By: Amanda Parrish
How did The Lands Council come to be in possession of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder’s canoe? If you guessed it was because of our work protecting the Colville National Forest, you’d be right! We’ve worked for decades to ensure public lands of the Inland Northwest remain public and are managed with future generations in mind, and it looks like we’ve gotten the attention of likeminded conservation heroes in the music industry. Of course, the story’s a little more complicated than that and we’ll be auctioning off the canoe along with a signed photograph later this fall. To learn more about our rockstar connections in the meantime, come to one of our many upcoming spring events and we’ll give you the inside scoop.
Speaking of rockstars, I’ve had the honor of leading the Environmental Subcommittee for the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of Expo ’74: the first environmental World’s Fair and have found that our environmental community is FULL of rockstars. The two month long 50th anniversary celebration, from May 4 – July 4, will be filled with community events, all of which have been planned and undertaken by a large and dedicated group of volunteers. The public may not notice, but as a member of The Lands Council, you deserve to know that collaboration amongst the local environmental community is at an all-time high and it’s working in your favor! Spokane’s beloved Garbage Goat will be proud to know that we’ve taken steps to divert organic waste from Expo +50 events into compost, helping our community reduce our greenhouse gas emissions that would normally come from incinerating our food scraps.
The Lands Council will be hosting a few events of our own under the Expo umbrella, and we’d love to see you there! Pick a day, May 7-11, and help us plant some of the 500 urban trees that together will comprise the Expo Forest. Thanks to sponsorship from Avista, local food trucks will be onsite providing free meals for our volunteers. On June 1st, come to Riverfront Park for our special Expo edition of Campfire Stories: Tales from Our Public Lands. Our biggest event – The Lands Council Legislative Summit – takes place at the Convention Center on June 21st. We’ll help citizens from all walks of life meet face-to-face with their elected officials to craft legislation that addresses climate injustice here in the Inland Northwest. With guest speakers like Mayor Lisa Brown and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, you won’t want to miss it. Plus, we’ve been working with the Spokane Tribe to coordinate our Legislative Summit with their Salmon Ceremony and Canoe Races that will take place on the Spokane River that same day. You can read more about the Expo Forest and Legislative Summit events in this newsletter, and find the full list of Expo +50 events here: https://www.visitspokane.com/expo-50/expo50spokane-events/
Despite all the synergy and collaboration locally, there’s a battle to address climate change at the state level. The Climate Commitment Act (CCA), Washington’s primary program for combating climate change, is in danger of being repealed. This November, Washingtonians will vote to uphold or reject the CCA, a program that imposes greenhouse gas limits for major emitters and uses revenue to fund projects that respond to climate change. One project funded by the CCA that we would be at risk of losing is the salmon recovery efforts on the Spokane River, which you can read more about in our current newsletter. I hope you’ll think of the salmon when it comes time to vote! Whether it’s as a group of voters or a group of stakeholders, I’ve seen firsthand that a dedicated group of collaborators is hard to stop. I promise that here at The Lands Council, we will never give up!