In a move that stunned environmentalists across the globe: the Coalition of Financially Challenged Countries with Lots of Trees (CoFCCLoT) recently recommended reforesting G8 nations back to pre-industrial levels in the hopes of countering the ravages of climate change. The coalition also has called for reintroducing gorillas into Spain and lions into Greece with the goal of revitalizing the ailing Eurozone economies. OK, the CoFCCLot doesn’t really exist, despite the press release cited above sent out last April 1. But the ersatz organization’s founders, Erik Meijaard and Douglas ... Read More
Save the Birds — With Doppler Radar
April 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
After slogging through knee-deep water, past palmetto thickets and trumpet vines dangling from the treetops, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mike Lange stops short. He signals toward a gnarled live oak, straight out of the magical charm of The Shire, its trunk the width of a car. Crumpled resurrection ferns line its branches, waiting to sprout in green abandon with the next rains. Nearby, the trunks of an elm and a water hickory wrap around each other like a sculpture of intertwined lovers. Lange is rightly proud of these woods. Over the past 20 years, he has been largely ... Read More
The History and Frightening Future of Forests
January 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The United Nations has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests, an interestingly ambiguous title that can be read as either celebratory or cautionary. Our review of recent forest-related research is similarly mixed: It seems that for every paper that warns forests are at risk from climate change, another suggests that, if well-managed, they could help mitigate its impact. Playing the role of victim and savior simultaneously is a lot to ask, but then forests have always played a dual role in the lives of man. In literature and folklore, they represent both the terror of the wild ... Read More
Saving Forests with a Sense of Place
December 8, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
I was in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca during one of Mexico's best-known traditions, the Day of the Dead. The somber Panteon General, Oaxaca City's largest cemetery, had been transformed into a carnival. A mariachi band played next to walls covered in candles reflecting the dead; yellow marigold flowers called cempasúchil decorated grave sites and adorned the altars that sprung up around the city. Offerings of food and drink for ancestors, who appeared in fading black-and-white photographs, were everywhere. Although part of the Catholic All Saints and All Souls days, the ... Read More
Pine Beetle Infestation Under the Presidents’ Noses
October 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Here, on the western flank of Mount Rushmore, from the vista that highlights George Washington's 60-foot profile, a few Ponderosa pines are showing signs of autumnal shedding. Nothing indicates anything amiss right under the immortalized presidents' stony noses. Yet not far from where Crazy Horse and Custer once rode, South Dakota's historic Black Hills are again rife with warfare, that of the dread mountain pine beetle's assault. Since the 1997 onset of this latest beetle epidemic, several million Ponderosa pine trees have been killed; a third of Black Hills National Forest's 1.2 million ... Read More
Learning from the Ancients
July 16, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Gazing at the famous Mayan pyramids of Chichén-Itzá, it's hard not to be mesmerized by the colossal limestone structures rising out of an expansive green lawn. It makes for a great photo, although the scene is missing a key feature from when those pyramids rose: a tropical rainforest canopy. In fact, that absent forest is the focal point of the widely accepted theory explaining the Maya's downfall. To the majority of archaeologists, anthropologists and Maya scholars, the collapse of the Maya civilization 1,000 years ago is best summed up by three words: slash and burn. According to the ... Read More
The Tree That Changed the World
March 29, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The author of A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, begins a series of articles on the world’s first energy crisis: peak wood. Part I: The Tree That Changed the World Part II: Wood and Civilization Part III: Peak Wood and the Bronze Age Part IV: Peak Wood Brings on the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Fossil Fuels Astronomers for the longest time have regarded Venus as the planet most resembling Earth. Having almost the exact size as Earth and being almost as close to the sun has led many to call it Earth’s twin. The clouds always covering the Venusian ... Read More
Tree by Tree: Reforesting Haiti
January 27, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The Marines, the Red Cross and countless other charity organizations are getting their boots on the ground to offer tangible, immediate aid to quake-stricken Haitians. Relief may come as simple as a dry biscuit and water delivered by the U.N. World Food Program or as complicated as surgery performed by Doctors Without Borders. Amid the tremendous effort to stave off hunger and slowly repair the tattered nation, another nonprofit, Trees for the Future, is continuing to do what it has done in the country for eight years: plant trees that produce much-needed fuel and food for rural ... Read More
The Sourdough Approach to Biomass
July 29, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The folks at Dovetail Partners, a Minnesota-based nonprofit corporation whose stated vision is "to be the most trusted source of environmental information," released a report today detailing some best practices for harvesting "woody biomass" for energy. And the takeaway message is sourdough. Burning twigs to power the world, as it were, isn't an environmental pipe dream — if you think about it, the whole planet pretty much used to be wood-powered back in the day — although the West still sees this as a "new" use of forests. Dovetail notes the International Energy Agency "believes the ... Read More
Off-roaders Leaving Environmentalists in the Dust
May 23, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Off-roaders may be winning the battle for access to public lands, and there's not much environmentalists can do about it, according to a new study from the University of Idaho. Because of their traditions and built-in policies, the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are inherently predisposed to favor motorized recreation, said Patrick Wilson, an associate professor of natural resource policy in the university's department of conservation social sciences. Historically, Wilson said, the managers of public lands have focused on such uses as ... Read More
