists believe are more transmissible or can cause more severe disease. Vaccines, treatments and tests that detect the virus may also be less effective against a variant of concern. Previously, the CDC had considered the Delta variant to be a variant of interest. The CDC said the Delta variant, which was first identified in India, shows increased transmissibility, potential reduction in neutralization by some monoclonal antibody treatments under emergency authorization and potential reduction in neutralization from sera after vaccination in lab tests.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today additional aid to agricultural producers and businesses as part of the USDA Pandemic Assistance for Producers initiative. As part of the Pandemic Assistance initiative announced in March, USDA pledged to continue Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments and to provide aid to producers and businesses left behind. Implementation of the assistance announced today will continue within 60 days to include support to timber harvesters, biofuels, dairy farmers and processors, livestock farmers and contract growers of poultry, assistance for organic cost share, and grants for PPE.

How to prevent your brain from shutting down under pressure? Whether you’re trying to nail a work presentation, sink a putt, or spell “bougainvillea” for the win at the National Spelling Bee, let’s get it done with these three tips:

Young salmon are now spawning above Grand Coulee Dam. The fish were brought above the dam last year in an effort to see if salmon could survive in the area that’s been blocked for nearly 80 years.

In 2017, he tried subterranean clover in his NE field. Subterranean clover is a cool-season annual legume that produces seeds during the summer at or below the soil surface (hence the name subterranean). Seeds then germinate in the fall after the first rains and grow rapidly through the fall/early winter. It may go dormant for a time during the winter, but becomes active again in early spring. It grows in densely matted clumps that are 6-15 inches tall. The clover spreads through rootless runners reaching up to 3 feet in length. After a few years of trial, Fred reports that the “Subclover cover crop, in what is now our nine-year-old hazelnut orchard, is working very well and is quite easy to manage. Plus, now as the trees have sent roots out in the row centers, we are getting some nitrogen benefits. This orchard was visibly greener than our other orchards last spring. Every year it [the cover crop] gets better without having to add any seed since it is self-seeding.”

Microsoft today released another round of security updates for Windows operating systems and supported software, including fixes for six zero-day bugs that malicious hackers already are exploiting in active attacks. June’s Patch Tuesday addresses just 49 security holes — about half the normal number of vulnerabilities lately. But what this month lacks in volume it makes up for in urgency: Microsoft warns that bad guys are leveraging a half-dozen of those weaknesses to break into computers in targeted attacks.

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.