Forests

"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."

"The Obama administration opened an aggressive new legal front in the enduring trade fight over lucrative softwood lumber exports, accusing Canada of violating a 2006 deal by allowing British Columbia to sell vast quantities of cut-rate, Crown-owned timber to lumber companies."

The mysterious "sudden aspen decline" that is decimating many western forests also seems responsible for a spike in deer mouse populations that is hastening spread of the sin nombre virus, a still-rare hantavirus that kills some 40 % of the humans it infects.