The Jan. 7 edition of the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about the pine beetle in Montana.

As trees die in Lolo National Forest, log cabin builders in the nearby Bitterroot Valley have an ideal source of raw material. Yet these manufacturers are trucking logs in from Canada, and almost all of Missoula County’s sawmills are idle.

Why? Environmental red tape for logging federal land and lawsuits from environmentalists who insist that the relatively small public forest land in the U.S. should live and die naturally.

So logs are being hauled 2,000 kilometres to build cabins, and fire hazard climbs in the beloved national forest.