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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.

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More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died on the mountainsides during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.

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Like the wildlife, the majority of the visitors are drawn to the valley bottom, the front country where the living is easier and the routes well established, by construction if not by time. That puts enormous pressure on the valley and on those responsible for protecting it, and the surrounding peaks. They’d be the first to say they don’t have all the answers, but they’re certainly seeking them — from hybrid buses to recycled hotel soap, their solutions just might surprise you.

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With the news in January that most, if not all, of Colorado’s old lodgepole pine trees will be dead within five years, those preparations are not hyperbole.

Most trees in Rocky’s Timber Creek Campground, on the park’s west side, were killed by the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Park officials said the 98-site campground will be closed through early July so the dead trees can be removed.

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Nearly six years after it was first introduced, a bill to create a Wild Sky Wilderness east of Seattle has cleared Congress, another step toward the first new wilderness area in Washington state in nearly a quarter-century.

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The X-Fire is burning ponderosa pine about 2 miles southeast of Tusayan, on the Tusayan Ranger District of the Kaibab National Forest. It is on the east side of state Highway 64 near Ten-X Campground and the Ten-X ranch