Federal funding cuts have hit the books.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is on the chopping block after the Trump administration's executive order to get rid of it.

Earlier this month, the institute announced it was terminating grants to three state libraries, one of them in Washington.

The State Library does a lot of things, and it also offers support to smaller libraries, like the one in Walla Walla, where Heather VanTassell is the director.

“It's devastating, and there's no... [sigh] I guess...

I don't know.

I don't know how to put it.” Both the American Library Association and 20 state attorneys general are suing the Trump administration over its efforts to dismantle the institute.

More on how this could change your next trip to the library is on our website.

The state of local news in the state of Washington, that's the focus of a new report from the Washington Local News Ecosystem Project.

Researchers put together an interactive map with dozens of TV, radio and online only newsrooms really showing you where the news deserts are.

There are problems and solutions in the report.

Hear from researchers and dig into the solutions in the full article on our site.

Burrowing owls are making a comeback.

Federally, burrowing owls are considered a ‘bird of conservation need.

In Oregon, they're ‘a sensitive species.

In Washington, a ‘candidate species for listing.

At the old Umatilla Chemical Depot near Boardman, Oregon the number of burrowing owls dwindled down to just four nesting pairs on the site in 2008.

Then people like Lindsay Chiono stepped in.

She's a wildlife habitat ecologist with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

“Every year we capture every adult owl that nests on the depot.

And then we also capture all of the fledglings and put bands on them so that we can track where they go from year to year.

The Umatilla site turned up nearly 82 pairs of breeding owls in more than 500 fledglings last year.

All that work... paying off by the numbers.

To learn more about how they're counted, the work that goes into it and why it's being done, go to NWPB.org.