Title
A MOTION requesting the executive to identify and analyze mature forests in King County, and to transmit two reports.
Body
WHEREAS, forests provide multiple benefits on both the local and global scale, and
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that forest management activities play a key role in the mitigation of climate change, and the Washington state Legislature has found that forests are one of the most effective resources that can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and
WHEREAS, King County's 2020 Strategic Climate Action Plan states that there are substantial carbon and climate benefits to maintaining, protecting, restoring, and expanding the more than 811,000 acres of forest land in King County, and that recent studies combining carbon sequestration potential and risk of loss due to wildfire, insects, and disease rank the coastal and Cascade forests of Oregon and Washington among the highest priority for protection, and
WHEREAS, in 2021, the executive developed a 30-Year Forest Plan, which lays out priorities and goals associated with King County's forests, as well as strategies for achieving those over the next thirty years, and
WHEREAS, in addition to greenhouse gas mitigation benefits, the 30-Year Forest Plan states that King County's forests provide benefits to human health, salmon habitat, and water quality and quantity, in addition to the economic benefits of timber, and
WHEREAS, "mature forests" are forests that were logged in the first half of the twentieth century or earlier, that naturally regenerated rather than being replanted, and that retain biological, structural, functional, or genetic legacies of natural and old-growth forests, and
WHEREAS, mature forests, on their way to becoming old-growth habitats, embody the species diversity, genetic richness, and intricate structural complexity of their natural predecessors, and
WHEREAS, these older forests store more carbon in standing wood, downed w...

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