After the massive wildfires that burned across North America in 2017, mitigation and salvage are top of mind concerns for the sector. Concerned citizens in Curry County Oregon not only support salvage logging, but are calling a proposed harvest “grossly inadequate” and lacking common sense. West Virginia’s agriculture commissioner isn’t as excited about logging, calling a bill that would open state parks to harvesting (to fund park improvements) “poorly thought out”. And, in Australia, one woman lived in a tree for 449 days to draw attention to deforestation — culminating in a successful world heritage listing.
In Business news: EACOM has installed a continuous dry kiln in Timmins Ontario to increase output and improve efficiency; Price Edward Island’s premier joins those concerned about effluent from Northern Pulp; and will the TPP affect NAFTA talks? Lead negotiator for Canada, Steve Verheul says, “It has not come up yet — so far.”
— Sandy McKellar, Tree Frog Editor
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is preparing for the possibility the U.S. may pull out of NAFTA. For Canadian companies, the trade skirmish has already begun. Recent sanctions against planemaker Bombardier Inc. and softwood lumber producers including West Fraser Timber Co. and Canfor Corp., as well as investigations into steel, aluminum and other industries threaten to make Canada one of the U.S.’s most-penalized trading partners. …“There’s a pretty hefty chunk of our trade facing very high tariffs,” said Dan Ciuriak, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a former deputy chief economist at Canada’s international trade department. “We’re facing a trade shock right now, in reality and in terms of rhetoric.”
During the last few years softwood lumber import in Southeast Asia has increased dramatically with China as the top performer. However, it is also many other countries in the region that have seen a rapid increase in imports, like South Korea, India and Pakistan. Softwood lumber imports from leading exporters in Europe (Russia included) and North America amounted to 3.5 million m³ during January-November 2017, which means an increase of 15% compared to 2016.
In the first eleven months of 2017, Russia increased its sawn timber exports again, both in value and in volume terms, indicate the statistics published by the Russian Federal Customs Office. Thus, during the first eleven months of the last year Russia exported 16.59 million tonnes of sawn timber. That is 11.46% more than during the respective period of the previous year. …In their turn, Russian log exports went a bit down in volume terms. In January-November 2017, Russian log exports went down to 17.65 million m3 while during the respective months of the previous year the figure equalled 18.23 million m3.
If you’re not an expert on trees (and maybe even if you are) you might be confused about the difference between two trees both called Red Cedars. There is an Eastern Red Cedar and a Western Red Cedar, but can you identify each one individually? How does one tell them apart, and what are their differences? Let’s take a close look at the two types of trees to see all the ways in which they differ and can be discerned from one another. The Western Red Cedar or Pacific Red Cedar is an evergreen that belongs to the genus Thuja. It is technically not a true Cedar, that is a member of the genus Cedrus. …The Eastern Red Cedar, sometimes known as the Eastern Juniper, is actually a species of Juniper found along the eastern coast of North America into southeastern Canada and down to the Gulf of Mexico. 
