Governor Jay Inslee paid a visit to Anderson Hall on Tuesday, May 17 on a fact-finding mission to learn more about climate impacts on Washington forests. In attendance were Dean Maya Tolstoy, and SEFS Director Dan Brown and more than a dozen faculty and staff from SEFS and the Climate Impacts Group.

The one-hour session touched on the current and potential future impacts of drought, disease, and fire on Washington forests, and the potential management options available to increase their resilience and sustainability. The discussion also touched on smoke impacts on human and wildlife populations, on management experiments in developing adaptive capacity in how we manage our forests, and on the role of the forest products industry in sustaining the infrastructure that supports forest management.

Governor Inslee also took a moment to learn about differential climate impacts on Western Redcedar and Douglas-Fir from recent alum Theo Hoss. And he paid tribute to the Dead Elk, of course.