Seattle

Environment

Environmental issues have a strong impact on Seattle, which was built on resource-based industries such as lumber and fishing. Even with the current dominance of the aerospace and high-tech fields, these older industries continue to play an important role in the region's economy. In recent years, logging practices—most notably clear-cutting—have come under fire from environmentalists, who have also raised the ire of those involved in the timber industry with their campaign to protect the forest habitat of the spotted owl. To save the old-growth forestland that serves as the birds' habitat, logging on federal lands in the region has been restricted since the late 1980s.

Salmon fishing has also raised environmental issues, including the debate over what to do about sea lions that feed on fish slowly making their way through the fish ladders built to facilitate their progress through the locks of area canals. When conservative efforts to discourage the sea lions failed, heated controversy arose over plans to have them killed.

More than 90 percent of Seattle's residents participate in the city's model curbside recycling program, which has reduced the volume of household-generated landfill waste by 40 percent.