Lands commissioner says our children will live with consequences
By JOEL CONNELLY State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark looks out at Washington’s unhealthy forests from a pilot’s seat, flying his plane from Olympia to his family’s ranch in the remote reaches of Okanogan County. “It is just mind-numbing the damage you see on west facing and south facing slopes … an overburden of dead and dying trees,” Goldmark said yesterday, referring mainly to predation by pine bark beetles. Goldmark had just shared his up-close perspective on global warming, and its consequences for trees in the Evergreen State, at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing here. The likely future for our forests through the 21st Century: Burn Baby Burn. “There is a 33 percent chance that we will see 2 million acres burn in one year by 2080: That is about 5 percent of the entire state,” Goldmark told the EPA. … As I drove up into the Sawtooth National Recreation Area of Idaho last weekend, the lodge pole pine forests came in three colors. The green trees were alive. The orange trees were dying. The grey trees were dead. …
Global warming’s impacts on state forests: Burn baby burn!
