Second, environmentalists have been effective at stopping timber sales because courts and agency officers have recognised consistently that the Forest Service, in catering mainly to logging over the decades, has failed to comply with scientifically sound resource-protection laws that govern forest management.

ECONOMIST: Letters

The result, when processed through the computers of Arbonaut, a Finnish natural-resource-management company, is a three-dimensional image of the forest that can be correlated with, and calibrated by, the efforts of the chaps with the tape measures.

ECONOMIST: Forest conservation