Follow Washington's largest manager of state lands on ‘Ear to the Ground' blog

OLYMPIA - "Ear to the Ground," a blog from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), helps the public follow the agency and its management of 5.6 million acres of state lands that provide revenue to support public schools, universities, county services and other public institutions.

Readers of Ear to the Ground (http://www.washingtondnr.wordpress.com/) were among the first to learn how to download an application to partner with DNR on a biomass project to demonstrate the safe use of wood energy.

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The blog also has an RSS feed option so readers can receive updates whenever a new posting is placed on Ear to the Ground. During the past 14 days, readers have paid nearly 1,000 visits to Ear to the Ground to get current updates and images of wildfires and vandalism on public lands, as well as news about conservation efforts, tidal energy projects - even a DNR law enforcement officer's rescue of a horse in Capital State Forest.

The blog, along with social networking tools, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace, will help support the agency's commitment to transparency and informing the public in how DNR makes its decisions and manages state lands.

Additional tools now available on http://www.dnr.wa.gov/ include:

* Twitter - http://twitter.com/waDNR 

* Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wastatednr/   

* Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/people/Washington-Dnr/1752219634

* YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/WAstateDNR

* MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/469270878

DNR manages trust lands
DNR manages about 3 million acres of state-owned trust lands and about 2.6 million acres aquatic lands, including the bedlands under Puget Sound. Peter Goldmark, who administers DNR, is Washington's 13th Commissioner of Public Lands since statehood in 1889 and the first commissioner from Eastern Washington.