Forests

"Forestry experts have a dire warning for California: the conditions are ripe for more catastrophic fire seasons like the one last fall. And an arcane federal funding arrangement is making it a lot harder for forestry officials to do something about it. Instead of fixing the problem, however, Congress just punted — again."

Genetics may be the key to saving California's ancient coastal redwoods from the climate change that threatens them.

"The old-growth timber industry's fight for survival in Alaska may be complicating congressional efforts to reach a long-term solution to costly wildfires."

"The Trump administration will curtail a detailed review of how cordoning off 230,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in Minnesota from mining development will affect a neighboring wilderness area, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post."

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed hear a bid by timber company Weyerhaeuser Co seeking to limit the federal government’s power to designate private land as protected habitat for endangered species in a case involving a warty amphibian called the dusky gopher frog."

"The death toll from devastating mudslides in affluent communities along a stretch of Southern California coastline rose to 17 on Wednesday after two more bodies were recovered, the local sheriff said, and the number of people missing also climbed to 17."

"At least 13 people are dead and more than 20 are injured in California from weather-related incidents, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday. The southern part of the state has been drenched with severe rain just weeks after several fires tore through the area."