Word: firs
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...hillside. In Northern California, members of the group blocked a logging road, and a brief brawl broke out between loggers and protesters. Earth Firsters also took to the trees in Oregon, Montana and Colorado. Two protesters in Washington's Colville National Forest who had clambered up into adjoining Douglas fir trees were surprised when the loggers they planned to confront never showed up. Their "occupation" was cut short after 48 hours, but tree-sitter Tim Coleman vowed to "take to the trees again if necessary...
...Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres, less than originally thought but still an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. But the flames were dervish-like, capriciously carving jigsaw patterns out of untouched forest, sometimes encircled by heavily burned areas. Blackened stands of lodgepole pine and Douglas fir should gradually become meadows of aspens, wildflowers and grass; life will go on. "From an ecological standpoint, there was no downside," says John Varley, the park's chief of research. "It is not a rebirth because there was not a death...
...tons of cellulose fibers a year, and its effluent, discharged directed into the lake, has created a polluted zone 23 miles wide. Clouds of yellowish smoke belching from the factory's smokestacks have settled over 770 sq. mi. of Siberian wilderness and have killed an estimated 86,000 fir trees...
Such selective cutting, however, which allowed forests to regenerate species that had no commercial value as well as the highly prized Douglas fir, seemed too inefficient to the Government foresters. Now, perhaps too late, research has shown that clear-cuts tend to break an important ecological chain: they destroy the habitat of small mammals that shelter in forest undergrowth. These creatures eat and distribute mycorrhizal fungi, which grow among the rootlets of saplings and help the trees absorb water and nutrients. There may be enough spores of fungi in the soil after a clear-cut to start a second-growth...
...guess I don't have the patience for any other job." A 15-year veteran of forest fires, Humphrey has had only one day off in a month, but says he would keep on working for free. As he talks, nearby flames shoot several hundred feet up a Douglas fir in a matter of seconds. The tremendous roar is followed by the thunder of a "widowmaker" -- a falling tree -- crashing through the dense smoke. Soon other trees ignite almost spontaneously in an effect known among fire fighters as crowning. "Those flames can leap across the treetops faster than...