Young people in Richmond and San Francisco are gaining similar experiences this summer through partnerships with local nonprofits and the Student Conservation Association, the first program of its kind in California to focus on Go to article.

A new study challenges a basic justification about the threat of wildfires that the Bush administration used to make room for more logging in old growth forests that are home to the northern spotted owl. The study, appearing in the journal Conservation Biology, found no increasing threat of severe wildfires destroying old growth forests in the drier areas where the owl lives in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. Go to article.

The explosive growth of bark beetles has been called "the Katrina of the West" and viewed as an unmitigated disaster by some. But other environmentalists and scientists argue that the insects, which kill only mature trees larger than five inches in diameter, are a natural phenomenon, like forest fires, and play a vital ecological role. Go to article.

AS Congress recessed for the July Fourth holiday, the debate over health-care reform was reaching a fever pitch. Now the top domestic issue for the Obama administration, the biggest questions are how much a reform bill will cost and how to pay for it, quite aside from how effective a "reform package" will be. Skyrocketing costs that are out of control are the hallmark of our present system. Yet legislators have already acceded to pressures and dollars from stakeholders in the present system (within which costs are revenue) and are only considering options that "build on the present system." Go to article.