Forest and Nature

By Robert Steyer
TheStreet.com Staff Reporter
Forest Laboratories (FRX - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr) is facing a mid-cap version of a Big Pharma headache as it seeks new drugs to replace those that will lose U.S. patent protection early in the next decade.

This year is pivotal because Forest has two products that now account for 80% of revenue. By the end of this month, or early June, Forest will unveil late-stage clinical trial results for two drugs: a treatment for fibromyalgia and a stroke-preventer, which has been genetically engineered from the saliva of a vampire bat.

By year-end, it expects to hear from the Food and Drug Administration about a blood-pressure drug licensed from Mylan Laboratories. Also by year-end, it should have the results (more…)

Tree growth above ground increases but root growth decreases, leaving trees in danger

HILLARY BORRUD Staff Writer
RIVERSIDE — Smog and wildfire smoke are both frequent sources of hazy skies in Southern California.

According to research under way at the U.S. Forest Service Fire Lab in Riverside, the connection between smog and forest fires is more than just an obscured horizon.

The ongoing study is looking at how nitrogen deposits from smog promote growth of non-native grasses, a common fuel for forest fires, and weaken trees, making them more susceptible to drought — and fire. (more…)

GREER - Heavy equipment operator Trinity Walker worked the controls of a three-wheeled machine called a Hydro-Ax, jerking the giant crab-like device toward a 75-foot ponderosa pine in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.

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Mechanical arms grabbed the tree and a grinding circular blade severed it at ankle height in a second. While still holding the cut pine vertically, Walker jerked the machine to another tree a few feet away to repeat the process.

Within a few minutes, Walker and his machine cut and carried eight trees before stacking them in a pile for removal. As he worked, sunlight spilled onto the previously shrouded forest floor for the first time in decades. (more…)

New technology being developed in Hawai’i is making it possible to survey, map and analyze large portions of the state’s natural resources with startling new accuracy, a scientist in charge of the project said yesterday.

The techniques being used are so precise they can identify the height of individual trees, determine their rate of growth every day and see how animal life changes in a forest with each foot of height, said Greg Asner, who heads a Carnegie Institution and Stanford University project on the Big Island.

“The technology is allowing us to do amazing new things,” Asner told about 150 policymakers, natural resource managers, planners and other professionals at the state Capitol.

Using a combination of laser-based data collection and hyperspectral imaging, Asner’s team of airborne researchers is capable of surveying up to 40,000 acres of land a day, and producing 3-D images and almost instantaneous analysis of what’s happening far below. (more…)

John Noel has found what he calls the “sweet spot” in Bon Aqua Woods.

It lies about one-quarter mile from old Highway 46, past hickory and tulip poplar trees, Mayapple plants, poison ivy and tall, native dandelion.

“You can feel what it would feel like to stand in the middle of an ancient forest,” said Noel, a Williamson County businessman and environmentalist, looking around him.

A few feet away rose a massive white oak estimated to be hundreds of years old. Turning in a circle, Noel could see another and then another 120-foot or taller gray-barked white oak in the distance, flanked by young, thin trees.

The state took possession last week of the 35-acre forest with trees of an “exceptional” size rare in Middle Tennessee. The public will be able to see them for themselves when it opens sometime this fall as a state natural area, a type of park. (more…)

It’s not often that anyone gets the opportunity to experience an old-growth forest in northeastern Pennsylvania — a forest where the trees are at least 150 years old and reach 100 feet or more above the ground. Probably, less than 1 percent of Pennsylvania’s forests escaped axe, and most of that virgin, untouched woods is in the western part of the state (the biggest remaining virgin tract is 4,000-acre Cook Forest State Park in the Allegheny Forest region).

In the Poconos, a few acres here and there in the steep, rugged ravines of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area contain ancient hemlocks and white pines that were left alone because the terrain was too difficult to lumber. A small tract of private forest at Buck Hill Falls — Jenkins Woods — has never been cut and represents a local showpiece of what the forests of the Poconos once resembled. But, sadly, all of the state parks, forests, games lands and other public (more…)

For Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s new term in office represents a significant change in political priorities. The fight against social inequality that was at the head of Lula’s efforts when he first came to power in 2003 has been replaced with an economic growth agenda. Facing an upsurge in the global economy, in which emerging countries such as China and Argentina show GNP growth rates of 10%, the Brazilian government has been under pressure to strengthen the country’s growth.

This is the context in which, at the end of January, a Lula team presented the nation and the National Congress the Plan for Growth Acceleration (PAC). This is a package of administrative measures and new laws whose objective is to guarantee a GNP increase of at least 5% per year from 2007 to 2010. The PAC contemplates investment of around US$260 billion (R$503.9 billion). Since only a small part of these resources (US$30 billion) will come from the national budget, state and private enterprises are expected to finance the program. (more…)