Music festivals and fan conventions, art walks, author events, and reading parties.

The next few months are amazing for arts and culture in the Seattle area.

And every week, KUOW's Arts and Culture Podcast, Meet Me Here, will give you the inside scoop.

From inspired recommendations to surprising chats with artists, you'll discover what's truly special about Seattle's creative communities.

Listen to meet me here on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, good morning. Patricia Murphy here. It's Saturday. This is Seattle now. Today we're bringing you the best from newsrooms across Washington. First, four years ago, President Joe Biden announced an executive order in Seattle that created the first ever national assessment of nature. President Donald Trump rescinded that effort two and a half years later on his first day in office.

But the team that had started the work led by a professor at the University of Washington refused to give it up.

Now an almost 900-page draft of the assessment is out for public comment with plans for publication by the end of this year.

K&KX environment reporter Bellamy Pailthor has the story of how it all came about.

On Earth Day, 2022, President Biden stopped at Seattle's Seward Park to sign an executive order.

It's an honor to be in this beautiful park of you all.

His remarks highlighted his administration's climate agenda. The pledge to map, catalog, and conserve old growth trees in national forests got the most applause.

But Biden also spoke more broadly about the benefits of nature.

Science has estimated that the protection and restoration of our natural lands and waters can provide more than one third of the solution to climate change.

Just that, if we did nothing else.

And because of those climate benefits, tucked into the executive order that Biden signed in Seward Park was a short clause stating that new research would include an assessment of the condition of nature.

About a year after the announcement, Phil Levin was appointed by the Biden administration

to direct the National Nature Assessment.

So it was the first time that there was going to be a holistic assessment

of the condition of nature in the U.S.

So our lands, our waters, our wildlife, and all the benefits that nature provides to people,

from jobs and livelihoods to health and well-being, to safety from natural hazards,

...