Publication archives

The Nature Conservancy said this week that it paid $2.2 million to preserve nearly 10,000 acres of forestland in Hancock County, Maine, capping a busy year for groups working to conserve open spaces around the state.

Hundreds of rural families, many of whom are child-headed households, are securing sound incomes by growing indigenous trees from the seeds found in local forests and using the saplings as currency.

Biologist Ian Swingland took up the idea of trading commodities to fund afforestation programs after he witnessed the devastation caused by logging in the Malaysian rainforests of Borneo in 1998, two decades after his first visit there.

Donald "Stubby" Warmbold remembers the day he saw a 100-year-old oak tree cut into 12-inch lengths of firewood. A new homeowner in suburban Mercer County, N.J., wanted to expand a driveway, so the tree had to go.

The region's lumber mills are on pace to set a 15-year production record this year, but a slowing national housing market will tamp down output next year, says a report Thursday by the Western Wood Products Association.

Members of Maine's Board of Environmental Protection expressed concern Thursday about how a proposal to allow power plants to burn more wood waste could affect air quality and the state's landfills. Two companies have filed paperwork with the state for authorization to generate steam or electricity by burning wooden construction or demolition debris, or CDD, in biomass boilers.

The American chestnut tree, long celebrated for its cabinet-grade wood, its meaty nuts and its widespread branches that shaded Longfellow's village smithy, was struck by a deadly blight in 1902, and by the end of World War II had disappeared from the country's forests.