Free Republic

PROHIBITIONS: Pursuant to 16 U.S.C. 551, and 36 CFR 261.53 (a), the following acts and omissions are prohibited on the areas, roads, and trails described in this Order, and depicted on the attached map incorporated into this order as Exhibit A, the "restricted area," all within the Reserve, Wilderness, Black Range and Glenwood Ranger Districts, Catron and Grant Counties, Gila National Forest, New Mexico. 1. Going into or being upon the restricted area as described in this order, 36 CFR 261.52(e) EXEMPTIONS: Pursuant to 36 CFR 261. 50(e), the following persons are exempt from this order: 1. Persons with a...

Berlin police on Wednesday released photos an English-speaking teenage boy who wandered into the city nine months ago saying he had been living for the last five years in the forest with his father. Police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf said all attempts to identify the boy since he emerged in the German capital on Sept. 5 have been unsuccessful, and they are now hoping the release of his photo may produce some leads. "We have checked his DNA against all missing person reports, sent the data to Interpol so that they could check it internationally, but unfortunately without any success," Neuendorf...

The Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team, under the direction of Incident Commander Tony Sciacca, assumed command of the fire at 6:00 a.m. Saturday 5/26. Mandatory evacuations are in place for the community of Mogollon and the Willow Creek Subdivision. Road/Trail/Area closures and Catwalk National Rec Trail Closure are in place on the Gila National Forest. Visit the Gila NF website at www.fs.usda.gov/gila for details. Smoke advisories are in effect. View the Smoke Advisory article under "Announcements" for further information. Smoke projection models are posted in "Photographs." Areas around Albuquerque, Belen, Socorro, Magdalena and Carrizozo will see smoke during...

Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Mayan house that dates to the ninth century. The figure of a man who may have been the town scribe appears on the wall to her left. Archaeologists working in one of the most impenetrable rain forests in Guatemala have stumbled on a remarkable discovery: a room full of wall paintings and numerical calculations. The buried room apparently was a workshop used by scribes or astronomers working for a Mayan king. The paintings depict the king and members of his court. The numbers mark important periods in...

It just never ends. First, National Public Radio had a feature this morning on the race riots in Tulsa around 1921. The people involved in that incident were completely wrong and everyone knows it. No further discussion needed. However, why bring this up in the middle of severe racial tension in the nation? Is NPR trying to bring about a peaceful, with-justice resolution to the national wound? No way. It's all about politics and race now, values have nothing to do with it. The reporter in talking about that event, said, "....Oklahoma, where not a single county voted for Barak...

There’s some good coming off China’s extensive coal exploitation (the nation holds the top place for most pollutant emissions resulting from burning coal), as recent mining activities around Wuda in Inner Mongolia, China, has uncovered an almost perfectly preserved 298 million year-old forest. The forest, which also features intact trees with leaves, branches, trunk and cones, was buried by volcanic ash, and thus kept away from time’s unforgiving touch. The researchers dubbed the forest the “Pompeii of the Permian period, since the manner in which it was preserved bared a striking resemblance to the famous Roman namesake event. The volcanic...

FORT HUACHUCA — This southern Arizona Army post is on a war footing. But the enemy is not a foreign power — it’s fire. As with anything involving the nation’s armed forces, operational plans have been developed and additional resources called forward to deny Mother Nature her way. The fort’s response is both defensive and offensive, Garrison Commander Col. Timothy Faulkner said, adding commanders of all units are being kept in the loop to provide manpower and other assistance needed to fight the Monument Fire’s attempt to breach the post’s boundaries. A large portion of military intelligence training has been...

Massive wildfires in Arizona continue to grow, burning at least 192, 000 acres of timber and brush, and prompting evacuations most recently in the town of Greer. The fires sent smoke into skies visible from 200 miles away. Residents in White Mountain community of Alpine in eastern Arizona near the New Mexico border were also ordered earlier to evacuate as the fire neared.

Sleeping Beauty's kingdom was overgrown by vines when she fell into a deep sleep. Researchers at the Smithsonian in Panama and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee received more than a million dollars from the U.S. National Science Foundation to discover why real vines are overtaking the American tropics. Data from eight sites show that vines are overgrowing trees in all cases. "We are witnessing a fundamental structural change in the physical make-up of forests that will have a profound impact on the animals, human communities and businesses that depend on them for their livelihoods," said Stefan Schnitzer, research associate...

MOSCOW (AFP) – The Russian government on Tuesday approved a plan to build a highway through a forest outside Moscow, in defiance of protests that had become a rare rallying cause for the opposition. Demonstrations against the building of the new highway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg through Khimki forest had prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to postpone the project, in a rare nod by the state to popular pressure. But Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the government commission tasked with investigating the project had after all given its green light to the plan. The commission approved the building of...

Foreign firefighting crews have begun to arrive in Israel to help battle a massive forest fire out of control in the north of the country.Further global assistance is due to arrive later on Friday, as fire crews battled high winds driving the blaze towards the city of Haifa. > Aircraft from Bulgaria, Jordan, Greece and the UK have arrived, after Israel issued a rare request for foreign assistance. Planes from Cyprus, Turkey and Russia were on their way, while flame-retardant materials were being flown in from France, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said. "The Russians are sending and we are waiting...

Last month, Herman Jacob took his daughter and her friend camping in the Francis Marion National Forest. While poking around for some firewood, Jacob noticed a wire. He pulled on it and followed it to a video camera and antenna. The camera didn't have any markings identifying its owner, so Jacob took it home and called law enforcement agencies to find out if it was theirs, all the while wondering why someone would station a video camera in an isolated clearing in the woods. He eventually received a call from Mark Heitzman of the U.S. Forest Service. In a stiff...

As related in a previous article, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission crossed the boundaries of their law-making power in 1995. In March of 1997, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled the AGFC’s “power to regulate the manner of taking game certainly does not translate into a general power to regulate the general possession of all firearms…” This ruling, however, did not stop the AGFC from enacting even stricter gun laws. Memorandum of Cooperation In recent years, the U.S. Forest Service and the AGFC have entered into a “Memorandum Of Cooperation” between the two agencies. Under this agreement, the AGFC has...

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...