Becky Kramer

Heading to the Idaho Panhandle National Forests for some outdoor recreation? You’ll probably pass a rural subdivision. Encroaching houses are the new reality for the 2.5 million-acre forest, which released a new draft management plan this week.

WALLACE – A century-old story of faith and miracles has captivated Mike Feiler, sending him on a quest to find a lost statue of Jesus. The story comes from the 1910 forest fires, which consumed a third of the mining town of Wallace. When flames threatened Providence Hospital, a Catholic institution on the north side of town, the mother superior fell to her knees, pleading with God to spare it.

Protecting habitat for woodland caribou will create economic hardships in Bonner County’s rural communities, its board of commissioners said Tuesday, predicting that the designation would create new restrictions on logging, snowmobiling and forest access. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed designating more than 375,500 acres in the Selkirk Mountains as critical habitat for woodland caribou, an endangered member of the deer family. Nearly 80 percent of the proposed habitat is on federal land in Idaho’s Bonner and Boundary counties and Washington’s Pend Oreille County.

The packages in a Washington State University warehouse are addressed to distant cities in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri. They’re consumer testimonials to the far-flung appeal of Cougar Gold. The WSU Creamery will ship about 50,000 boxes of the crumbly, white cheddar – which comes in an iconic gold-striped can – and other Cougar-brand cheeses this holiday season. Some of the shipments are Christmas gifts for distant alumni, who yearn for a taste of the Palouse.

Second of two parts Wheat is the most common export commodity in Washington’s Garfield County, where Matt Powell spent his childhood. But soon the county of 2,266 people will have a new export: wind energy.

At a wind farm in Alberta, researchers noticed a disturbing trend – the turbines harvesting the wind sweeping across the Canadian prairie were also killing hundreds of migratory bats. Dead silver-haired and hoary bats piled up beneath the turbines. Necropsies indicated bleeding in the lungs.

KITTITAS, Wash. – Greg and Barb Tudor left their suburban Bellevue neighborhood for solitude and open sky in eastern Kittitas County. It was the perfect antidote, they said, to years of gray drizzle and congestion. From their retirement home on a ridge, the Tudors look out over thousands of acres of sagebrush-covered landscape. The wind gusting over the nearby hills carries the aromatic tang of desert plants, and at night the sky is often dark enough to see the Milky Way.

ELLENSBURG – Gusty winds sweep through Central Washington’s Kittitas County, scattering tumbleweeds and spinning the blades of 149 turbines on Whisky Dick Mountain.    The westerly wind is a gift of geography. Moist air from the Pacific Ocean picks up speed as it’s forced through Snoqualmie Pass. As it hurtles down the eastern slopes of the Cascades, it rushes through Puget Sound Energy’s Wild Horse wind project. Since 2006, the Seattle-based utility has harnessed the wind, converting its force into kilowatts of electricity. When wind speeds hit 9 mph, the turbines start producing power for the utility’s customers in the Puget Sound region.

An appetite for dog food was the black bear’s undoing. Wildlife agents killed the 500-pound male after it engineered a series of crafty break-ins at cabins in southwest Washington. Now, it’s an educational mount that will remind people of the perils of feeding wildlife and teach them how to differentiate black bears from grizzlies.

An appetite for dog food was the black bear’s undoing. Wildlife agents killed the 500-pound male after it engineered a series of crafty break-ins at cabins in Southwest Washington.

Kathi Nygaard left her home in Potlatch, Idaho, with a carefully scripted Christmas shopping list: Pots, pans and a Magic Bullet blender for her 20-year-old son, who’s getting ready to leave home. Boots, slippers and shirts for her daughter. Barbie dolls for her two great-nieces … But during 12 hours of marathon shopping on Friday, including stops in Pullman and Coeur d’Alene, Nygaard also threw a few extra items into her cart. She bought a $248 laptop computer at Wal-Mart and an electric roaster at Shopko, which she thinks cost about $40.

The siren call of Black Friday specials proved irresistible to many shoppers, who left the malls with extra shopping bags and additional credit card charges. Impulse buying – the sudden, powerful urge to purchase an item immediately – accounts for more than $4 billion in retail purchases annually, according to consumer research. But a Washington State University researcher said it's possible to train yourself to resist impulse buying.

Marc Divens gently nudged his drowsing son, 13-year-old Adam, as the eastern sky lightened. “The turkeys are awake,” he said. “Hear them?”

Gary Verbrugge is converting an old cow pasture along the Little Spokane River into a thriving wetland. Over the past three years, he and others have planted about 15,000 seedlings on 17 acres that his family owns south of Newport, Wash. The young willows, hawthorns and wild roses are still tender slips of plants. But within a few years, they’ll screen the meandering river, providing shade to cool the water and root mass to stabilize the bank.

Building a mine beneath Montana’s Cabinet Mountain Wilderness won’t imperil the region’s threatened grizzly bears, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. The San Francisco-based court said that the grizzlies will be protected through an extensive mitigation plan required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The decision, which upholds a Montana judge’s earlier ruling, opens the door for the first development phase of the Rock Creek silver-copper mine to begin as early as 2013.

PRIEST LAKE, Idaho – Four years ago, Mike and Chantell Sackett cleared a lot to build a house overlooking one of North Idaho’s most scenic mountain lakes. They pictured a roomy A-frame, with a deck for entertaining. At the front of the house, windows would frame views of Priest Lake and the deep forest stretching down to the lake’s indigo water. From the back, the couple could watch the Selkirk Mountains change with the seasons.