Subject: East vs. West Washington
Date: Apr 14 18:19:26 1998
From: Deb Beutler - dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu


One thing has been bothering me for the last five years (since I
moved to Washington). Why do we only divide the state into two regions?
People often talk about Western Washington, meaning anything west of the
Cascade Crest, and Eastern Washington, everything east of the Cascade
Crest). Clearly there is a political and ecological difference between the
east side and west side of the Cascades (rain shadows are powerful things).
However, by that division, eastern Washington covers most of the state and
includes and incredible diversity of habitats from the sagebrush coulees and
potholes area, the slackwater (formerly riverine) habitats along the
Columbia and Snake Rivers, the wheat deserts of the Palouse, the apple
deserts of the Tri-Cities area and and the pine forests of northeastern
Washington.

On Tweeters, the vaguenes of east vs. west can cause problems.
Often people ask for good places to bird in "eastern Washington" and I never
know what to tell them (except "Avoid the Palouse"). Are they talking about
the dry central part, the wetter northern pine forests or the wheat desert?
Other times, people are reporting their trip just east of the Crest and put
"Eastern Washington" in the subject line. It isn't one giant region over here.

What do you think? What would be a good classification for
Washington? We could have Western Washington (possible divided into Puget
Sound, Olympic Pennisula, South Coast, Cascades), South Central Washington
(east of the Cascades to around the Potholes region), North Central
Washington (Okanogan region), Northeastern Washington (forested regions from
Grand Coulee west to Idaho South to Spokane) and Southwestern Washington
(including the Palouse, Snake River area, etc.) That is just my
classification. What is yours? You can respond to me directly or to the
list at large.

Just wondering
Deb

Deb Beutler
Department of Zoology
P.O. Box 644236
Washington State Univerisity
Pullman (Whitman Co.), WA 99164-4236
dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu