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[Washington, DC] The Administration’s proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 2008, released Feb. 5, deeply cuts funding for land conservation programs and further threatens this country’s decades-long commitment to protecting public lands. Despite…enormous need, the Administration’s FY 2008 budget proposed only $29 million for 14 Forest Legacy projects…a cut of more than 50% from the…

The Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC) released a new interactive website that offers consolidated information on a variety of threats facing forest land. The website provides information for landowners, researchers, land managers and policy makers on topics such as invasive species, diseases, wildland fire, loss of open space, and severe weather. The Threat…

[Vermont] For some, a fungus success story means nothing is growing at the back of their refrigerator. But for Costa, research assistant professor of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont, and Grassano, his graduate student, the vigorous growth in their laboratory of this fungus, a strain called Lecanicillium mucarium, means a hopeful…

[Maine] Acid rain is still a threat to more than one-third of Maine’s forestland, according to a new study presented Tuesday in Portland. While not the urgent and unregulated threat it was in the 1980s, enough acidic pollutants are settling across the landscape today to gradually weaken forests in sensitive areas, the study found. “Acid…

Mountain Voices Alliance (no relation) is working hard with the citizens of Buncombe County to stop an oil-burning plant which would be situatied just North of Asheville. This map from The Ashevillianillustrates the location of the proposed Diesel Power Plant (in red) and the direction of the prevailing winds (black line). If you are in…

[Georgia] Less than two weeks ago when President Bush told the country it needed to produce a whopping 35-billion gallons of biofuels a year by 2017, he may have had Georgia on his mind. Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue announced that a plant west of Savannah would soon begin turning pine bark and tree limbs…

From Brent at ASUSES… Beech Mtn saw a lot of wind yesterday. The turbines are all fine and enjoying life up here. The winds were a steady 30-45 mph. The max gust was 71.3 mph yesterday, 2/22/07 @ 4:10pm. The new Skystream hit a max instantaneous output of 4290 Watts just before hitting the “storm…

Increasingly, economic measures are being used to assess ecosystems by way of the universally comprehensible currency of money. As it is, environmentalists “aren’t really relevant in policy and business decision-making. If we don’t do something to become relevant, we don’t have a chance.” Many scholars and activists suspect (or at least hope) that human beings…

The House of Delegates yesterday gave final approval, 82-16, to a bill that would end the state’s experiment with electric deregulation. However, the sponsor of the House-passed bill, Sen. Tho- mas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, asked the Senate yesterday to delay its final vote on an identical House bill. Afterward,Norment indicated that he was…

Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards is a new grassroots group that has RAPIDLY come up in Southwest Virginia. They’ve been organizing hard over the last year and are working to stop some of the nastiest mountaintop removal and strip mining in all of Appalachia. In Wise County Virginia, nearly 1/4 of the land in the entire…