Earth Share of Washington - News

Governors team up to cope with threat of huge wildfires

Northwest maps drought strategy

SPOKANE — Northwest governors agreed yesterday to share resources in battling what are projected to be huge wildfires in the drought-stricken region this year.

The governors, meeting here, also said they would send a letter to federal officials asking that they be allowed to attack wildfires in the region when they are small, regardless of whether the blazes are on state or federal lands.

“We’re going to ask the federal government to allow us to respond immediately, so we do ...Read the full story

April 28, 2005 | Comments Off

U.S. businesses starting to see need for action on global warming

Feeling the heat on global warming, sentiment in U.S. business and industry is beginning to shift in favor of action to address carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

U.S. companies already face restrictions on such emissions from their overseas operations as a result of the Kyoto Protocol, the 124-nation climate-change treaty that came into force this year.

At home, major corporations are under mounting pressure from shareholder activists who want companies to assess the financial risks posed by climate c...Read the full story

April 27, 2005 | Comments Off

Washington Women Fighting to Protect Our Environment

Sue Joerger, the Puget Soundkeeper, steers her small craft around an industrial site on the seemingly pristine waters of Lake Union and looks for telltale signs of chemical spills and pollution. She poses a question: Know what you get if you take copper, mercury, a handful of PAHs, add some PCBs, and mix in a little arsenic and tributlytin? A toxic soup washing into our lakes and rivers, contaminating our beaches and compromising our marine life.

Joerger has been conducting the same weekly search for five years. She joins hundreds ...Read the full story

April 26, 2005 | Comments Off

Green Seattle Partnership Earth Day Restoration

Seattle, April 22, 2005 – On a beautiful Earth Day, about 275 people – volunteers from the community, EarthCorps youth, Seattle Parks and Recreation staff and employees of Starbucks Coffee Company, Nokia and many more — joined together to remove more than one acre of invasive plants and restored more than 900 feet of walking trails in Seward Park. 

The effort was an activity of the Green Seattle Partnership, a public-private partnership between the City of Seattle and the Cascade Land Conservancy.  The mission of the Green Seattle Partnership is to restore Seattle’s 2,500 acr...Read the full story

April 25, 2005 | Comments Off

Earth Day Reception a Rousing Success

Earth Share of Washington held its annual Earth Day reception Thursday, April 21. The non-profit organization, which represents 66 conservation and environmental organizations, honored outstanding companies and individuals that support Earth Share of Washington. The event was sponsored by Puget Sound Energy (PSE), and Phil Bussey, representing PSE, gave a brief introductory talk.

Earth Share of Washington is best known for helping companies build effective employee giving programs. Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI) receiv...Read the full story

April 22, 2005 | Comments Off

Forests grow, owls decline under plan

PORTLAND, Ore. — A decade after the Clinton administration reduced logging in national forests in the Northwest, scientists have concluded the forests are growing, but the population of the threatened northern spotted owl has declined.

Scientists reported Tuesday that the Northwest Forest Plan, adopted by the Clinton administration in 1994, resulted in an 80 percent reduction in logging on 24 million acres of land in western Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

Since the plan was adopted, medium-aged to older forests have increased by 6...Read the full story

April 21, 2005 | Comments Off

Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "The Lint Trap"

by Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share of Washington organization PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the April 20, 2005 edition of Wild Again

Occasionally, the PAWS Wildlife Department receives a wild animal that has been transported hundreds of miles to arrive in our care. The animal may have endured amazing hardships, and survived incredibly traumatic injuries, and it may have passed through many different hands before finally arriv...Read the full story

April 20, 2005 | Comments Off

Thinking Small

By Clark Williams-Derry of Northwest Environment Watch, originally published in the Cascadia Scorecard Weblog.

This article from Saturday’s Seattle P-I warmed my heart:  Seattle-area utilities are apparently taking energy conservation much more seriously.  In some ways, of course, the utilities have to do this.  New power plants are expensive, and fuelling them is becomi...Read the full story

April 19, 2005 | Comments Off

Earth Saving Tips - "Backyard Biodiversity"

Courtesy of Earth Share of Washington organization, Union of Concerned Scientists

The space around our homes provides us with places to play and relax. To local wildlife, however, expanses of lush, green grass might as well be asphalt. Lawns provide animals with no shade, shelter, or food, and the runoff from fertilizers and pesticides applied to lawns can contaminate wildlife habitats. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that approximately 20 million acres of land in the United States are dedicated to lawns—more than is used f...Read the full story

April 18, 2005 | Comments Off

Proposal would ban trio of toxins used in everyday products

Proponents say flame retardants leak into bodies

Lawmakers in Olympia have jumped into a searing debate about chemical flame retardants.

A proposed law would make Washington the first state in the nation to ban a trio of long-lived industrial chemicals commonly added to televisions, computers and other electronics.

Scientists have found the fire-proofing chemicals — polybrominated diphenyl ethers — in fish caught in the Columbia River, local women’s breast milk and household dust in Seattle.

“It’s a kids’ i...Read the full story

April 15, 2005 | Comments Off

Starbucks takes fancy to wind energy

By Lisa Hymas, courtesy of Gristmill

You may hate its coffee, you may hate that it drove your favorite mom-n-pop coffeehouse out of business, you may just hate its bland ubiquity — but you gotta give Starbucks props for its latest initiative. Today the java giant announced that it will buy enough wind energy to meet 5 percent of electricity needs at its North American stores.

From the company’s press release (not yet up online, the slackers):

“Starbucks is mindf...Read the full story

April 14, 2005 | Comments Off

Senate OKs tough emission standards

A campaign to make Washington the second state in the country to cut greenhouse gases coming from cars took a major step forward yesterday when the state Senate approved a bill adopting many of California’s tougher limits on tailpipe emissions.

The 29-19 vote marked a major victory for environmentalists and a defeat for carmakers and car dealers, who are trying to beat back the spread of regulations. Yesterday’s vote, however, doesn’t mark a total victory for proponents. They had to water down some provisions to win key votes from rural Democrats, and some of the c...Read the full story

April 14, 2005 | Comments Off

Chinook take their time arriving at fish ladders

PORTLAND – Usually by now the Columbia River’s spring chinook salmon are heading upstream over fish ladders in the tens of thousands to spawn.

But not this year.

“It’s a never-before-seen scarcity,” said Charles Hudson of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “We’re way behind, even compared to the historically low years of 1994-1995.”

It’s this bad: For centuries, the treaty Indian tribes on the river have caught salmon for the First Foods celebration marking the return of the fish. This year, they had to get their salmon e...Read the full story

April 14, 2005 | Comments Off

Editorial - Energy Efficiency is Key

By Alan Durning of Northwest Environment Watch, originally published in the Cascadia Scorecard Weblog.

The School District in Olympia, Washington, provides en encapsulating anecdote of the continuing, Brobdignagian, untapped potential to save energy at a profit, as the Olympian reports. Newly hired resource conservation manager Brittin Witzenburg has imp...Read the full story

April 13, 2005 | Comments Off

Region feeling the heat, says expert

Drought or no drought, climate change has arrived in the Pacific Northwest.

That means higher average annual temperatures, reduced snowpack, earlier spring thaws and less river water in summer, said state climatologist Phil Mote.

“The warming seems to be unprecedented in the last 1,000 years,” Mote told a group of about 320 scientists in Tacoma on Tuesday.

The University of Washington research scientist, who belongs to the school’s Climate Impacts Group, was keynote speaker at the annual Washington Hydrogeology Symposium, held at the Sheraton Tacoma Convention Center...Read the full story

April 13, 2005 | Comments Off

Statement by Rob Masonis of American Rivers on Drought in the Northwest

This story is courtesy of Earth Share organization American Rivers

The people of the Pacific Northwest have the power to make the impacts of this year’s drought more or less severe. Whether you are an urban Seattleite or an eastern Washington farmer, we can all take positive steps to ensure we have enough water for people, salmon, and healthy rivers.

The policy, scientific, and technological solutions required to solve our r...Read the full story

April 12, 2005 | Comments Off

Restoring the Rain Forest

WILLAPA BAY —— From here all the way north to the Olympic Peninsula, a century and a half of logging has left a landscape of young, industry-owned plantations where the original coastal rain forest once stood.

Only small pockets of that great cedar, spruce and hemlock forest survive. Passed over by loggers, they hold the genetic legacy of the original forest and provide scarce habitat for salmon and salamanders and marbled murrelets.

Now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy have joined f...Read the full story

April 11, 2005 | Comments Off

'Problem solver' Jay Manning steps into tough job

Jay Manning, new head of the state Department of Ecology, talks to members of the Washington State Conservation Commission at a recent meeting in Olympia. While some environmental groups have endorsed Manning’s appointment, others are skeptical because of his past work for business.

Jay Manning is a master at seeking the middle ground.

As an environmental attorney, he has been in legal fights with virtually every side: government, industry, even environmentalists. Yet he has earned a reputation for finding compromise on some of Washington’s thorniest cases.

April 07, 2005 | Comments Off

Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "Cars, Crows, and a Cooper's Hawk at Cowen Park"

by Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share of Washington organization PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the April 6, 2005 edition of Wild Again

On January 21st, 2005, a Cooper’s Hawk near Seattle’s Cowen Park was having a very bad day. The hawk was lying helpless on the grass after having suffered a traumatic injury, and he was surrounded by a mob of crows. Vocalizing, dive-bombing, and occasionally pecking, the crows were not surrounding the injured ...Read the full story

April 06, 2005 | Comments Off

Judge voids U.S. approval of Montana mine

By SUSAN GALLAGHER, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - A judge sidelined a copper and silver mine criticized
by environmentalists and swank jeweler Tiffany, saying the plan was approved
without consideration of the possible harm to imperiled grizzly bears and
bull trout.

Judge Donald Molloy said the Fish and Wildlife Service inadequately weighed
the possible effects of the mining proposal on wildlife that fall under the
protection of the federal Endangered Species Act.

April 04, 2005 | Comments Off

Washington to require 'green' state buildings

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Schools, universities and other public buildings would have to be built to meet energy efficiency, water conservation and other environmental standards under a bill given final approval by lawmakers Wednesday.

If signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire - who has expressed support for the measure - Washington would be the first state in the nation to have such a “green buildings” law. Several cities and municipalities have required new buildings to be built to the standards, including Chicago and Austin, Texas.

“It&...Read the full story

April 01, 2005 | Comments Off