2006
September 2006. Restoring
Landscapes with Fire. Nature Conservancy. Excerpt: ...the
Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) will
use helicopters for a more practical purpose-setting
fires to restore Mornington's wildlife habitat.
Covering more than 800,000 acres of tropical
savanna in northwest Australia, Mornington
Station is the country's largest privately
owned nature reserve. ...For centuries, lightning
strikes during the rainy season started quick-burning
fires that created a mosaic of burnt and unburnt
grasslands where birds and mammals thrived.
Now, human intervention has led to fewer fires
that burn larger areas, altering ecosystems
and contributing to the decline of many species.
The Conservancy is helping AWC, which owns
and manages Mornington
Station, with funding for new technology to
ignite prescribed fires from helicopters-a
key tool for fire management in such remote
and rugged terrain.
September 2006. The
Sale of the Century. By Colin
Woodard. Nature Conservancy Magazine. With
huge swaths of Eastern forests up for grabs,
the [Nature] Conservancy moved quickly to
protect 700,000 acres. But what will become
of the woodlands that didn't make the cut?
... International Paper, a company that was
once the country's largest private landholder,
had decided to sell virtually all of its U.S.
forest holdings. Nearly 6.8 million acres
of some of the best-managed timberlands in
the country were headed for the auction block,
including dozens of ecological jewels. ...given
recent developments in the timber industry
and the real estate market, chances were good
that these forests would not remain intact;
a few years down the road, a lot of them probably
wouldn't be forests at all. ...the Conservancy
and its partners announced three deals (two
with IP and one with Plum Creek Timber Co.)
that may just add up to be the largest private-land
conservation purchase in history. When all
is done, the deals will help protect 700,000
acres of forestland-an area larger than the
state of Rhode Island.
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