Forest and Friends February 20, 2025

​It is February, we have snow on the ground, fire in our hearts, and we can see smoke on the horizon.  This last gasp of winter probably isn’t going to be enough to balance the water ledger for this wet season, we’re coming off a dry year and we’re already 5” behind normal for 2025 and that puts greater pressure on our forests.  If you are on the Eastside on Thursday February 20th, join us from 5:00-7:30 at Cascadia Pizza (https://www.cascadiapizzaco.com/bellevue).  We get together each month to discuss climate, forests, startups, GIS, and technology in general; come join the discussion among friends.  Will this year see fire roar back and smoke swamp our communities?  Is there anything we can do as Washingtonians?  It turns out, yes!

Back in November we were talking a bit about the State Public Lands Commissioner and the natural resource challenges across the state.  I finally wrote up a set of recommendations and thoughts for what to do about it, specifically around the State Schools Land Trust – 3M acres of which 2.4M are managed for timber harvest.  That’s simultaneously a lot of land and a little, a lot of revenue ($200M) and a little (State Education Budget ~$40B), there aren’t a lot of easy answers – but there are options. 

​As a friend and former CIO at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality put it:  "Properly managed forests promote more wildlife, better forest health, increased public safety, and greater economic impact."  We’ll talk a bit about State land management, if you want to read ahead before we meet in person I wrote an approach Washington could take here.

​We’re always eager to see new faces out!  The stewardship obligation we have towards the land never sleeps so we’ve always got something interesting to talk about, even and especially now.