The largest Sitka Spruce broke off in the latest severe storm to hit Oregon. This article tells of it and what happened with things that affect the environment during its 700 year life, e.g., it was a sapling when The Plague struck Europe.
Story. New West. By Joseph Friedrichs
Added. Related from the Oregonian. Big, wet storms may become new ‘normal’. Global warming – Faster-than-expected tropical expansion could bring more tempests to the Northwest By Michael Milstein.
Added. More on more rain in the Pacific Northwest. Climate change could mean more massive downpours. By Lisa Stiffler and Tom Paulson. Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporters.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
To all things there is a season…
Visited this ole gal last year! What an amazing thing Mother Nature is!
You dropped a ton of cones during your life! Lots have grown straight and tall just like their Mom!
RIP
I use to catch lots of fish near by while growing up there
I am sorry to hear about that magnificent tree.
This, though, just highlights how little care and interest there is in the REAL ancient trees of much of the American West – Pinyon and Juniper.
Western juniper, whch grows in Oregon, Idaho, and California – can live to be 1600 years old. There is a proposal in the Steens for massive killing of western juniper. The Owyhee ranchers drool at the thought of killing old growth western juniper – and the BLM lies to aid and abet this killing. There is a truly horrendous proposal afoot in the Modoc to massively kill western juniper for Biomassing. The DEIS comment period has already elapsed.
The Utah juniper of the Great Basin and a bit of southeastern idaho (and furhter south) : Can live to be TWO THOUSAND Years. And be only 10 or 12 feet tall …
These trees, dubbed “woodlands” or ‘”pygmy forests” because the Land Grant college types who deal in their death just cannot bear to call them forests lest someone really care about them – are wantonly killed by BLM and the Forest Service on public lands Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, California – in various Haz Fuels or ‘rangeland health” projects. The Bush admin. just finalized the Westwide Weed EIS – that will unleash new herbicides – on top of fire, chaining, cutting and biomassing that the agencies are planning.
Thanks, KT.
They claim they are preventing the massive spread of junipers, but they destroy the old ones with equal, if not more abandon.
Cattle again.