Trees Forests

  • Canadian tar sands are not just about turning Alberta’s boreal forest into a wasteland. Transport of the product has many dangers, ill-effects. ____________ They haul their giant equipment around the world disrupting the roadside environment to dig tar sands in Alberta, turning hundreds of square miles into lifeless pits. Ah, but they produce oil!  They…

  • Predators help disperse salmon, nutrient on streambanks This article describes the results of a study suggesting another “trophic cascade” mechanism by which predators and salmon interact, enriching the diversity of plant-life in the world’s largest old-growth temperate rainforest: Pacific salmon run helps shape Canada’s ecosystems – BBC News The annual migration sees salmon return to western Canada…

  • The most abundant of all Western pine falls at astounding rate- Every Western pine from the Yukon to New Mexico is suffering high mortality from unusually severe attack by native insects, diseases and direct mortality from drought and heat. Lodgepole pine, which often grows in vast almost monocultural stands, is dying too.  Almost anyone who…

  • It is land clearing for livestock- Despite some recognition today, just one tree is being planted in Queensland for every one hundred cleared to increase livestock grazing. Yes, it rained a lot for a long time, but cows on huge tracts of “cleared” land made the disaster. Video. http://suprememastertv.com/save-our-planet/?wr_id=1659

  • It releases a great deal of carbon and produces much less new food than more intensive use of existing croplands- Lose-lose . . . sounds like a Western land use issue. Clearing tropical forests is a lose-lose. Michael Marshall. New Scientist.

  • The first large scale planting blight resistant chestnut is done- When the chestnut blight hit in the 1950s, there were probably 3 billion American chestnut trees in the United States. Now there are perhaps only about a hundred trees in its natural range. The demise of the chestnut was a blow to wildlife that ate…

  • “We don’t know what’s going to happen without whitebark.”- I know it will soon be functionally extinct, although no doubt some token remnants will be protected from beetles and blister rust. Ecologically speaking, it is already almost gone. Here is a long essay on its demise and the effects. Feature article in New West. Grizzlies…

  • Very important. Interesting post by NRDC’s Louisa Wilcox about how the science shows how critical whitebark pine nuts are for grizzlies and how the managers talk out of both sides of their mouth. “In its August 9th legal brief challenging the 2009 ruling by Federal Judge Donald Molloy that required relisting of the Yellowstone grizzly…

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