Mild winter weather is hurting Upper Peninsula lumber operations, delaying the freezing of the ground that allows loggers to do their job.
Industry observers say the freeze that makes the ground solid enough to allow logging hasn't arrived yet.
An executive at the Keweenaw Land Association in Ironwood says about 75 percent of his logging crews are idle.
Chain saws in hand, they trudged through the woods, slashing away at trees with no training. At night, they slept in ragged tents in bone-chilling cold. Up before dawn, they traveled to remote job sites in unsafe vans.
Five years ago, intense forest fires around this logging and tourist town burned more than 350,000 acres of forest. Today huge swaths of charred trees cover the mountainsides.
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai urged Kenya's government on Monday to do more to protect and rehabilitate indigenous forests, saying decades of deforestation had contributed to the current drought.
The Kenyan government says at least 2.5 million people in the east African nation are on the brink of starvation due to severe drought, crop failure and depletion of livestock herds.
A real estate developer standing here would drool over the prospects.
Unspoiled hardwood forests covering rolling hills. Deer tracks running past a trout stream and a small, pristine lake. Popular Sugar and Pokegama lakes over the hill. And all just a few miles from Grand Rapids and its amenities.
Governor Tim Pawlenty today announced that Minnesota's state forest lands have achieved an economic and environmental milestone through certification as sustainable forests. This accomplishment follows through on a commitment made early in the Governor's term to achieve sustainable status on all state forest land.
