Forests

"On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned."

"Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face."

"Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest worsened in the first week of September and are increasingly spreading into areas of untouched forest, satellite data showed as of Wednesday, after the number of fires likely reached a 10-year high in August."

"California is on fire. Almost 2.5 million acres of land have burned there so far this year — nearly 20 times what had burned at this time last year — and the wildfire season is far from over. That means many scientists in the state aren’t just studying their field; many of them are living it."

"“Unprecedented fire.” “Devastating consequences.” “Substantially destroyed.” Those were among the ways Oregon Gov. Kate Brown described the catastrophic wildfires blazing through large swaths of western Oregon Wednesday. The last statement was a reference to a handful of communities, including Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon, Blue River and Vida in Lane County and Detroit at the foot of Mt. Jefferson."

"A U.N. fund has approved a $103.8 million payment to Indonesia for preventing deforestation-based carbon emissions — its biggest payout yet, and one that critics say can’t be justified."

"South, central and north Medford are under evacuation alerts Tuesday night from the fast-moving Almeda fire that started in Ashland in the morning, then swept north through the Rogue Valley."

"Land rights advocates say allowing the state and farmers to negotiate on the size of a protected area sets a worrying precedent".

"The Trump administration on Friday proposed a sale that would allow logging across thousands of acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which critics say will exacerbate climate change and harm wildlife habitats."

"A record-smashing heat wave sent temperatures in areas across the Bay Area well over 100 degrees Sunday, choking the region with the smoke of weeks’ worth of wildfires and putting more than 2 million customers under the threat of rolling blackouts as the state’s energy grid neared capacity."