Wow. I can't believe I've gone the entire week without a blog posting! That's a first. This was one of those weeks where there were a host of meetings, a deadline or two and various surprises thrown in the mix. So here's a hasty, while-I'm-Drinking-the-Morning-Coffee-Scanning-the-News blog posting.
First off, salmon at West Milton! Wednesday I met Josh Baldi, special assistant to Dept. of Ecology Director Jay Manning, and Friends' board member Judy Turpin, at West Milton for a tour. The DOE directed about $140,000 in oil spill mitigation fines to the Friends for this project. During the tour we saw two pink salmon at various points in the stream. We may be getting a lot more pinks in the future, as these salmon are beginning to show up and spawn in more numbers each year.
It's gratifying to see that the salmon are continuing to view our work at West Milton positively!
We also received a very nice surprise in the mail this week. You all know about our HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge participation. The donations had been coming in at a really nice clip. Then, I opened an envelope Wednesday to find a $10,000 check from the William and Elizabeth Hyde Fund at the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation! The donors designated the Tree Challenge program and directed the funds to tree planting in Pierce County. We'll have more on this next week, but for now, let me just say that is so cool! This is a huge boost to our reforestation efforts on the Pierce County side of Hylebos.
I have a big thanks for the William and Elizabeth Hyde Fund! What a huge impact their donation makes to our conservation efforts!
I also had a chance to meet with former Stream Team Coordinator Katie Moller, now the Urban Forester at the city of Seattle. It's always great to see Katie again. I learned a lot in our meeting about the Green Seattle Partnership that we may be able to apply to our reforestation efforts in the Hylebos.
Now, Some News Sifting
Global Warming Report Out: Uh Oh.
All you HyleBloggers out there know already how I feel about global warming. I hate to be so right on this issue. But the science just keeps moving in my direction. Yesterday, the fourth and final report of this round of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released. Bottom line: We've locked in serious global warming, we're beginning to feel the impacts and they're gonna get worse, and we'd better act soon because our GHG emissions are going through the roof. Read about it here, here and here.
As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.
2020? Go down to the Southeast and Southwest of our great country and you'll find the heat waves are already there and the droughts are seriously affecting cities.
We're all familiar with the images of damage to the human environment after hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the southeast and Gulf Coast. A new report to be published in Science contends that the damage to native forests of the area was also unprecedented. Unfortunately, like the initial and follow-up federal response to Katrina, government programs to help the trees recover aren't faring well.
"This is the worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez accident ... and the greatest forest destruction in modern times," said James Cummins, executive director of the conservation group Wildlife Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. "It needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn't happened."
And finally, I see that the Todd Beamer High girls soccer team has earned a spot in the state championship game tonight. A round of Hyle-Applause and best wishes for these girls bringing the state trophy back to Federal Way.
Alright, that's it. I'm done. I'm taking the rest of the weekend off dry. Stay dry and warm (unless that's not the way you roll) and we'll see you back here on Monday.
