Forests

"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."

"As climate change brings stronger droughts and hotter temperatures, wildfires are becoming a bigger threat around the world - including in places they have not been seen previously".

"Between a third and half of the world’s wild tree species are threatened with extinction, posing a risk of wider ecosystem collapse, the most comprehensive global stocktake to date warns."

"A popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists was clogged with fleeing vehicles Monday after the entire resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to leave as a ferocious wildfire raced toward Lake Tahoe, a sparkling gem on the California-Nevada state line."

"More than 13,500 firefighters were working Monday to contain a dozen large California wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of people to flee to safety."