Drought

At least 10,000 migrating snow geese and other waterfowl have died this spring at drought-plagued Lower Klamath and Tule Lake national wildlife refuges along the Oregon border with California.

Biologists are calling the avian cholera outbreak one of the biggest drought-related die-offs in the refuges' more than 100-year history.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Researchers say they've discovered the probable cause behind a mass die-off of aspen trees in the West during the past decade.

Thursday marked the start of the 2012 wildfire season, meaning the 2011 fire season -- one of the costliest and most destructive in Texas history -- is officially in the books.

But the distinction is largely bureaucratic and has nothing to do with the end of the critical fire danger, said April Saginor, spokeswoman for the Texas Forest Service.

SMITHVILLE, Texas -- Mizzy Zdroj and her fellow firefighters barreled down Cottletown Road, in pursuit of flames that had choked the sky with smoke and bedeviled the all-volunteer force.

"Stop!" she begged.

Zdroj hopped out of the truck and charged toward her wood-frame home, which she and her husband had spent years refurbishing. She threw open their chicken coops and the pen of the family donkey, Sally. Then she raced back to fighting the Bastrop County Complex blaze, which has devastated this patch of central Texas since it was sparked Sept. 4.

BASTROP, Texas -- Residents left homeless by a massive Central Texas wildfire turned their attention Friday to what they need to move forward, with some voicing frustration over a perceived delay in federal response even as early signs of recovery appeared in reopened neighborhoods.

Firefighters focused on extinguishing hotspots and had isolated remaining flames from the blaze that has burned for almost a week in and around the city of Bastrop, destroying nearly 1,400 homes and sweeping across about 45 square miles of rain-starved landscape.

BASTROP, Texas -- Dennis Silman was in line at the store when his wife's urgent call came through: They needed to get out. Smoke was drifting up through the woods and the wildfire that just 30 minutes earlier wasn't near enough to pose a problem was visible over the treetops by the time he got home.

In just 90 minutes, Silman was able to make four trips loading clothes and a few important possessions into his Mustang. He could feel the blaze's heat and hear the crackling roar as he packed his car. Less than two hours after they drove away for the last time Sunday, the Bastrop Complex fire consumed his home and six other houses of relatives who all lived within about four square miles of each other.