John Miller is back again with anoth­er beau­ti­ful pho­to to share, and again cap­tured at Dream Lake (Lakedale). This time it’s a Buf­fle­head on the wing. Thanks for shar­ing John!

The fol­low­ing sto­ry comes to you from Wild Fish Con­ser­van­cy… In anoth­er legal defeat for Cooke Aqua­cul­ture, a sec­ond Wash­ing­ton state court has reject­ed efforts by the seafood giant to sue Wash­ing­ton state over the ter­mi­na­tion of the company’s lease for their Port Ange­les net pen oper­a­tion. On Tues­day, the Court of Appeals issued an  Con­tin­ue Reading

Local pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Miller shares this image he cap­tured Sat­ur­day of a swan on Dream Lake (Lakedale). Thanks for shar­ing John!

The fol­low­ing is from Wolf Hol­low’s Decem­ber edi­tion of Hol­low Hap­pen­ings… Many of the injured owls we treat are rel­a­tive­ly large. How­ev­er, last month we cared for a tiny owl; a North­ern Saw-whet Owl that was only ~6” tall and weighed just 90 grams. This lit­tle owl had been hit by a car near La  Con­tin­ue Reading

Freez­er Burned is an ongo­ing series on the San Juan Update, writ­ten by Steve Ulvi… (Authors note: this fic­tion­al tale of Alas­ka bush life adven­ture, grief and redemp­tion, cir­ca the 1980s, will be con­tin­ued found­ed upon two pre­vi­ous sto­ries.  See Freez­er Burned: “No Mat­ter What” and “The Con­fines of Heav­en” for char­ac­ter back­ground.) The Con­fines of  Con­tin­ue Reading

If you would pre­fer not to have an otter fam­i­ly under your house or a rac­coon fam­i­ly in your attic this spring, now is a good time to do some pre­ven­tive main­te­nance. Look around the out­side of your house. Are there holes beneath the skirt­ing or loose cov­ers on vents that would allow crit­ters easy  Con­tin­ue Reading

This arti­cle writ­ten by Dominic Siv­i­t­il­li… The lab was buzzing with excite­ment when I arrived. A few weeks into the sum­mer term, the water tables of Lab 3 were teem­ing with inver­te­brate life. All vari­eties of mor­phol­o­gy and behav­ior were on dis­play for our class to study. But some­thing was dif­fer­ent today: the lab had  Con­tin­ue Reading

This is from the Cen­ter for Whale Research… Please help us raise $74,000 by year’s end! The $74,000 rep­re­sents one thou­sand dol­lars for each of the sev­en­­ty-four (74) whales in the South­ern Res­i­dent orca com­mu­ni­ty. We all remem­ber J35. In 2018, the whole world watched J35 car­ry her deceased baby for 17 days and 1,000  Con­tin­ue Reading

San Juan Coun­ty, WA, USA. – The recent­ly updat­ed Sal­ish Sea Ves­sel Traf­fic Pro­jec­tions (PDF — Nov. 2021) pro­vid­ed by Friends of the San Juans shows that at least a 25% increase in large, ocean-going com­mer­cial ves­sel traf­fic could occur if all of the pro­posed new and expand­ing ter­mi­nal and refin­ery projects are per­mit­ted and  Con­tin­ue Reading

Trail Times is a con­tin­u­ing series of arti­cles intro­duc­ing the Old Mil­i­tary Road Trail (OMRT), a pro­posed 18–21 mile cross-island non-motor­ized mul­ti-use trail link­ing Eng­lish Camp and Amer­i­can Camp and hon­or­ing the orig­i­nal Old Mil­i­tary Road. The King Sis­ters Pre­serve is an often over­looked lit­tle gem in our San Juan Island Trail Sys­tem. Strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed in  Con­tin­ue Reading

Wolf Hol­low shares this sto­ry of a Great Blue Heron they took care of in Sep­tem­ber… Our most notable patient in Sep­tem­ber was a Great Blue Heron. This adult heron arrived near the begin­ning of the month, thin and unable to fly. When we did an intake exam and took radi­ographs, we dis­cov­ered that the  Con­tin­ue Reading

The fol­low­ing sto­ry is from the Cen­ter for Whale Research (CWR)… In the fol­low­ing Q & A with CWR’s Dr. Michael Weiss, we learn what it’s like to fly a drone over top of whales and the new knowl­edge gained from the cap­tured video footage. 1. Do you launch and fly the Cen­ter for Whale  Con­tin­ue Reading

At 7:00 pm, Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 23, 2021, join Shona Aitken, Edu­ca­tion Coor­di­na­tor at Wolf Hol­low Wildlife Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­ter, to explore the fas­ci­nat­ing world of island owls, and learn about the many dif­fer­ent owls that live here on the San Juan Islands. We hope you can all attend this enlight­en­ing talk. To reg­is­ter email: giverson@sjlib.org You will receive  Con­tin­ue Reading

FRIDAY HARBOR, WA. — As sum­mer Chi­nook salmon runs wane in the Sal­ish Sea, South­ern Res­i­dent Killer Whales typ­i­cal­ly begin to trav­el fur­ther south in Puget Sound in search of prey. A study com­pil­ing 10 years’ worth of data found evi­dence that the whales’ diets shift from pri­mar­i­ly Chi­nook salmon in the sum­mer months to a  Con­tin­ue Reading

Joint media response con­cern­ing “the dis­cov­ery of a new kind of killer whale” off west­ern North Amer­i­ca On Octo­ber 4th, Hakai Mag­a­zine pub­lished an arti­cle with a head­line report­ing the dis­cov­ery of “a new kind of killer whale”. Oth­er media out­lets sub­se­quent­ly report­ed sim­i­lar head­lines in Cana­da, theUSA and inter­na­tion­al­ly, and although some con­tent has  Con­tin­ue Reading

All four of the Har­bor Seal pups we cared for through­out sum­mer were released on Sept 11, 2021. These pups were all brought to Wolf Hol­low by San Juan Coun­ty Marine Mam­mal Strand­ing Net­work in late June and July, but they came from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­ty. The first orphaned/separated pup was found on  Con­tin­ue Reading