Word: alaskas
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Poised between the Pacific and southeast Alaskan coastal glaciers lies Tongass National Forest. Don't let the Alaska address fool you: Tongass is a rain forest. Protected from snow by the tree canopy and from the frigid air by the warmer ocean winds, deer browse among ancient groves of Sitka spruce, yellow cedar and hemlock. The shelter of these giants is vital for wildlife, but the trees are also the prize sought by loggers--a single 200-ft. Sitka spruce may yield 10,000 board feet of timber so fine it can be used to make pianos and guitars. Lesser...
...conservationists, who watch in horror as the global timber machine chews up the world's wilderness, the Tongass had become a test of whether even the richest nation on earth can muster the will to control the forces of deforestation. Logging supporters, and that would include Alaska's Republican Senator Murkowski, seethe over any attempts to restrict harvesting of what they view as a renewable resource...
...Tongass Timber Reform Act, which forced KPC to pay market prices. KPC later sued for breach of contract and threatened to close the Tongass pulp operation if Congress did not extend the contract for 15 years beyond its 2004 expiration date and restore bargain-basement timber prices. With Alaska's delegation occupying key positions on congressional committees, it looked as though KPC would get its way, and Murkowski would protect the state's jobs. Said he: "If the pulp operation goes, all logging in southeast Alaska will collapse as well...
While the Senator blustered, Louisiana-Pacific was getting ready to toss the mill overboard. Why? As a financial proposition, logging in remote, southeast Alaska is problematic because of the high cost of Alaskan labor and the expense of building logging roads. Now, with pulp prices falling, the company is facing increasing competition from mills with cheap labor and fast-growing trees...
...hard to understand his frustration. Paleoanthropologists have only a general idea of how humans first came to the Americas. It happened, most believe, around 12,000 years ago, when Asians began crossing a strip of land that connected present-day Siberia and Alaska, across what is now the Bering Strait. Modern Asians and Native Americans have enough genetic and physical similarities to make a convincing case for the link. But the details of the migration, including how many waves there were, when they happened and the routes by which wanderers subsequently moved east and south over the millennia, are still...