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The chief of the U.S. Forest Service has upheld the revised land management plans for five southern national forests, including the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee.

The predominantly Douglas fir forests of the Wood River Valley could be in for a shock. The "most widely distributed and destructive defoliator of coniferous forests in western North America," the western spruce budworm, is at work in the Smoky Mountain foothills on the west side of the valley.

Don't feed the bears. Pack out what you pack in. Keep fires confined to existing fire rings. Or, better yet, pack a camp stove. And, whatever you do, don't leave behind "Charmin lilies." "My wife likes to educate people on that one," Stanislaus Wilderness volunteer Randy Esson said, referring to unsightly and unsanitary toilet paper clumps left behind in the forest.

The Bush administration has agreed to hold off selling some national forest lands and will support one more year of payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging, lawmakers said Monday.

U.S. companies with corporate vehicles now have a new, alternative method to operate an eco-friendly company car program.

Decades of reckless deforestation have stripped North Korea of tree cover that provides natural protection from catastrophic flooding, experts say. Energy-starved residents have used every scrap of wood from the countryside to cook food or heat homes through the bitter winters. This leaves the country vulnerable to flooding and landslides on a massive scale, they say.

Where gushing streams and creeks first meet to form the Chattooga River, there's a wild, winding stretch that's become a favorite refuge for fishermen seeking solitude.

Mercury contaminates watersheds around Lake Superior, and naturally-occurring bacteria convert this mercury into its most toxic form - methylmercury. Scientists have known for many years that these toxic transformations occur in wetlands and lake sediments: studies in Michigan's Upper Peninsula documented similar transformations in groundwater.