The Wettest Rainforest in the United States Has Gone Up in Flames [View all]

[RiverLover]

The Wettest Rainforest in the United States Has Gone Up in Flames
by Subhankar Banerjee
The Nation
7/30/15

"When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate, you know the Earth is beginning to burn."



The wettest rainforest in the continental United States had gone up in flames and the smoke was so thick, so blanketing, that you could see it miles away. Deep in Washington’s Olympic National Park, the aptly named Paradise Fire, undaunted by the dampness of it all, was eating the forest alive and destroying an ecological Eden. In this season of drought across the West, there have been far bigger blazes but none quite so symbolic or offering quite such grim news. It isn’t the size of the fire (though it is the largest in the park’s history), nor its intensity. It’s something else entirely—the fact that it shouldn’t have been burning at all. When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate, you know the Earth is beginning to burn.

....SNIP....a very long, detailed, well-written account by a resident of the area who has a rich history & love for the PNW...please read if you have time, it's fascinating & educational. though tragic....


...A team of international climate change and rainforest experts published a study earlier this year warning that, “without drastic and immediate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and new forest protections, the world’s most expansive stretch of temperate rainforests from Alaska to the coast redwoods will experience irreparable losses.” In fact, says the study’s lead author, Dominick DellaSala, “In the Pacific Northwest…the climate may no longer support rainforest communities.”...

....The harbors of Washington, a state that prides itself on its environmental stewardship, have already become a support base for one, and the other will likely join the crowd in the years to come. Washington’s residents will gradually become more accustomed to oil rigs and tankers and trains, while its rainforests burn in yet more paradisical fires.

In the meantime, the Olympic Peninsula is still wreathed in smoke, the West is still drought central, and anthropogenic is a word all of us had better learn soon.

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-wettest-rainforest-in-the-united-states-has-gone-up-in-flames/