Publication archives

Dale Erickson's logging company is in the northernmost reaches of Minnesota. But even in what's supposed to be one of the most frigid parts of the state, his Baudette-based Erickson Timber Products is having a tough time getting timber out of the forest.

Isaac Berzin is a big fan of algae. The tiny, single-celled plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut global warming. Overshadowed by a multibillion-dollar push into other "clean-coal" technologies, a handful of tiny companies are racing to create an even cleaner, greener process using the same slimy stuff that thrives in the world's oceans.

After wildfire sweeps through timber, as it does every summer across the American West, the inclination of foresters is to salvage the scorched trees. Turning them into paper and lumber, the reasoning goes, is better than letting them decay. It removes dead wood that could fuel future fires, and it clears the area for seedlings.

The growth of farming and cattle ranching in western Brazil could destroy the world's largest freshwater wetlands by 2050, researchers said Wednesday.

Rogue loggers are taking advantage of slow-reacting authorities, mountainous terrain and even language barriers to clear-cut trees on Indian lands in northern Mexico, activists and an international environmental commission said Monday.

Warmer, wetter weather in Russia over the past 40 years has already changed the way forests there look -- and the implications for future warming aren't good, a University at Albany researcher says.

Chain saws in hand, they trudged through the woods, slashing away at trees with no training. At night, they slept in ragged tents in bone-chilling cold. Up before dawn, they traveled to remote job sites in unsafe vans.

Five years ago, intense forest fires around this logging and tourist town burned more than 350,000 acres of forest. Today huge swaths of charred trees cover the mountainsides.