Building a stronger, more just & transparent democracy
Building a stronger, more just & transparent democracy
Sorted by date Results 1 - 12 of 12
When it comes to our sense of the weather, a lot of it may actually be linked to perception. "It's funny how your memory is different from the data," Methow Trails Executive Director James DeSalvo said. In his 14 years with Methow Trails, while every year has been different, last year was exceptional - and that probably colors people's sense of the "typical" Methow winter, DeSalvo said. Last winter, with copious dumps of early-season snow, Methow Trails opened its Nordic...
Pigs are rumored to be quite intelligent, but did you know that they can learn to play video games by moving a joystick with their snout? That's one of the things that 11-year-old Paisley Esmiol learned when she raised a pig for the Okanogan County Fair. Paisley and her sisters, Olivia, 9, and Alice, 13, each raised a pig to show at the fair for the first time. Most kids start with chickens or rabbits, but the Esmiol sisters were ambitious, despite being new to the whole fair...
In its first week, the Blue Lake Fire grew slowly - it was just 290 acres after burning for eight days - but it has nearly doubled in size since Friday, after strategic firing operations used to burn vegetation in the fire's path to keep it from spreading ignited a spot fire on the north side of the North Cascades Highway on Saturday (Aug. 26). As of Tuesday (Aug. 29), the fire, burning west of Washington Pass near Bridge Creek, was 1,056 acres, about one-fourth of that north...
The Methow watershed is officially under a drought emergency. Okanogan County is one of 12 counties across the state hit with a drought declaration by the Washington Department of Ecology on Monday (July 24). The Okanogan watershed is also in a drought emergency. Ecology declares a drought when there is less than 75% of normal water supply and the corresponding risk of undue hardship to irrigators, households and businesses. The rest of the state is under a drought advisory,...
Two dozen members of the North Central Washington Forest Health Collaborative celebrated the group's 10th anniversary in May, hailing its effectiveness in accelerating forest-restoration projects through consensus-driven work by its diverse member organizations - from the U.S. Forest Service to environmentalists to loggers. U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore came from Washington, D.C., to attend the celebration, and praised the group for its diversity, Trout Unlimited...
MV Elementary adopts phonics-based method to teach kids reading Most of us probably don't remember much about how we learned to read - mastering the association of shapes with sounds and ultimately linking them into words and sentences that unlocked compelling stories and ideas. Learning to read and write English - which is replete with exceptions and doesn't follow straightforward patterns - can be especially challenging. "There are 26 letters, but 44 different sounds,"...
Switching to energy-saving appliances for heating and cooling. Building a water bank to preserve water for local agriculture. Adding charging stations for electric vehicles. Planting more trees in Twisp. These are just a few of the programs already underway to lessen the impacts of climate change on the local level. Resilient Methow, a community organization dedicated to equity and climate solutions and the well-being of future generations, held its first update on the Methow...
Mule deer and other wildlife will benefit from an additional 220 acres of protected shrub-steppe in the Rendezvous area recently purchased by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). The 200-acre property called Rendezvous West is accessed via Gunn Ranch Road, where it connects with National Forest land. The 20-acre Rendezvous East parcel is on the north side of Highway 20, across from Big Valley. Big Valley is already part of the wildlife area. It has a popular...
Even before the North Cascades Scenic Highway opened on Sept. 2, 1972, after 13 years of actual construction and many more of surveying, the road had been the dream of entrepreneurially minded visionaries for a century. "[The opening of the highway] may well have been the final great break-through in the western movement that had been surging against the last Pacific Coast barrier since emigrant days," wrote Charles Kerr in a history of the highway published in 1972 in...
The Methow Valley Ranger District has closed additional trails from the Harts Pass area north to the Canadian border and west to the Ross Lake National Recreation Area because of wildfires. Smoke from these fires and others in the region settled over the Methow Valley, Chelan and Wenatchee last week, bringing what the National Weather Service in Spokane “some of the worst air quality not only in the country but the world.” The lightning-caused fires, burning in the Pas...
Four employees of the Methow Valley Ranger District safely navigated the rocky, narrow Harts Pass Road in treacherous conditions as torrential rains sent rocks cascading onto the road and seriously limited visibility on Aug. 22. The work crew was coming down the mountain in three pick-up trucks when they hit a blinding rainstorm near Deadhorse Point, Methow Valley District Ranger Chris Furr said. "Rocks were falling down as they were passing through. There was nothing to do...
Tens of thousands of endangered salmon could access high-quality habitat in the Similkameen River watershed if Enloe Dam were removed, but any plans to demolish the dam would have to address arsenic contamination in sediment that's collected behind the dam under deep gravel. At a community meeting on Enloe Dam in Tonasket last week, federal, state and tribal biologists and hydrologists, along with representatives from the Colville Tribes, presented conclusions from...
