Restoring longleaf pines, keystone of once vast ecosystems

DESOTO NATIONAL FOREST, Miss. (AP) — When European settlers came to North America, fire-dependent savannas anchored by lofty pines with footlong needles covered much of what became the southern United States. Yet by the 1990s, logging and clear-cutting for farms and development had all but eliminated...

Small town besieged by hundreds of giant black vultures

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Black vultures circled beneath a leaden sky, swooping down close to the tombstones in a Marietta cemetery in search of something dead to eat. Classic horror imagery aside, a big bird in the air is better than one on the roof for homeowners in this quaint town of 2,607 on the Susquehanna...

Colorado looks to logging to help re-balance forests

GOULD, Colo. (AP) — Stunned by unprecedented megafires, Colorado is embracing logging — mowing holes up to 140 acres in beetle-infested lodgepole pines — in an effort to revive out-of-balance forests. This for-profit mechanized tree-cutting, concentrated between the blackened Cameron Peak and...

US: Mountain pine tree that feeds grizzlies is threatened

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday. A Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be...