Forests

"More than 1,600 firefighters battled on Monday to contain a fast-spreading wildfire that has forced hundreds of evacuations in the drought-parched canyons north of Los Angeles, destroying 18 homes, killing at least one person and closing a highway."

"At the foot of a giant sequoia in California's Sierra Nevada, two arborists stepped into harnesses then inched up ropes more than 20 stories into the dizzying canopy of a tree that survived thousands of years, enduring drought, wildfire and disease. There, the arborists clipped off tips of young branches to be hand-delivered across the country, cloned in a lab and eventually planted in a forest in some other part of the world."

"Several destructive wildfires were raging across the Southwestern United States on Saturday, after consuming dozens of homes and forcing evacuations."

"A new wildfire burning through bone-dry grass, shrub and timber has forced the evacuation of dozens of homes in a mountain community in central California and more houses could be in the inferno's path, fire officials said on Saturday."

"Mass die-offs in California, the Southwest and Europe are not only tied to global warming by new studies, they will add to it."

"Lust for charcoal is leading to murders, political unrest and the chopping of prime forests on the most populous island in the Caribbean, and a portion of the bounty winds up used to fuel barbecue grills in the United States."

"When Julien Andrianiana started selling charcoal 14 years ago, he was just one of a few dealers around. Most households in Toliara, a coastal city in southwestern Madagascar, still used firewood for cooking."

"A fast-growing wildfire on Thursday destroyed at least 80 homes near the riverside community of Lake Isabella in central California, as a threat to populated areas from five other major blazes across the state diminished, authorities said."

"Firefighters across Arizona and New Mexico battled 31 wildfires on Wednesday, their efforts complicated by a relentless heat wave and bone-dry conditions. And in the Angeles National Forest, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, two fires kept more than 300 families from their homes as the fires threatened to merge into one."

"Surging wildfires on Tuesday forced new evacuations of hundreds of homes across the West, while firefighters began beating back a pair of big adjacent blazes looming over suburban Los Angeles."