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burned in the Sierra. It's similar to the northern spotted owl's designation as an indicator for old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. The owl was declared threatened in 1990.
• Other subspecies of black-backed woodpeckers live in burned forests stretching along the Canadian border, from Washington state and British Columbia to the Northern Rockies and the northernmost parts of the Upper Midwest and northern New England.
• Those birds are "not doing terribly well," Hanson said. But he said they are connected to Canadian boreal forests farther north, whereas the two genetically distinct populations in the Sierra/Cascades and Black Hills are much smaller and "genetically isolated."

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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- More than 180 soldiers with the 200th Engineer Company of the South Dakota Army National Guard have returned to the United States after a year-long deployment to Afghanistan.
• The unit deployed in May 2011 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Their job

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