Publication archives

Building Green TV announced today that its new weekly television series about creating beautiful homes and buildings in harmony with the environment is set to air on PBS affiliate stations across the country starting June 5, 2007.

Georgia's owners of forest land have long argued that they somehow should get credit for the public service their trees provide: Cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Now the state of Georgia is helping create a market for this invisible commodity. Tree growers and farmers could receive payments for storing carbon to reduce global warming.

Washington State has a new law to improve forest health conditions, Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland announced today. In a late afternoon ceremony, Governor Gregoire signed Senate Bill 6141, passed by the 2007 Legislature following enthusiastic advocacy for passage of the bill by a broad range of stakeholders.

For Goran Samuelsson, the proud owner of 70 hectares of majestic spruce trees here in southeastern Sweden, the forest is no place for fairy tales or fauns. It is his economic security -- "a bank where you don't have to bow to get what you need," as he puts it.

Malaysian authorities have proposed a multi-million dollar scheme to regenerate a heavily logged forest in a bid to save its orangutan population, a report said Sunday. A fund of 200 million ringgit (59 million dollars) will be used to replant trees to restore the Ulu Segama-Malua forest in eastern Sabah state on Borneo island.

Washington state's tree farmers of the year don't live anywhere near an actual tree farm. Bob and Le Roy Burns, now in their 70s, grew up on the family farm along the Washougal River, but they're avowed city dwellers today. The two brothers, whose 200-acre Skamania County tree farm was recognized last month by the Washington Farm Forestry Association, both live in Vancouver.

Plans to burn pine-beetle-killed wood to generate electricity are gaining momentum in British Columbia, where a pine beetle plague affects some 9.2 million hectares, an area roughly three times the size of Vancouver Island. The infestation has resulted in a scramble to cut affected wood before it loses economic value and to find alternative uses for pine-beetle- killed timber.

It's the biggest fire to hit the Superior National Forest in about a century. It has torched miles of scenic birch, spruce and pine, turned the lush forest floor into a blanket of smoldering ash and consumed dozens of cabins and homes. Yet as devastating as the Gunflint Trail fire has been, it could be one of the best things to happen to the boreal forest.