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Japan should use more domestically produced wood to help build a recycling-oriented system to utilize forest resources and revive the faltering forestry industry, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said Tuesday in an annual report on forestry.

Bamboo, long known by the Chinese as the plant of a thousand uses, was once viewed here primarily as panda fuel, fishing poles or Pier 1 patio kitsch. Now it's the trendy raw material of the moment in everything from textiles to flooring.

During weekly lab lunch at The Evergreen State College, Nalini Nadkarni and other International Canopy Network (ICAN) researchers were inspired: Why not make a Barbie that's strong, adventurous, loves science and has fun in the forest? They wrote and called Mattel, the Barbie toymaker, but no response. So they made their own TreeTop Barbie.

Plant inspectors from China will visit Alaska in late April to do site inspections of log sources, a move that could greatly improve the bottom line for the state's timber exporters, state officials said.

The Bush administration has ordered America's national parks to show that they can function at 80 percent or less of their operating budgets, which is forcing some parks to cut services for visitors as summer approaches.

Environmental groups say a planned forest thinning project in northern Idaho by the U.S. Forest Service is really a timber sale that will do more harm than good. The Forest Service wants to thin about 900 acres of forest that surrounds at least 35 homes six miles north of Bonners Ferry to reduce the threat of wildfire.

You may have heard by now about a beetle invasion that is laying waste to the vast pine forests in interior British Columbia. Lumber mills up there have moved to triple shifts to process salvaged timber.

Your health? Priceless. The savings from neighborhood trees on things such as hospital visits related to air pollution? Some $16 million if you live in East Boston, Roslindale, the South End, or Jamaica Plain, according to a study by the Urban Forest Coalition.