On a hot summer day last week, a group of forest scientists and managers hiked up a cool Idaho mountain ridge to look at trees in trouble. Whitebark pines are hardy, gnarly and long-lived trees at high elevations across the Pacific Crest, western Canada and the Northern Rockies of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. While these trees have long withstood wind, snows and freezing temperatures for millennium, on slopes from 5,000 to over 12,000 feet — today, a combination of conditions puts the species at risk. more

Listen to ecologist Dr. Tom DeLuca talk about his research trips to the remote area of northern Sweden and you’ll be treated to an ecological mystery story. Birch forests once filled an open valley in the mountains between Sweden and Norway just north of the Arctic Circle, but sometime around 1000 years ago the trees disappeared. All that remains today is an open vista and the collapse of an ecosystem, says Dr. Tom DeLuca Senior Forest Ecologist with The Wilderness Society. more

Throughout the past eight years, the Bush administration has treated our country’s wild lands as if they belong to industry. Through a series of short-cut measures and regulations that have cut science and the public out of decision making, the administration has consistently rolled back environmental protections and sharply favored industrial use and exploitation of our wild lands above all other public concerns. And they’re not done yet. more