Our News and Views

For those of you not living in the Northwest, the Puget Sound, located in Western Washington, is an amazing saltwater estuarine system of waterways brimming with life (human and non-human).  It’s tidally influenced by the Pacific Ocean and is fed freshwater from numerous streams and rivers flowing from the Olympic and Cascade Mountains.  The total basin is over 12,000 square miles.

The Forest Service today released their Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for forest planning. This version of the "planning rule" has been in development for just over two years. The agency held regional and national roundtables, and also received more than 300,000 comments on the rule. They've been trying to update their 1982 planning regulations since the 1990s, but none of their previous attempts have survived the courts.

Here is an interesting story about a highway in Spain that was recently converted into a park.  How did they do it?  They put the road underground.  This is just one of many examples around the world where urban expressways are being reclaimed and turned into urban parklands. Check out the New York Times article here:

In Madrid’s Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted