sierraclub.org - sierra magazine - november/december 2010 - grapple: race to raze
Dodging the Bullet | Otter Confusion | Race to Raze | Woe Is Us | As the World Warms | Up to Speed
Race to Raze
Peter and Maria Hoey
The world is rapidly going bald. Satellite imagery reveals that in the first part of this decade, logging, beetle infestation, and wildfires stripped Earth of more than 3 percent of its forest cover. The largest total losses occurred in the nations with the largest forests--Brazil and Canada--but the highest rate of deforestation was in the United States, which ended 2005 with 6 percent less forest than it had in 2000. The ecosystems hammered the hardest were not tropical rainforests but the boreal forests of northern Canada and Russia. —Paul Rauber
Woe is Us