logging
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Nigerian activist Odigha Odigha fights to halt illegal logging
In southeastern Nigeria, private logging companies are felling the country’s last remaining rainforests. These hardwood forests shelter the highest diversity of primates in the world and some 20 percent of the planet’s butterfly species. Odigha Odigha. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. Odigha Odigha grew up in and around these forests, in the Ijagham community of Cross […]
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Pain in the Tongass
Moderate Republicans, as well as Democrats and environmentalists, are up in arms over eleventh-hour language added by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to a huge $395 billion spending bill that would boost logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. The provision would exempt nearly 2 million acres in the Tongass from a rule approved by former President […]
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Order in the Court
With a staunchly anti-environmental White House and a Republican-dominated Congress, environmentalists are turning to the third branch of government to fight their cause. Happily, the courts have presented a relatively safe haven for greens, upholding strict clean air standards the Bush administration sought to water down, blocking oil and gas exploration in the West, limiting […]
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Texan’s Chainsaw Massacre
Disregarding opposition in both houses of Congress, President Bush announced a plan yesterday to expedite the cutting of trees and brush in national forests by streamlining environmental reviews and judicial oversight. Bush says the plan will help reduce fire danger, but critics say last summer’s wildfires merely provided the pretext for permitting more logging on […]
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Can’t See the Forest for the Stumps
Here’s something you probably weren’t feeling very thankful for on Thursday: The Bush administration issued a proposal last week that would allow managers of the country’s 155 national forests to approve logging and other commercial activities without thoroughly assessing the potential environmental damage that could result. The proposal would radically alter Clinton-era rules that required […]
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Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
The Bush administration and environmentalists are at loggerheads over what should happen to national forests burned in last summer’s wildfire season. The administration is pushing for aggressive logging of scorched forests, including older and larger trees; next month, it will propose new rules meant to reduce delays in timber sales due to environmental appeals. Enviros, […]
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Umbra on sustainable bunk beds
Dear Umbra, I’ve been looking for a sustainably harvested bunk bed for my five-year-old son for quite some time now. I have found only one company, Pacific Rim, that makes such an item. It seems like a great company, but it doesn’t have exactly what I’m looking for. When I search online, all I read […]
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The Owl and the Pussycats
Canadian wilderness activists still can’t get over their astonishment or their delight over yesterday’s announcement by International Forest Products (Interfor) that it would halt all logging in spotted owl habitat in British Columbia, Canada. The company is the second-most active logger in the endangered owl’s terrain; not long ago it was considered Public Enemy No. […]
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Umbra on forest fires
Dear Umbra, My husband says that Rush is blaming the Sierra Club for the huge forest fires raging in Colorado and Arizona. He says that because environmentalists oppose logging, the forest is too full of fuel. I told him that as far as I know, the Sierra Club is really trying to prevent logging in […]
