What's New

Preventing wildfires could mean more logging QUINCY, CALIF. - The US Forest Service approved a plan to reduce the threat of wildfires that could more than double logging on 2.4 million acres in three National Forests in northern California. But the fire breaks, which are long strips of logged land designed to prevent the spread of forest fires, can't be created in the habitat of the spotted owl until an environmental impact statement is completed.

Environmental groups say the forest service decision to use fire breaks was untested and would lead to a huge increase in the amount of timber taken from the national forests.

Erosion decreasing in Midwest WISCONSIN - A study of a watershed on western Wisconsin farmland suggests that soil erosion is not as bad as once thought. The rate of erosion in the Coon Creek Basin has been decreasing since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and is now 6 percent of what it was then. The study found the amount of soil washing down the Mississippi River has remained, for the most part, unchanged for many years. The study suggests that the practice of minimal tilling of cropland has helped reduce erosion.

Bugs Bunny call home SOUTHEAST ASIA- A new species of striped rabbit has been discovered in the mountains of Laos and Vietnam. Studies show the rabbits are related to another species of rabbit found 1,000 miles away in the Indonesian island of Sumatra. About six new animal species have been found here since 1992.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society