Wildfires burned down several villages in the central part of the country as forests and swamps turned into tinderboxes under a record-breaking heat wave.

Two big wildfires have burned homes and forced 2,300 people to evacuate mountain communities on the edge of the Mojave Desert and in the southern Sierra Nevada.

The ruling says that the plan does not ensure protections for threatened and endangered species of fish and other animals when fighting wildfires.

Great swaths of trees are dead or dying across Wyoming, Idaho and Montana after being attacked by beetles. The ecological effects could be serious.

A two-week program at Paul Smith?s College in the Adirondacks teaches skills like logrolling, felling trees with axes and making fires without matches.