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A 10-foot high-tech map pinpoints the real-time location and status of every plane and helicopter fighting fires in forests and grasslands across the country. Next to it, wildfires are identified on a similar map. Facing the maps, workers in the coordination center for the National Interagency Fire Center are arrayed in defensive lines like fire crews in the field.

Somehow, California's redwoods have survived tens of thousands of years of fires, floods and human scorched Earth logging. Poachers are becoming a significant problem in the state and national parks along the California's north coast.

The entire Colorado legislative delegation introduced a federal bark beetle bill on Tuesday that would commit up to $22 million to help the Forest Service and local communities combat the threat of wildfire and protect water supplies in the state.

China aims to expand its acreage of trees suitable for providing feedstocks for power plants and biodiesel makers by 16 times during the 2010-2020 period, a senior government official said on Tuesday.

This month, the USDA announced that the amount of U.S. land planted to corn had increased an incredible 18.5 percent, up to 92.9 million acres. The corn boom is directly tied to the ethanol boom, which in the U.S. is almost exclusively dependent on corn.

Peeved by growing accusations of rampant industrial pollution, China has unveiled a conservation strategy for its flora. The green plan aims at reverting farmland to forests. China is home to 10 per cent of all known plant species, and half of those unique to China, about 5000 species of plants, are under threat.