The Woods

Lawsuit aims to end commercial fur trapping in California

Lawsuit aims to end commercial fur trapping in California

"Conservation groups, aiming to end California’s dwindling fur trade, filed a lawsuit Wednesday that would force state wildlife authorities to raise license fees to levels required by law to cover the full costs of regulating the trapping, killing and skinning of wild animals.

That would drive the fees so high it would effectively kill off the trade introduced centuries ago by California’s first explorers and settlers, said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, one of the plaintiffs."

Eastern Forests Change Color As Red Maples Proliferate

Eastern Forests Change Color As Red Maples Proliferate

"Liberated from their swamp ghettos, red maples have become abundant in the understory -- the carpet of saplings and smaller plants under the canopy -- of many forested stretches in the Middle Atlantic States, the Northeast, the Midwest, the Great Lakes region and in higher Southern elevations like the Appalachians and Piedmont. When the oaks and other species of older trees die, red maples will replace them, Dr. Abrams said. In some spots, that has already happened.

This is all the more remarkable, he said, because the red maple, though versatile, is not especially robust. In the conventional terms of plant physiology, the faster a plant converts sunlight to energy and the better it is at sucking up nutrients, adapting to drought and ''breathing'' efficiently, the better it can compete with other plants.

The red maple is not particularly good at any of these; it is ''toward the low side of average'' in such measures, Dr. Abrams said. ''It's leading me to believe that studies at the physiological level don't tell us very much about the ecological success'' of a plant, he said."

Why I Sometimes Buy Plastic Bagged Wood

Simply because I can legally bring it across state lines and move it more then 50 miles across the state, and don't have to worry about getting ticketed. That said, I usually try to just find wood wherever I am in the woods.