Forests

"Ms. Malmberg, 64, is a goat herder and a pioneer in using the animals to restore fire-ravaged lands to greener pastures and make them less prone to the spread of blazes."

"Two journalists and an environmental activist have been beaten up by suspected illegal loggers in a forest in northeastern Romania while making a documentary about illicit deforestation, authorities said Friday."

"A group of landmark giant sequoias has so far been spared by a blaze sweeping through a California national park, authorities said on Sunday."

"Growing wildfires in the Sierra Nevada forced the closure of Sequoia National Park in California on Wednesday as blazes sparked by lightning strikes threaten the park’s groves of giant sequoias, home to some of the tallest and oldest trees in the world."

"Globally, tree-planting projects are becoming all the rage, but many are counting on old habits of planting monoculture plantations and calling them forests."

"President Joe Biden will promote his administration’s use of the Defense Production Act to aid in wildfire preparedness during a western swing in which he’ll survey wildfire damage in Idaho and California."

"Experimental pine seedlings poke from the rocky New Mexico earth, the only living evergreens on a hillside torched by one of the U.S. West’s drought-driven wildfires. These climate-smart sprouts about 30 miles (48 km) east of Taos are part of a push to increase the dramatically lagging replanting of U.S. forests after fires."

"Democrats aim to pour tens of billions of dollars into a New Deal-style program that would hire young people to work on projects to protect communities and the environment from disasters that are growing more destructive due to climate change."

"Fire season has become a hard-to-breathe reality in much of the western United States. But the blazes may affect more than air quality or even human lungs. A recent study attributes as many as 7,000 preterm births in California to wildfire smoke exposure."