Forests

"Conservation groups are concerned that new National Forest Management planning rule announced by the Obama administration last month takes away the single most important measure to ensure wildlife protection afforded by the 1982 regulations they will replace."

"Protests over timber corruption that has made a billionaire of the chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak and enriched his family at the expense of the state's indigenous and other citizens have spilled over to the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, Ottawa and London." Now there are charges of a political murder on US soil.

"The federal rule protecting the nation's last remaining stretches of roadless wilderness will apply now to the largest and grandest of the national forests under a court ruling in Alaska, which threw out the exemption granted to the Tongass National Forest."

"Rising temperatures, drought and the spread of destructive insect pests will shrink the North American range of the lodgepole pine nearly 10 percent by 2020, a new study finds."

"A Canadian company hoping to compete with China's near-monopoly of rare earth elements — metals critical for everything from U.S. military weaponry to wind turbines — wants to open a strip mine inside a national forest in northeast Wyoming."

"David Cameron has ordered ministers to carry out the government's biggest U-turn since the general election by abandoning plans to change the ownership of 258,000 hectares of state-owned woodland."

"The U.S. Forest Service believes proposed revisions to its forest planning rule will accelerate timber sales and provide rural jobs while protecting watersheds, wildlife and quiet spaces for recreation."

"Scientists fear billions of tree deaths in the Amazon caused by drought could turn the forest from a carbon sink to a carbon source."

"Selling off England's public forests could cost the nation more than it would save, according to an official government document that emerged last night."