The Firestone company, the second largest employer in Liberia, is so powerful in that country that the people there have little recourse when they complain that it is poisoning their water. Firestone's massive rubber plantation there was set up with help from the U.S. government in the 1920s. Firestone is now owned by the giant Bridgestone Americas, a Japanese company.
"A tiny insect is literally sucking the life out of hemlock trees in the Eastern United States. The hemlock wooly adelgid was first spotted in Virginia in the 1950s. Since then it's hit roughly half the hemlocks from Georgia to Massachusetts."
"Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today renewed for another year a policy giving himself sole power to approve logging or road projects on tens of millions of forested acres while the Obama administration decides how to handle the controversial Clinton-era roadless rule."
"To reduce trade in illegally harvested wood, a global initiative was launched today in Washington that brings together conservation groups, government agencies, corporations and business associations with a stake in promoting legal forest product supply chains."
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility obtained and disclosed a USFS memo ordering its law enforcement personnel not to talk to reporters about anything without first getting clearance from its Washington director and press office.
"The battle between forestry companies protecting their timber supply and environmentalists trying to save the trees has been too fierce to hide in the shade of Canada's vast boreal forest. But after decades of fighting, the bitter foes have agreed to bury the hatchet."
A new report by the US Geological Survey, Bureau of Reclamation, US Forest Service, other federal agencies, and university experts says the water-hogging reputation of the two species has little merit, but found that effects on wildlife are mixed.
The USFS Forest Legacy Program has awarded a total of $72 million to 36 property owners in 33 states and territories to apply conservation easements to their land, with the goal of preventing development or other uses of the land that would reduce its forest value.
"Legislation would transfer prized sections to an Alaska Native company for logging. Native leaders say it's long overdue. Preservationists are outraged."
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