By SUSAN GORDON, Tacoma News Tribune

TACOMA, Wash. -- You don't have to visit Washington's old-growth rain forests to get a glimpse of the state's living history. It's in the lustrous leaves and rugged branches of surviving Oregon white oaks, which once dominated South Puget Sound prairies and still loom over some neighborhoods in Tacoma and the region.

Could a salad-dressing ingredient help stewards of Puget Sound control aquatic aliens? In theory, yes. In practice, the answer could depend on the outcome of an experiment that began in February at Maury Island's Dockton Park in King County, Wash.

Three children -- ages 1, 3 and 6 -- have been poisoned by lead from wildcat smelting activities at the Tacoma, Wash., home where they lived last year, state and local officials say.

Parents John and Heather Jones have filed a lawsuit against the landlord of the house for injuries to their children, who may have suffered brain damage.

0LYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- The elusive fisher, famous for its fabulous fur and for picking fights with porcupines, has slipped back into the wilds of Washington state. Its mission: to re-establish a homeland.

Fishers, cat-sized members of the weasel family, have been missing from Washington's forest landscape for decades, wiped out by early 20th-century trappers.

A prized population of Columbia River sturgeon is the latest victim in a familiar Pacific Northwest plot: Hungry sea lions exploit an artificial fish barrier, eat their fill of fish and defy wildlife officers to scare them away.