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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...

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...