Here’s a thought…
“The competition between Nature and the economy is deep and broad.
In the short term, the economy usually wins. In the long term …?”
BILL APPEL
Guest Opinion | Paul Ehrlich was early, not wrong
||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON ||| Paul Ehrlich When Paul Ehrlich died recently (March 13, 2026), many of the obituaries and articles about him repeated a familiar judgment: he was alarmist, even brilliant, but
Land Bank meeting coming up on March 20
||| FROM SAN JUAN COUNTY CONSERVATION LAND BANK COMMISSION ||| The San Juan County Conservation Land Bank Commission will hold its monthly meeting Friday, March 20. The meeting is scheduled from 8:45am – 11:10am via
Review the Critical Areas Ordinance update at community meeting on April 6
A first draft of the updated regulation is now available for public comment, and the Department of Community Development (DCD) is holding a community meeting to accept feedback and walk residents through the documents. |||
The Island Gardener for March 2026
||| FROM ORCAS ISLAND GARDEN CLUB ||| March in the garden is always a bit of a tug-of-war between patience and pure excitement. Even after all these years, I still find myself getting swept up
Earth Day Orcas News | Join in the 4th annual celebration
||| FROM MARCY MONTGOMERY for EYE OF THE WHALE ARTS ||| 2026 marks the 4th year of engaging Earth Day learning experiences on Orcas Island and adds new features during this month-long series of Science,
No Place Like Loam | The pruning mistake creating water sprouts
(and costing you fruit, time, and money) ||| NO PLACE LIKE LOAM by ALEX TAMAYO WOLF ||| The Problem Made Visible I walk the same roads through Eastsound most mornings. It’s an old habit now.
Spring 2026 Great Islands Clean-Up | Our power, our planet
Join us for the 2026 Spring Great Islands Clean-Up on Saturday, April 18 ||| FROM SAN JUAN COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS ||| When islanders work together, small actions add up to big impact. This spring, the community
News Brief | AI and the decline of human agency
||| FROM POPULATION BALANCE ||| AI, under the dangerous control of tech oligarchs, is creating a world with shrinking human choice, creativity, and connection. How tech journalism emphasizes novelty and business profits and amplifies tech
Larsen announces $17.5 Million investment in Skagit Transit
||| FROM THE OFFICE OF U.S REP. RICK LARSEN ||| WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Representative Rick Larsen (WA-02) released the following statement: “Finally! Trump’s Department of Transportation (DOT) released $17.5 million it was holding hostage that
News Brief | Inside the dirty, dystopian world of AI data centers
||| FROM THE ATLANTIC ||| This is Colossus: a data center that Musk’s artificial-intelligence company, xAI, is using as a training ground for Grok, one of the world’s most advanced generative-AI models. Training these models
The Exchange Update | March 2026
||| FROM ORCAS RECYCLING (THE EXCHANGE) Drifting Dock Highlights Growing Microplastic Risk Last month, residents of Orcas Island responded to an incident involving a drifting dock with deteriorating plastic-wrapped styrofoam floats. The floats were breaking
Guest Opinion | Another Eastsound Water essay
||| FROM THOMAS OWENS ||| A Path Forward Eastsound Water’s ongoing turmoil is multi-faceted involving both tense Board-Membership interactions and instability in internal operation. While these two elements of the Association’s crisis are certainly intertwined,
CWR logs encounter with inbound J Pod
||| FROM CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH ||| Full Encounter Report ObservBegin: 10:55 AM ObservEnd: 03:00 PM Vessel: KCB III Staff: Dave Ellifrit, Michael Weiss, Katie Jones Pods: J IDsEncountered: J16, J19, J22, J26, J27, J31,
Kwiaht: Preparing for the next avian flu outbreak
||| FROM RUSSEL BARSH for KWIAHT ||| The San Juan Islands experienced an outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian flu (H5N1) from mid-November to mid-January. It probably began in lower San Juan Channel, between Cape San Juan
As Alaskan Chinook crisis deepens, Federal Court imposes deadline on overdue endangered species act decision
||| FROM EMMA HELVERSON for WILD FISH CONSERVANCY ||| Today we’re sharing an update on Wild Fish Conservancy’s effort to secure a timely federal decision on the status of Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon under
