Latest news with #forests
Al Arabiya
12 hours ago
- General
- Al Arabiya
Plane with five aboard missing in Siberia: Russia
A plane with five people aboard, including two pilots, went missing in the deep forests of Siberia on Tuesday, Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said. The Antonov An-2, a Soviet mass-produced single-engine biplane aircraft widely used for agricultural and forestry purposes, issued distressed signals over the forests of Yakutia in far northeastern Russia, TASS news agency reported, citing the local emergency ministry's office. A search and rescue plane has been sent to locate the aircraft that was performing forestry aerial reconnaissance, Rosaviatsia said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
Maine lawmakers try to thread the needle on forest protections
Late last year a team of ecologists came to a dire conclusion: without new conservation and management initiatives, half of the oldest forests in Maine's unorganized territory could be gone in the next 35 years. A bipartisan bill introduced by state Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) aims to reverse that trend while also protecting Maine's undeveloped lakes and ponds through prescriptive conservation measures. After overcoming initial opposition from state officials and forest industry groups through multiple compromises, the bill was unanimously voted out of committee and approved by the state Senate this week. Although the version of L.D. 1529 the full legislature received is drastically different from what Bennett originally proposed, it now has support from both conservation and forestry groups. In Bennett's original draft, agencies under the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry would have been tasked with prioritizing the acquisition of mature forest stands for conservation and placing dozens of undeveloped ponds and lakes into a new management classification, further shielding them from development. By instructing the Land for Maine's Future Board — the state entity that funds conservation land acquisitions — to place parcels with mature tree stands at the top of its acquisition list, Bennett said his original bill would have provided protective actions without regulatory processes. The bill also included measures to promote the study of Maine's oldest forests, intended to spur new conservation strategies down the line and entrench late-successional, old-growth forests at the center of forest management plans. And the bill went beyond forest protections. Bennett also included a provision directing the Land Use Planning Commission, which oversees Maine's unorganized territory, to reassign undeveloped lakes and ponds to a more protective class that limits development near shorelines. Such proposals won approval from conservationists and environmental nonprofits across Maine, but drew criticism from DACF officials and forestry groups like the Maine Forest Products Council. DACF official Judy East testified that the proposals were developed without input from key stakeholders and would be a costly addition to the department's already heavy workload. Similar criticism arose from the Maine Forest Products Council, a trade group representing landowners, loggers, truckers, paper mills and foresters across the state. In his testimony, MFPC Executive Director Patrick Strauch wrote that L.D. 1529 'establishes predetermined outcomes for forest stands on private land without any consultation with the landowner community.' Instead of jumping forward to land acquisition policies and reclassifying Maine lakes, Strauch said the state should first work with stakeholders to determine how and where to conserve older forests and lakes while acknowledging the multiple uses, like recreation and timber production, that state management plans allow for. John Hagan, who co-authored the 2024 report from environmental nonprofit Our Climate Future that surveyed the state's unorganized territory, encouraged both sides to come to the table the same way they did to support his team's mapping project. 'I hope we can all come together, work together, support this bill, and come up with a practical plan to conserve (late-successional or old-growth) forest before it's gone and the question of saving it becomes moot,' Hagan wrote in his testimony. Ultimately, both sides did. The amendments added across two committee work sessions removed more immediate, sweeping development restrictions but maintained and fine-tuned instructions for state agencies to study and incorporate forest and lake protections in long-term management plans, all for an estimated cost of $75,000. Instead of reclassifying undeveloped Maine ponds and lakes in the near future, the new version now instructs the Maine Land Use Planning Commission to evaluate the decades-old Lake Management Program and determine whether reclassification is needed. It also instructs the state Bureau of Forestry to conduct research that follows the work done by Our Climate Future and sets a 2026 deadline for the DACF to compile statewide strategies to enhance its conservation. The end result is a bill that the Maine Forest Products Council and environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Council of Maine both support. 'Mainers recognize that these are really unique resources that we have,' said Luke Frankel, director of NRCM's Woods, Waters, and Wildlife Division, and the bill is 'a promising path forward to protecting older growth forests.' ___ This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
CBS News
19-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Conservation group that protects Santa Cruz Mountains celebrates 125th anniversary
In March, President Trump issued an executive order to increase the production of lumber on federal lands, calling it a matter of national security. But conservation groups have fought hard to preserve America's forests for the future, including one that, on Sunday, was celebrating its past. Roaring Camp in the Santa Cruz mountains is a replica of an old West mining town in the 1800s. But with tall trees towering overhead, it may not have looked exactly like that back then. "There was clear-cut logging throughout the Santa Cruz mountains," said David Cowman, director of land stewardship for the conservation group Sempervirens Fund. "Clear-cut logging means that any tree that can be cut and sold for commercial benefit or used for a commercial benefit is cut and sold. You can look at historical photos where there are essentially no large, mature trees left in any of these locations." That's because, back then, the forests were considered an economic resource to be exploited and not much thought was given to leaving anything behind. But around the turn of the century, it began to dawn on people that it was possible to lose the majestic forests, and the Sempervirens Fund was born. "It was pretty unusual for the vision of that crew of people who really saw the potential to preserve it for future generations," said Sempervirens board member Vishy Venugopalan. "And so, they banded together, acquired the land for conservation purposes, and that really set in motion the California State Parks, and eventually, the National Parks, as well." They've been preserving redwood forest land ever since. The first area saved by Sempervirens eventually became Big Basin State Park, California's first state park. Since then, they have protected more than 35,000 acres of forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. On Sunday, Sempervirens celebrated its 125th anniversary, as the group that invented the concept of the conservation land trust. "It wasn't just about, 'Oh, let's conserve the environment, otherwise something bad's going to happen in the future,'" said Venugopalan. "It was just that these [trees] are almost like a national treasure that needs to be conserved for future generations and not just exploited." And that's why Mr. Trump's vision of the nation's forests as an economic asset has many in the conservation movement worried that the past may be repeating itself. Lee and Alice Pullen from Capitola were out hiking amongst the trees. Lee's walking stick was adorned with badges from the many national parks they've visited. "Glorious and peaceful. Just relaxing," said Alice as she gazed up at the canopy above. "You need it in our lives with so much hustle, bustle." But Lee, 83, once worked in a sawmill in Montana. He said he sees the importance of both lumber production and preserving the beauty of nature. "I'm glad there's a balance. You need a balance," he said. "You can't go this way, and you can go crazy the other way. From don't cut any trees, to mow them all down. I'm in the middle." There's not a lot of middle ground in the country these days. It feels like people who can see both sides are becoming as rare as the old-growth redwood trees themselves.
BBC News
16-05-2025
- BBC News
How the humble chestnut traced the rise and fall of the Roman Empire
The chestnut trees of Europe tell a hidden story charting the fortunes of ancient Rome and the legacy it left in the continent's forests. The ancient Romans left an indelible imprint on the world they enveloped into their empire. The straight, long-distance roads they built can still be followed beneath the asphalt of some modern highways. They spread aqueducts, sewers, public baths and the Latin language across much of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. But what's perhaps less well known is the surprising way they transformed Europe's forests. According to researchers in Switzerland, the Romans had something of a penchant for sweet chestnut trees, spreading them across Europe. But it wasn't so much the delicate, earthy chestnuts they craved – instead, it was the fast-regrowing timber they prized most, as raw material for their empire's expansion. And this led to them exporting tree cultivation techniques such as coppicing too, which have helped the chestnut flourish across the continent. "The Romans' imprint on Europe was making it into a connected, economical space," says Patrik Krebs, a geographer at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). "They built a single system of governance all over Europe, they improved the road system, the trade system, the military system, the connection between all the different people all over Europe." As a result of that connection, "specific skills in arboriculture [the cultivation of trees] were shared by all the different civilisations", he says. The arboreal legacy of the Romans can still be found today in many parts of Europe – more than 2.5 million hectares (6 million acres) of land are covered by sweet chestnut trees, an area equivalent in size to the island of Sardinia. The trees have become an important part of the landscape in many parts of the continent and remain part of the traditional cuisine of many countries including France and Portugal. Krebs works at a branch of the WSL in Switzerland's Ticino canton on the southern slope of the Alps, an area that is home to giant chestnut trees, where many specimens have girths greater than seven metres (23ft). By the time of the Middle Ages, sweet chestnuts were a staple food in the area. But it was the Romans who brought the trees there – before their arrival in Ticino, sweet chestnuts did not exist there, having been locally wiped out in the last ice age, which ended more than 10,000 years ago. Using a wide range of evidence, including paleoecological pollen records and ancient Roman texts, Krebs' research team analysed the distribution of both sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) and walnut (Juglans regia) trees in Europe before, during and after the Roman empire. Sweet chestnut and walnut trees are considered useful indicators of the human impact on a landscape, as they generally benefit from human management – such as pruning and supressing competing trees. Their fruits and timber are also highly desirable. In countries such as Switzerland, France and parts of Germany, sweet chestnut pollen was near-absent from the wider pollen record – such as, for example, fossil pollen found in sediment and soil samples – before the Romans arrived, according to the study and previous research. But as the Roman Empire expanded, the presence of sweet chestnut pollen grew. Specifically, the percentage of sweet chestnut pollen relative to other pollen across Europe "shows a pattern of a sudden increase around year zero [0AD], when the power of the Roman empire was at its maximum" in Europe, Krebs says. After the Barbarian sacks of Rome around 400-500 AD, which signalled the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire amid widespread upheaval, the chestnut pollen percentage then drops temporarily. This decrease suggests that many of the Roman-era orchards were abandoned, Krebs says, probably not only due to the fall of the Roman Empire, but also, because a wider population decline in many areas at the time. "Juglans [walnut] has a different pattern," says Krebs. The spread of pollen from these trees is less clearly associated with the rise and fall of the Roman empire, he and his colleagues found. Its distribution around Europe had already increased before the arrival of the Romans, perhaps pointing to the ancient Greeks and other pre-Roman communities as playing a role. But while the Romans can perhaps take credit for spreading the sweet chestnut around mainland Europe, some separate research suggests they were not behind the arrival of these trees in Britain. Although the Romans have previously been credited with bringing sweet chestnuts to the British isles – where they are still a key part of modern woodlands – research by scientists at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK found the trees were probably introduced to the island later. Sweet chestnut trees can be striking features of the landscape. They can grow up to 35m (115ft) tall and can live for up to 1,000 years in some locations. Most of those alive today will not have been planted by the Romans, but many will be descendants or even cuttings taken from those that ancient Roman legionnaires and foresters brought with them to the far-flung corners of the empire. The oldest known sweet chestnut tree in the world is found in Sicily, Italy, and is thought to be up to 4,000 years old. Wood for fortresses Why did the Romans so favour the sweet chestnut tree? According to Krebs, they did not tend to value the fruit much – in Roman culture, it was portrayed as a rustic food of poor, rural people in Roman society, such as shepherds. But the Roman elites did appreciate sweet chestnut's ability to quickly sprout new poles when cut back, a practice known as coppicing. This speedy regrowth came in handy given the Romans' constant need for raw materials for their military expansion. "Ancient texts show that the Romans were very interested in Castanea, especially for its resprouting capacity," he says. "When you cut it, it resprouts very fast and produces a lot of poles that are naturally very high in tannins, which makes the wood resistant and long-lasting. You can cut this wood and use it for building fortresses, for any kind of construction, and it quickly sprouts again." Coppicing can also have a rejuvenating effect on the chestnut tree, even after decades of neglect. In Ticino, chestnut trees became more and more dominant under the Romans, according to the pollen record. They remained popular even after the Roman Empire fell, Krebs says. One explanation for this is that locals had learned to plant and care for the tree from the Romans, and then came to appreciate chestnuts as a nourishing, easy-to-grow food – by the Middle Ages, they had become a staple food in many parts of Europe. The chestnuts, for example, could be dried and ground into flour. Mountain communities would also have welcomed the fact that the trees thrived even on rocky slopes, where many other fruit trees and crops struggled, Krebs adds. "The Romans' achievement was to bring these skills from far away, to enable communication between people and spread knowledge," he says. "But the real work of planting the chestnut tree orchards was probably done by local populations." When they are cultivated in an orchard for their fruit, sweet chestnut trees benefits from management such as pruning dead or diseased wood, as well as the lack of competition, all of which prolong their life, Krebs says: "In an orchard, there's just the chestnut tree and the meadow below, it's like a luxury residence for the tree. Whereas when the orchard is abandoned, competitor trees arrive and take over." More like this:• How donkeys changed the course of human history• The ancient Roman alternative to daylight saving time• Searching for the Old Ones: Where to find the world's oldest trees Research on abandoned chestnut orchards has shown that when left alone, chestnut trees are crowded out by other species. In wild forests, "Castanea reaches a maximum age of about 200 years, then it dies," Krebs says. "But here in Ticino, where chestnuts have been cultivated, they can reach up to almost 1,000 years, because of their symbiosis with humans." By the end of the Roman era, the sweet chestnut had become the dominant tree species in Ticino, displacing a previous forest-scape of alders and other trees, the pollen record shows: "This was done by humans. It was a complete reorganisation of the vegetal landscape," Krebs explains. In fact, pollen evidence from a site in Ticino at some 800m (2,625ft) above sea level shows that during the Roman period there was a huge increase in Castanea pollen, as well as cereal and walnut-tree pollen, suggesting an orchard was kept there, Krebs says. (Read more about the traces left by passing Romans and other ancient civilisations in the Alps.) By the Middle Ages, long after the Romans were gone, many historical texts document the dominance of sweet chestnut production and the importance of foods such as chestnut flour in Ticino, says Krebs. "In our valleys, chestnuts were the most important pillar of subsistence during the Middle Ages." People in Ticino continued to look after the trees, planting them, coppicing them, pruning them and keeping out the competition, over centuries, Krebs says: "That's the nature of this symbiosis: humans get the fruit [and wood] of the chestnut tree – and the chestnut gets longevity", as well as the opportunity to hugely extend its natural area of distribution, he explains. A similar transfer of chestnut-related knowledge to locals may have happened elsewhere in the Roman Empire, he suggests – and possibly left linguistic traces. As a separate study shows, across Europe, the word for "chestnut" is similar to the Latin "castanea" in many languages. Today, Europe's sweet chestnut trees are facing threats including disease, climate change and the abandonment of traditional orchards as part of the decline in rural life. But chestnut trails and chestnut festivals in Ticino and other parts of the southern Alps still celebrate the history of sweet chestnuts as a past staple food – reminding us of the long legacy of both Roman and local ideas and skills in tree-care. -- For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
