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COPENHAGEN – A plan to protect the world's biologically rich tropical forests by paying poor nations to protect them was shelved Saturday after world leaders failed to agree on a binding deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Burning trees to clear land for plantations or cattle ranches and logging forests for wood is blamed for about 20 percent of the world's emissions. That's as much carbon dioxide as all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined. About 32 million acres (13 million hectares) of forests are cut down each year — an area about the size of England...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration says it will defend a 2001 rule imposed by President Bill Clinton that blocked road construction and other development on tens of million acres of remote national forests. The administration's decision was contained in court papers filed Thursday in a case in Wyoming that could help settle the fate of remote federal forests. The administration is siding with environmentalists in the case.

National forest roads and bridges in 31 states will get long-needed repairs under an economic stimulus spending plan announced by the Obama administration. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Tuesday that $228 million in economic stimulus money will be used for road maintenance and decommissioning and watershed restoration in dozens of national forests. A total of 106 projects in 31 states will be paid for as part of the $1.15 billion in economic stimulus funding awarded to the Forest Service

Don't tell me I donated all of those quarters to save the rain forest for nothing? No one told me we could simply plant another one. All those wasted quarters. I say, we cut it all down so we can use the wood for nice toilet paper, hard wood floors and toothpicks, then just replant it later. Not only would that create jobs in harvesting the wood, but all the libtards could get jobs replanting it. Win, win. April 17, 2008 How campus researchers helped to rescue a rain forest By Beth SkwareckiHalf a century after most of Costa Rica's...

Trees in old growth forests across the West are dying at a small, but increasing rate that scientists conclude is probably caused by longer and hotter summers from a changing climate. While not noticeable to someone walking through the forests, the death rate is doubling every 17 to 29 years, according to a 52-year study published in the Friday edition of the journal Science. The trend was apparent in trees of all ages, species, and locations. "If current trends continue, forests will become sparser over time," said lead author Phillip J. van Mantgem of the U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological...

Conservationists have found a host of new species after discovering uncharted new territory on the internet map Google Earth. The mountainous area of northern Mozambique in southern Africa had been overlooked by science due to inhospitable terrain and decades of civil war in the country. However, while scrolling around on Google Earth, an internet map that allows the viewer to look at satellite images of anywhere on the globe, scientists discovered an unexpected patch of green. A British-led expedition was sent to see what was on the ground and found 7,000 hectares of forest, rich in biodiversity, known as Mount...

Scientists angry after feds ax forest studyThe government wanted to see how forests responded to carbon dioxide. By Jeff Barnard The Associated Press Published on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 DURHAM — For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years. Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments. The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists...

Our view:It’s criminally negligent when politicians can’t set aside differences long enough to talk for a morning about an urgent public safety hazard The organizers of a wildfire forum in Sacramento on Wednesday brought together three members of the U.S. Congress and half a dozen state lawmakers. They drew the California fire marshal, the head of the state Fire Safe Council, Forest Service researchers and officials, and county supervisors from around the region. STORY TOOLS E-mail story Comments iPod friendly Printer friendly News alerts Subscribe to the paper Submit a news tip More Editorials Delta overhaul can't undercut northern rights...

By CHRIS MERRILL Star-Tribune environment reporter Tuesday, June 24, 2008 > LANDER -- Since Rainbow Family participants have chosen to stay put at Big Sandy in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, leaders with the Boy Scouts of America have decided to alter plans for a major service project that had been scheduled to take place in the same general area. > > Leaders with the Boy Scouts' Order of the Arrow have decided to cancel a long-planned forest restoration project near Dutch Joe Guard Station in the Wind Rivers, said Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman with the Bridger-Teton National Forest. > > The...

The Cheecka Ring is a ring measuring about 1 kilometre in diameter, located 20 km east of Hearst, Ont. Scientists believe it was formed by a natural gas deposit. (Courtesy S. Hamilton, OGS) It is a strange phenomenon: thousands of large, perfectly round "forest rings" dot the boreal landscape of northern Ontario. From the air, these mysterious light-coloured rings of stunted tree growth are clearly visible, but on the ground, you could walk right through them without noticing them. They range in diameter from 30 metres to 2 kilometres, with the average ring measuring about 91 metres across. Over...

A federal appeals court has barred logging in the Sierra Nevada forest. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the federal government failed to explore other ways to raise money to fight forest fires when it approved a plan to award timber contracts to cut down trees on three sites. The Forest Service says the logging of commercially valuable trees is needed to help pay for thinning of less desirable smaller trees and brush. Environmental groups say the logging plan fails to protect scarce species such as the California spotted owl, martin and Pacific fisher. Attorney General Jerry Brown...

ANGLO-SAXON MOUND FIND IN SHERWOOD FOREST 11:27 - 25 April 2008 A Mysterious mound in Notts that was once thought to mark the boundary of two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is to be investigated by historians, the Forestry Commission has said. Known as Thynghowe, the hillock was only discovered three years ago in the Birklands area of Sherwood Forest by former teacher Lynda Mallet and her husband Stuart Reddish. With their friend John Wood, the couple used an original 19th Century perambulation document to find Thynghowe, which is believed to be an ancient meeting place dating back to Viking times. Experts think...

Agriculture chief's priority: avoid jail By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 23, 10:12 AM ET WASHINGTON - He overhauled federal forest policy to cut more trees — and became a lightning rod for environmentalists who say he is intent on logging every tree in his reach. After nearly seven years in office, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey still has a long to-do list. Near the top: Persuade a federal judge to keep him out of jail. Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist who has directed U.S. forest policy since 2001, also wants to set up state rules making it...

Snow damage 18.6 million ha of Chinese forest Source:www.chinanews.cn BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- The extreme weather that hit China in recent weeks has damaged 18.6 million hectares of forest in 19 snow-afflicted provincial regions, the State Forestry Administration announced here Wednesday. The total included 6.83 million ha of bamboo, 11.62 million ha of woods and 15,333 ha of saplings, according to the administration. The 19 provincial-level areas plagued by snow and cold weather were Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Henan, Yunnan,Sichuan, Chongqing, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan. The administration has earmarked 4.3 million...

U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece. A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week. The statement, in Arabic, said that “summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.” The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.”...

Caribbean forests thrived in 'Little Ice Age' 22:00 01 October 2007 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Some Caribbean forests were at their densest for the past 2000 years during the 'Little Ice Age', new research shows. This forest growth was not expected, because other areas in the region were cool and dry, but the curious finding shows that the effects of climate change can vary from place to place, say researchers. From approximately 1350 to 1850, the Little Ice Age cooled low latitudes and dried the Caribbean including the Yucatan Peninsula. So you might expect to see evidence of this...

Greek forest fires kill 47 as blaze nears Athens By Roya Nikkhah, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:40am BST 26/08/2007 Forest fires have ripped through southern Greece, killing 47 people, injuring 40 and leaving hundreds homeless. A hot, dry summer and a three-day heatwave with temperatures of 40C created the tinderbox conditions A national state of emergency was declared yesterday as firemen fought up to 170 fires which have raged since Friday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of villages. The southern Peloponnese region was described as a "crematorium" by officials, who said the death toll was expected to rise as gale-force...

In a once-lost forest in Africa, six animal species new to science have been discovered, members of a two-month expedition now reveal, including a bat, a rodent, two shrews and two frogs. "If we can find six new species in such a short period, it makes you wonder what else is out there," said Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Andrew Plumptre. The bat appears to be a kind of horseshoe bat (genus Rhinolophus), known for the large horseshoe-shaped "nose leaves" used for directing their ultrasound. These new species were discovered in an expedition from January and March 2007 into woods just...

Archaeologists have found an eight-million-year old forest of cypresses, well preserved and not fossilised, in Bukkabrany in north eastern Hungary. "The discovery is exceptional as the trees kept their wooden structure, they neither turned into coal nor were petrified," Tamas Pusztai, the deputy director and head of the archaeological department at the local Otto Herman museum who oversaw the excavation, told AFP. Archaelogists announced the find last week after uncovering the mysterious forest of taxodiums, a kind of swamp cypress, after a few days of digging. Miners working in a brown coal mine had first uncovered several tree trunks that...

SOUTH AFRICA: JOHANNESBURG - Rural fires that blazed for weeks in South Africa killed at least 26 people, marking the worst loss of life from such infernos since the 1980s, a government spokesperson said on Wednesday. Ten deaths have been confirmed in the northeastern province of Mpumalanga and 16 in Kwazulu-Natal, where veld and forest fires broke out on July 2, Department of Provincial and Local Government spokesperson Zandile Ratsitanga said. Most of the fires have been contained and were no longer a threat, officials said. Another two deaths were still unconfirmed by police in Mpumalanga. "Work is still continuing...

MADRID, July 31 (RIA Novosti) - Some 10,000 people have been evacuated from two major islands on Spain's Canaries swept by forest fires, a local government spokesman said Tuesday. "The island of Gran Canaria, where over 20,000 hectares of pineland has burnt down, is seeing the worst situation, and 13,000 hectares of forests have been destroyed on Tenerife," the source said. However, the spokesman said the fires were raging in inland areas of the islands, while coastal regions where numerous hotels and popular beaches are located were under no threat. The official said strong winds and scorching temperatures of up...

Hot, dry and windy weather helped a wildfire near Glacier National Park grow to roughly 5,000 acres on Sunday and continue to threaten an evacuated lodge. The blaze had grown from 1,000 acres a day earlier and was just 2 percent contained, fire information officer Dale Warriner said. The fire was running into heavy timber. On Sunday, authorities reopened a highway near the park in northwestern Montana, but they warned that U.S. 2 could be closed again if the blaze flared up. Guests and 18 workers at the Summit Station Lodge along the highway remained evacuated as flames burned within...

Official: Chinese forests contribute a lot to absorbing world's CO2 www.chinaview.cn 2007-07-17 21:02:36 BEIJING, July 17 (Xinhua) -- China's forest coverage has risen constantly for almost two decades, increasing the nation's contribution to the world's carbon dioxide absorption, Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration (SFA), said on Tuesday. The world's forested area decreased by about 0.2 percent annually or 9.39 million hectares between 1990 and 2000, said Zhu, citing statistics from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. However, forests in China had been growing by 1.2 percent or 1.81 million hectares every year in...

The recent loss of more than 200 homes in the Angora fire near Lake Tahoe was another ugly reminder that California hasn't gotten its act together on forest policy. As San Diego County residents know painfully well from fall 2003, when the Cedar and Paradise fires destroyed more than 2,400 homes, much of the state is at risk. But long before 2003, fire experts had zeroed in on the especially destructive possibilities of a wildfire in the Tahoe basin, where thousands of homes are built in forests that are vastly thicker than they were in the days when there were...

A buried treasure of trees A Washington state man who always loved to dig in the dirt unearths a petrified forest, covered by lava 15 million years ago while still upright. By Tomas Alex Tizon Times Staff Writer June 28, 2007 Yakima, Wash. — Clyde Friend's life changed the moment his bulldozer hit the first tree on a hot summer afternoon in 2002 as he leveled a hill behind his workshop. Chips flew everywhere, a small explosion of brown and white shards. He hopped off the dozer to investigate. There, embedded in the hill, was a mostly intact fossilized tree...

SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. - Firefighters were trying to contain a wildfire that had burned about 2,400 acres of grass and brush in Sequoia National Forest and was spreading into wooded areas Monday. Officials asked residents in a recreation area called Horse Meadow to evacuate their cabins and trailers after the Goldledge Fire inched about a mile away from the private property, said Geri Adams, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman. "We're getting some really strong winds and the humidity is low, so the fire is really active," she said. The fire started across the street from the Goldledge Campgrounds on...

<p>Arch Cape, Oregon) – The mysterious chunks of wood have shown up periodically over the last few decades, sticking out of the sand like doomed creatures trying to make their last, desperate escape from a dreadful fate beneath the rest of the world. They make momentary impressions on passersby, who have no clue to the real meaning of these muted witnesses to an age practically before Mankind. They are unintentional memorials to the grandiose forest that once stood here, now reduced to twisted, tortured shapes that scream silently from another epoch.</p>

Forest of Broken Urns Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 by Karen J. Coates Borneo's unexplored past is dying by the chainsaw. Tony Paran sits near a jar that held the remains of one of his ancestors. Soon, the forests that shelter these jars will be logged. (Jerry Redfern) Walter Paran was a lucky boy. Three minutes out his front door lay an old grave in the forest marked by big stone slabs, a broken jar, and human bones. A few minutes another way was a pit where the riches of the dead were purportedly buried. What more could an...

Contrary to common belief, forests in many nations are expanding not shrinking, say researchers. They say that while the majority of the world's most forested countries are still losing trees, the number that are gaining forests is rising. However, much of the new forest is cultivated, not natural, leading some experts to caution that planted forests do not support the same level of biodiversity. The new work assessed the 50 most-forested countries around the world from 1990 to 2005. It reveals that forest area increased in 18 of the 50 nations, while total biomass increased in 22 countries. “There is...

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

A small band of archers has been shooting bows and arrows for 37 years on a range in the Pike National Forest north of Deckers, paying the U.S. Forest Service about $450 a year for a permit. This year it will all end because the Forest Service presented the Columbine Bowmen with a bill for $23,000 for the one-year permit, said club president Tom Younger. The same fate faces the 180 or so members of the Buffalo Creek Gun Club, who shoot targets in the Pike forest near Bailey. The club's annual permit fee of $150 over the past 40...

Logging trucks are again rumbling through town after a nearly 15-year hiatus. The Forest Service has reopened - or has plans to reopen - numerous drainages south of Eagle Ranch to logging... There are currently two active sales south of Eagle, with another in the works, said Cary Green, the White River National Forest's timber management assistant for the Eagle area. The 60-acre Beecher Gulch salvage timber sale, on Hardscrabble Mountain, sold in 2005, and about 500,000 board feet of timber is currently being harvested... A typical 2,000-square foot, single-family home requires about 27,000 board feet of framing lumber, paneling...

A massive closure of local national forest recreation areas and campgrounds may be imminent because of equally massive budget cuts. In the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, a shrinking recreation facility maintenance budget is creating a dire situation, potentially forcing the permanent closure of 49 of the GMUG’s 138 recreation areas, said forest public service staff officer Corey Wong. With a $2.7 million recreation facility maintenance backlog, the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests have many old, dilapidated facilities. Water systems in some campgrounds have been removed because they don’t meet standards. “Most of our facilities were...

The ongoing wildfires that are currently burning, or that have already burned this summer in Washington State and all across the western United States, may be a shock to some people, but isn’t this what some of our appointed public land managers and many of our elected officials have been allowing to happen for quite some time by not properly managing these public lands that belong to all of us? At last count when I wrote this article on 9/8/06 there has been more than 8.5 million acres that have burned nationwide, with Washington State leading the pack with 310,966...

Federal officials on Friday were tracking 60 large, active fires that were burning more than 1 million acres, or more than 1,500 square miles, across the West. The states in the region with the most number of fires included Idaho, Nevada, and Montana, according to the Web site of the Boise-based National Interagency Fire Center, composed of various federal agencies that coordinate to battle wildfires. In Idaho, fires had burned more than 231,000 acres, or 360 square miles, the center reported. State officials toured fire camps to survey the damage -- as well as to tell federal firefighting crews here,...

Experts and emergency management officials in Grand County worry that a large stretch of forest devastated by pine beetles may be waiting to burn in a massive wildfire. At least a quarter million acres of lodge pole pines are either dead or dying because of the mountain pine beetle. They've turned once green forests into large areas of dead, red colored trees. "Some of these county roads are very thin," Billy Sumerlin, director of Grand County's Natural Resources department said. "It makes it very difficult for fire apparatus to get in, especially if we're in the process of trying to...

Experts paint grim picture for local trees, eye future forest.. It seems there’s just not much good news for trees these days... Pine beetles decimating lodgepole pines across the West ...foresters are already looking ahead to what the landscape will look like in the future. “This mature pine forest is a goner,” said Cal Wettstein, district ranger for the Holy Cross and Eagle ranger districts. “We’re focusing on the next forest.” Asked what the future holds...Wettstein said simply “large fires.” Over the next two decades, the beetle-killed trees will shed their needles and their branches, then fall down and contribute...

High wind hampered fire crews again Sunday as they fought a wildfire that had dashed across nearly 300 square miles of remote rangeland in northern Nevada. The brush fire 50 miles northeast of Winnemucca had exploded from less than 30 square miles to 292 square miles since Thursday, making it one of the nation's biggest wildfires of the season, fire information officer Susan Marzec said. "The fire is continuing to make its move because of gusty winds and dryness," Marzec said. "Every time we make headway we're back where we started." The fire was just 5 percent contained, and no...

Camping, hiking and fishing in the wild as a child breeds respect for environment in adults, study findshttp://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March06/wild.nature.play.ssl.html http://tinyurl.com/ljnj3 By Susan S. Lang March 13, 2006 If you want your children to grow up to actively care about the environment, give them plenty of time to play in the "wild" before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study. "Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking,...

Wildfire triage helps districts decide which properties to protect... Increasingly wary of powerful forest fires..mountain fire districts are mapping out which vulnerable homes might be sacrificed to avoid putting firefighters in harm's way and make best use of limited resources... Since [ the ] disastrous fire season of 2002, fire districts and departments...are rapidly assembling data to assist in hard decisions about what neighborhoods are defensible and which ones may be left to burn. But should a fast-rising fire force districts with too few resources to make deployment decisions fast, new maps and software give firefighters instant access to the...

While beetles at low levels always exist on Grand Mesa National Forest, some foresters worry the area may be on the verge of a beetle disaster. “It’s at the edge of possibly blowing up and killing a lot of trees,” said forester Kitty Tattersall of the Paonia and Grand Valley ranger districts. “We’re worried it could become a problem.” Mostly, foresters are concerned about the spruce beetle, whose outbreaks are normally triggered by blowdowns. Last October, violent winds toppled trees near the Alexander Lake area on the mesa, creating the potential for a spruce beetle epidemic. Spruce beetles usually emerge...

This started as a question to myself: "I wonder if there are sand dunes in northern climates?" Googling on "sand dunes" + Canada revealed another heretofore unknown (at least to me) geological location -- Athabasca Sand Dunes in Saskatchewan. I've heard of Athabasca before in association with tar sands, but this is a the first time I'd heard of a provincial Athabasca Sand Dunes Park. The Web site says that is only accessible by air. So I'm guessing not a lot of people have been there or visit there. Since this is very new to me and perhaps others, first...

Mat Schulz goes hunting for the endangered bison in a primeval corner of Poland. For most people, Poland is connected with images of factories, coalmines and shipyards. But between the industrial landscapes there are mountains, lakes and sea. Most surprisingly, on the border with Belarus, Poland also has mainland Europe's last primeval forest - 8000 years old and 1250 square kilometres in size. The Bialowieza Forest still exists because Polish and Lithuanian royalty used it for hunting from the 14th century. When, in the 19th century, the land became part of Russia, the tsar reserved it for the same purpose....

Millions 'wasted' planting trees that reduce water By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 29/07/2005) Millions of pounds in overseas aid are wasted every year planting trees in dry countries in the belief that they help attract rainfall and act as storage for water, scientists said yesterday. In fact, forests usually increase evaporation and help to reduce the amount of water available for human consumption or growing crops, according to a four-year study. Research on water catchments on three continents says it is "a myth" that trees always increase the availability of water. Even the cloud forests of tropical Costa Rica...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked an energy company from clearing land in preparation for oil and natural gas drilling near a forest and a river. Judge David M. Lawson issued a preliminary order halting Savoy Energy from cutting timber, building a road and taking other steps to get the project under way in northern Michigan. Lawson said the order was necessary "to prevent irreparable harm" and give the court time to review decisions by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to permit the exploratory drilling. The Sierra Club and...

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Planting trees across the United States and Europe to absorb some of the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels may just outweigh the positive effects of sequestering that CO². In theory, growing a forest may sound like a good idea to fight global warming, but in temperate regions, such as the United States, those trees also would soak up sunlight, causing the earth’s surface to warm regionally by up to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. Forests affect climate in three different ways: they absorb the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and help to keep the planet cool;...

PORTLAND – Oregon farm and forest representatives urged a USDA panel to fund conservation programs and international trade programs in a 2007 Farm Bill forum here Oct. 25. Also in the listening session that included USDA Undersecretary Eric Bost, participants said it was important that Congress continue to fund price support programs, specialty crop grants and agricultural research in the next farm bill. Barry Bushue, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation, said the Farm Bureau supports a 2007 bill patterned after the 2002 bill, and he urged the USDA to back a bill with fully funded price support programs...

Experiments with intensive fertilization show that a spruce forest in Västerbotten, northern Sweden, can more than triple its growth if the trees have access to all plant nutrients. This favorably affects the function of the forest as a carbon sink. In other words, fertilizing forests can help slow down global warming. This has been shown by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) at Umeå and Alnarp. The research findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology. The authors are Per Olsson, Sune Linder, Reiner Giesler, and Peter Högberg. In terms of both the climate and energy policy...

OSLO — Deforestation is often wrongly blamed for causing floods, like in Guatemala this month, under a myth that has skewed agricultural policies, an international report said on Thursday. "There is no scientific evidence linking large-scale flooding to deforestation," the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) said in a report. The frequency of major floods in the past 120 years, back to the late 19th century when forests were far more abundant, has been stable worldwide, it said. That implied that deforestation was not a cause of flooding. It said devastation...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Los Padres National Forest will allow companies to drill for an estimated 17 million barrels of crude oil or natural gas within its borders but roadless wilderness areas and critical habitat of the California condor will be preserved, forest officials announced Thursday. Forest Supervisor Gloria Brown will allow oil and gas leasing on only 52,000 out of 767,000 acres of land that were included in a decade-long study of Los Padres, a nearly 2 million-acre forest that spans 220 miles from Big Sur in Monterey County south to near western Los Angeles County. On all but...