Becky Kramer

Avista Corp., which gets half its energy from hydropower dams, has joined other clean-energy providers, retailer Gap Inc. and Colorado resort operator Aspen Skiing Co. to form a new lobbying group for federal climate-change legislation.

Over a three-year period, wildfires charred 50,000 acres of the Custer National Forest in South Dakota. In some 1,000-acre tracts, not a single ponderosa pine tree remained to cast new seeds, and the seeds in the soil had burned up. Natural regeneration “would have taken 100 or more years,” said Dennis Sandbak, the Custer forest’s silviculturist. To speed up the process, he ordered native pine, ash and alder seedlings from the U.S. Forest Service Nursery in Coeur d’Alene.

Nine months after the Sunshine Mine’s operators filed for bankruptcy, a court battle is heating up over control of the historic silver mine. Sterling Mining Co. reopened the Sunshine Mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley in late 2007, paying out $10,000 in monthly lease fees to the mine’s owner, Sunshine Precious Metals.

Bear populations rise and fall on huckleberry crops. So the data from a survey north of Bonners Ferry initially stumped Barb Moore. During 2004 – the second year in a row of record-low huckleberry production – three times as many black bears wandered through a research site as passed through in the previous year.

International borders and state lines are no deterrent to gray wolves, which are drifting into Washington from neighboring packs in British Columbia, Idaho and Montana. At least two wolf packs have produced pups in the state, and wildlife officials say they wouldn’t be surprised if a third pack with pups is confirmed by next summer.

When Shawn Montee finished a logging job, thousands of BTUs of energy used to go up in smoke. His crews gathered up the logging slash and torched it. To Montee, one of North Idaho’s largest logging contractors, the blazing slash piles always seemed like a waste.

Shipments of mine waste started arriving at the East Mission Flats repository Monday, after a top Superfund official endorsed a plan to store 40,000 truckloads of soil tainted with heavy metals in the Coeur d’Alene River’s floodplain. Mathy Stanislaus expressed confidence in the repository’s ability to protect groundwater during a conference call with reporters. But he also said an “early warning system” will be installed to address concerns about potential contamination during floods. Additional monitoring wells at the repository will alert officials if metals start leaching into the groundwater.

At the Greenland ice sheet’s coldest and thickest point, where temperatures can plunge to 55 degrees below zero and ancient ice layers are 10,000 feet deep, a University of Idaho professor will use weather balloons to study whether changing cloud patterns are speeding up the ice melt. The twice-daily balloon launches will collect data about temperature, air pressure and humidity. Over time, the information will provide an intricate look at clouds blanketing the Northern Hemisphere’s largest ice mass.

In Ghana, a single bucket of water goes a long, long way. With five gallons of water, a family can wash and rinse dinner dishes or do a load of laundry. Five gallons also provides enough water for one adult to take a “bucket shower.”