Topic: Forests
Washington’s first state parks, established in the early twentieth century, were donated by wealthy citizens who wanted to preserve natural, scenic, and historic sites. It took almost another de...
The Alpine Lakes Wilderness covers more than 414,000 acres within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests in the northern Cascade Mountains of Washington. The wilderness inc...
Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island is internationally recognized for its evocative beauty as a landscape of environmental rehabilitation, as well as a place offering an experience "bound to, and enm...
Frederick William Cleator was a forester and conservationist who in the first half of the twentieth century was instrumental in the federal government's efforts to survey, establish, regulate, and pro...
As a political species, the Republican environmentalist has become as endangered as the spotted owl. Washington state still has, however, one of the country’s greatest conservation advocates in ...
Beginning in the early twentieth century, forest managers recognized they needed to study Washington's forests if timber production was to be sustainable over the long run. The U.S. Forest Service for...
Fire lookouts have been a critical part of the story of fire suppression and exclusion in the forests of Washington since around 1910. Built by the United States Forest Service and private timber comp...
Despite the rainy reputation of the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the natural and economic history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Native Ameri...
People have used the vast Ponderosa pine and Western white pine forests of Northeast Washington for thousands of years. Tribal people split logs for shelters and used the wood and bark for canoes. The...
Intensive logging started later in Southwest Washington than it did around Puget Sound, largely because sandbars at the mouths of the Columbia River, Willapa Bay, and Grays Harbor impeded th...
The North Cascades ecosystem includes diverse forests shaped by natural processes and human history. Indigenous peoples have used the forests for millennia, employing cultural fire and harvesting vari...
Despite persistent rain in the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Indigenous people used it in their que...
Standing at an official height of 14,410 feet -- 14,411 feet by more recent, unofficial measurements -- Mount Rainier became the nation's fifth national park in 1899 and is an iconic symbol and centra...
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and drastically changed the surrounding environment. Despite the devastation to plant, animal, and human communities, ecological recovery developed over ...
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust was established by Jim Ellis, Brian Boyle, and Ted Thomsen in 1991 to develop a greenway along Interstate 90 from Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains -...
The North Cascades Smokejumper Base, at its present location outside Winthrop in Okanogan County's Methow Valley, dates officially to 1945, when it became the fifth smokejumping base officially establ...
Established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 29, 1938, Olympic National Park has obtained global renown as a natural reserve. The park, encompassing 922,650 acres on the Olympic Peninsula...
The first purpose-built company town in Washington Territory's timber industry was Teekalet (now Port Gamble), a sawmill-centered community founded in 1853. By 1860 there were numerous sawmills i...
The first tree farm in the United States grew out of research undertaken in the 1930s by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, one of the nation’s largest private landowners. After studying the econo...
Brian Boyle has worked as a mettallurgic engineer, miner, county commissioner, university professor, environmental consultant, and for 12 years (1981-1993) was the Commissioner of Public Lands of Wash...
Gary Morishima (b. 1944) has served as Technical Advisor for Natural Resources to the President of the Quinault Indian Nation, since 1978, after establishing the tribe's forestry program. Morishima wa...
Mitch Friedman founded Conservation Northwest in Bellingham in 1989 and serves today [2024] as its executive director. With a stated mission to "protect, connect and restore wildlands and wildlif...
In addition to her many accomplishments in Washington state, Sally Jewell served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. In nominating Jewell for the post, Pr...