Forest Service U S

More than 3 million acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging and road building under a new management plan released Friday by the U.S. Forest Service. At 17 million acres, roughly the size of West Virginia, the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska is the country's largest national forest and the world's largest intact coastal temperate rain forest.

California sued the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday over plans that would open more than 500,000 acres to roads and oil drilling in the state's largest national forests. The four Southern California forests -- Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland -- comprise more than 3.5 million acres that stretch from Big Sur to the Mexican border. They provide habitat for 31 threatened or endangered animal species, including the California condor, and 29 such plant species.

Deadly miscalculations, unpredictable fire behavior and a misguided decision to save homes in the path of a fast-moving wildfire led to the deaths of a U.S. Forest Service crew overrun by the Riverside County fire in October, according to a report by state and federal fire officials released Tuesday.

The U.S. Forest Service failed to follow a series of safety protocols before five federal firefighters died in an arson-set wildfire near Palm Springs in October, according to a report released Thursday by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The federal labor agency found six "serious" health and safety violations that put the firefighters in peril by "exposing them to hazardous conditions of a burnover," the report says. The crew of Engine Co.

You take public transportation to work, use energy-saving lightbulbs and turn off the air conditioner when you're not home -- but still you feel somewhat guilty that your lifestyle isn't totally pollution-free. The federal government may have an answer for you. For years, companies have been allowed to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing "carbon offsets" -- vouchers for investment in alternative energy sources, tree-planting and other projects that can mitigate global warming.

The Bush administration has launched a campaign to eradicate thousands of acres of illegal marijuana plants from California's national forests, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday. Officials said crime rings have planted about 6,000 acres of marijuana plants in federal forests and often send armed squatters to set up camp and tend the lucrative crop. In one recent three-week period, officials pulled up more than 280,000 marijuana plants, worth about $1.

The retiring chief of the U.S. Forest Service's Intermountain Region says the days of unrestricted cross-country travel on public lands are quickly coming to an end. Jack Troyer, who steps down next month, has managed 32 million acres of national forests and grasslands in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California and Colorado for the last five years. Troyer said half of his budget was being consumed by controlling wildfires, up from 13% in 1991.

At 6:30 in the morning Tuesday, Debora Lutz of the U.S. Forest Service got the first sign she was in for a hellacious day in the air war against the Witch. The Witch fire in northern San Diego County had already devoured more than 150,000 acres, and was eating its way down the San Dieguito River Valley, heading straight for the blue-chip seaside real estate of Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe.

Hundreds of Lake Arrowhead-area homes could never have been protected by Road Queens, a nickname for the big, iconic, ladder-hauling fire engines that are designed to save structures. Up in the mountains, in neighborhoods built along streets as narrow and bendy as creek beds, keeping fire out of yards and living rooms is a job for the boxy but nimble trucks -- the brush engines -- of the U.S. Forest Service's strike teams.

FBI agents in Sacramento arrested three suspected Earth Liberation Front members Friday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up U.S. Forest Service facilities, cellular phone towers and power-generating stations at various locations in Northern California. The arrests in the Sierra foothill city of Auburn, about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento, capped a terrorism investigation that began nearly a year ago, authorities said.