By Sarah Titcomb
(Photo Source: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith)
Ten of Washington’s most iconic native mammal species have gone nearly extinct at some point in the state’s history. These ten species include:
By Sarah Titcomb
(Photo Source: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith)
Ten of Washington’s most iconic native mammal species have gone nearly extinct at some point in the state’s history. These ten species include:
By Sarah Titcomb & Andrea Mojzak
Around the world, September 18 marked PARK(ing) day. This is an international event where residents, artists, planners, architects, and designers work together to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into small urban parks and open spaces. And here in the Puget Sound region, we couldn't help but participate.
Did you know the 8th Annual South Sound Sustainability Expo is happening this weekend? This event is a great opportunity to connect with private and public organizations whose work support environmentally sustainable practices. Learn more about the event here.
It seems like a perennial challenge to create well-utilized open space in urban settings! Many cities suffer from a lack of trees and green spaces. The street grid imposes limits on developing new open space. These challenges are even more profound in dense urban neighborhoods, like Seattle's First Hill.
We are delighted to share the great efforts of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, Stewardship Partners and their Snoqualmie Valley partners for their visionary planning in the watershed. This beautiful "report card" reflects the thoughtful work they are doing to create a robust watershed plan to protect and enhance their forests, farms and rural lands that make up 96% of their land and provide essential ecosystem services for the entire Puget Sound region.
Did you fly Alaska Airlines recently? If you did, you might have seen the great article on the University of Washington’s Green Futures Research and Design Lab, where the ROSS project is housed. The GFL’s innovative Green Wall project is prototyping and monitoring growing food vertically as well as providing habitat for native birds, reducing heat island effect and reducing heating and cooling costs for adjacent buildings.
Issues like open space planning and salmon spawning don't often find their way onto late-night comedy programs. Frankly, we'll admit, we take the work we do pretty seriously. But when we saw this on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, we knew we had to take a moment to share it with our friends and colleagues. We hope you enjoy the video as much as we did.
A recent op ed in the Seattle Times elevates the import of protecting and creating pollination pathways for bees in our cities. As Mark Winston shares, the needs of these small critters are often overlooked by more dramatic expressions of urban nature and development, but they are critical to a healthy ecosystem. He shares key examples and future developments in this space.
It has been a busy summer for us here at the ROSS. Not only have we been hard at work on our open space services work and entering into an agreement with King County and the City of Seattle for the Green-Duwamish WOSS you may have read about earlier this month, we’ve also been developing a new website.
Monday, September 9, marked a seminal moment in open space planning, as King County and the City of Seattle, in the presence of community groups, natural resource agencies and local news media, announced plans to develop a Green/Duwamish Watershed Strategy.