Dear Parks Supporter:
Today King County announced a visionary open space conservation strategy, called the Greenprint for King County, aimed at identifying and ultimately protecting the county’s most important open space and resource lands.
The Greenprint for King County gives us the strategy we need to target our limited budget resources and protect those open space lands that maximize public benefits. In an era of shrinking budgets, rising land prices and competing demands for resources, it is important that we target our land conservation action ahead of development so that we do not lose our most valuable water and land resources. The Greenprint gives us a powerful tool to prote ct an additional 100,000 acres of open space and resource lands by 2010 and strengthen a green infrastructure capable of ensuring that King County’s incredible natural assets are safeguarded for many generations to come.
We unveiled the Greenprint for King County with Roger Hoesterey, Trust for Public Land northwest regional director, as part of King County’s Earth Day Expo at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle. Developed in collaboration with the Trust for Public Land, the Greenprint articulates a conservation vision for the county’s ecological lands, regional trails, farms, forests, and flood hazard protection areas to ensure that the Cascade Foothills remain forested, critical salmon habitat is protected, missing links in the regional trail system are completed, and that citizens are protected from floods. The Trust for Public Land is a national conservation non-profit organization.
The Greenprint will build upon King County’s proven track record in protecting land and water resources. King County currently owns more than 25,000 acres of lands and more than 106,000 acres of development rights for the purpose of preserving working forests, productive farms, rivers that are managed to support salmon habitat yet also reduce flood threats, and a premier multi-modal, regional trail system.
Other Greenprint resources:
King County Parks: trails & open space
King County GIS Center
Article on greenprint effort from Seattle Post Intelligencer
Trust for Public Lands
Help Rebuild Washed Out Snoqualmie Valley Trail
The Northwest Parks Foundation announced that it will accept donations to repair King County's Snoqualmie Valley Trail after a washout destroyed a 120 foot section of the trail north of Fall City.
Donations can be made online or through the mail. Online, people can click 'contribute' on the Northwest Parks Foundation website at www.NWparks.org and in the comments box put 'Snoqualmie Valley Trail.' Donations can also be mailed to: Snoqualmie Valley Trail Donations, Northwest Parks Foundation, 600 First Ave, Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98104.
'To protect public safety, King County immediately closed the trail and posted warning signs. There is a vertical drop of about 80 feet where the trail is washed out and the area remains very unstable. It will likely be at least several months before the trail is back in commission. The county will have a better idea about how long it will take to make repairs after an engineering assessment is completed.
Other Trail Resources:
Washout Claims 120 feet of Trail
Snoqualmie Valley Trail
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