WACD Reading List

How can professionals who devote their lives to sustaining real places connect in virtual space? Judging from the 2021 Boot Camp, pretty intensely.

Adversaries are relying less on malware to conduct attacks that are consequently more difficult to detect, according to an annual report released by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

In a similar sense, employee engagement is less at the lower tiers and increases as we move towards the top. So, if we identify and address employee needs, we can improve engagement and retention.

Men account for over 75% of suicides, and the rate of male suicide has risen in recent decades.

But when it comes to yes/no decisions, we found that group deliberation actually reduced the likelihood of making the correct choice. In other words, even when deliberation produces more accurate estimates, if the group then votes on the simple yes-or-no decisions related to those questions — i.e., Will this product launch on time?, Will we overrun our budget?, or Will this candidate meet our standards? — they are actually less likely to make the correct decision.

The forecast precipitation through 5 PM Sunday is a wet wake-up call, with several inches in the mountains and roughly a half-inch in the lowlands. The watering season may be over.

Effective leaders have realized that their role has shifted from having all the answers to adopting the role of a coach.

Ian Rickert, acting fire management specialist with the Bureau of Land Management Oregon-Washington State office and the United States Department of Agriculture/Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region office said in a late August report that there are still areas of Washington and Oregon that still have a considerable distance from being in the clear as high temperatures and low humidity continues to affect those regions.

While the annual State of the Sound report isn’t due out until Nov. 1, an overview of the report was presented at a Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council meeting this week.

If you’re confused about where we are in the pandemic — and where we’re headed — you’re not alone. This is a deeply weird time, neither the roaring ’20s we were promised would start after the vaccine became available, nor the misery of last year, when many of us remained all but airlocked in our homes.

The number of ferruginous hawks in Washington continues to decline. The birds face multiple threats, including wildfires, urban sprawl and loss of prey. Washington’s ferruginous hawk population is continuing to slip. The state Fish and Wildlife Commission unanimously voted at a meeting in August to change the hawk’s status from threatened to endangered, in an effort to stop the decline.

Thousands of wildfires ignite in the U.S. each year, and each one requires firefighters to make quick decisions, often in difficult conditions like high winds and lightning. Crews and managers must determine when to bring in aircraft, what time of day is best to battle flames, whether to evacuate residents and even if certain fires should be extinguished at all.

Click to drop a raindrop anywhere in the contiguous United States and watch where it ends up

CLALLUM COUNTY, Wash. – Two Olympic Peninsula counties will now require proof of vaccination to enter bars and restaurants. The Health Officer for Jefferson and Clallum Counties issued the vaccination order, saying bars and restaurants bring together large numbers of unmasked people and this will keep them safer.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington State Department of Natural Resources said fires that started over Labor Day weekend accounted for more than 70% of all acres burned in the state in 2020. The fires ravaged the town of Malden and burned 283 homes and more than 600,000 acres across Washington. Smoke from the wildfires temporarily gave Western Washington the worst air quality in the world. To avoid a repeat of last year, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz is asking for the public’s help to prevent wildfires over the holiday weekend.

The Northwest's Bull Kelp fields support a wide array of sea life, but they're disappearing.

As wildfires have burned throughout the Northwest this summer, some forest stands have fared better than others. Managers say that’s thanks, in part, to thinning and prescribed burns, which have made the stands more resilient in the face of wildfire. “What we’re trying to do is get our stands into the structure of what they used to be,” said Pat Ryan, Northeast region state lands assistant manager with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, referring to an era when forests were less dense.

Many Washington state educators feel the hot-button term is being unduly conflated with teaching anything about race and racism.

"Equity" literally means "the quality of being fair." While "equality" relies on the virtue of sameness, "equity" recognizes that different people may need different tools and accommodations to accomplish the same goal. Sameness may still be the ultimate goal (sameness in opportunity, in dignity, in access to physical or monetary resources), but to get there, different processes may be required, just as Pachovas needed different accommodations to have equal access to his college's sidewalks and buildings. Equity recognizes that treating different people the same can be just as unfair as treating the same people differently.

The Twenty Five Mile Fire is now burning almost 10,000 acres at Lake Chelan north of Wenatchee. It’s also threatening more than 720 homes with evacuation notices, with many of them at the highest level where people are asked to leave immediately. Ryan Rodruck with the state Natural Resources Department says the weather this weekend could present a challenge to firefighters.