Free Republic

The former commander of an elite wildfire team that battled the largest blaze in Arizona history and aided in recovery efforts at the World Trade Center is accused of starting two fires last year, federal prosecutors said. Van Bateman, 55, was indicted Wednesday for allegedly setting the fires in the Coconino National Forest in 2004. He faces two federal counts of setting timber afire and two counts of arson on public lands. The first charge carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, while arson is punishable by up to 20 years, prosecutors said Thursday. Bateman was a Type I...

Eleven illegal immigrants from Mexico have been arrested and about 100,000 marijuana plants worth a total of $150 million are being uprooted as a result of several drug busts that culminated with one near Strawberry on Monday.

BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (AP) - In the mountains of Southern California, it's the new sound of summer: the whine of a chain saw followed by the whoosh and thud of a falling tree. Logging crews are moving through neighborhoods and across densely forested hillsides, racing to cut as many dead and dying trees as they can before the area erupts in flames. It's a battle no one expects to win this year - and perhaps not anytime soon. "We have an extremely hazardous situation out there even though we've made a lot of progress," said San Bernardino County Fire...

Busted! Drug dealers are planting pot farms all over our national parks, and the Park Service is struggling to root them out. Armed combat is hardly what families hope to encounter as they head for their summer vacations in America's national parks and forests. But drug smugglers, methamphetamine cooks and cannabis cultivators are invading federal lands as never before. A U.S. Park Service ranger in Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was gunned down by a Mexican pot smuggler last August. In Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest, 192 meth labs have been dismantled over the past three years. And marijuana...