Notebook of a Digital Naturalist

A mountain bike expedition into Mexico's Sierra San Pedro Martir reveals what healthy fire-adapted forests look like—and what a century of fire suppression has cost us.

A contentious meeting with the Forest Service over logging 120 ancient trees at Black Mountain reveals the conflict between traditional forestry and modern ecosystem science.

The pile of cut and stacked logs towered thirty feet over our heads as my colleagues and I diligently counted the minuscule rings. Two hundred and fifty rings—more than qualifying this stand as an Old Growth Forest.