Lucky 13! Yes, it was thirteen years ago that the first Tree Frog Forestry News email went out to a small group of forest education volunteers with a collection of the top forestry news stories. Then, like a snowball, it got bigger the longer it rolled along. Today we’ve gone from 15 readers to thousands daily, and not just in BC, we have subscribers from all over the world! 

We track our readers through both our daily email subscribers and our website analytics. This allows us to paint a picture of our readers and track our success. Over the last three years, we’ve seen a 70% increase in annual unique visitors to more than 57,500. 

I believe that one of the reasons for the growth is the way we create our daily service. We’re not a computer algorithm or a word-matching program—the Tree Frog news editors are forestry professionals with decades of experience in the sector. And we open and read every story to decide what to carry for our readers. We make every effort to remain unbiased in our selection. We post articles that we believe are of value to those working in and associated with the forest sector. The breadth of coverage we provide is reflected in the demographics of our audience. 

Of course, none of this would be possible without our sponsors and supporters—companies, organizations and individuals who see the value in what we are doing—allowing us to provide free subscriptions to the widest range of readers. 

This last year has been challenging for everyone. At the Tree Frog News we saw first-hand how our sector was impacted as the virus hit. As people were isolating at home—the need for connectivity was evidenced by a huge spike in hits on our news site. In fact, as some may have experienced, the increased traffic caused our site to temporarily crash and forced us to move to a bigger platform. We were honoured to know that readers saw such value in our product.

As a result of the pandemic, we also expanded our service last spring to include an extensive list of industry events, sharing updates and changes to annual conferences and meetings on a daily basis. As the summer approached we added our ICU (I See You!) photo feature. This was in response to readers asking how others were dealing and coping with the new working protocols, virtual conferences, etc. People were getting a little stir crazy, in fact, some were downright lonesome. We believe that our online ‘virtual’ hangout helped readers feel a little less disconnected from their colleagues. 

In the coming year, our site will evolve to provide additional space to give sponsors the recognition they deserve. A new ‘week at a glance’ feature will make staying on top of the news easier. And additional industry generated content will be featured alongside the mainstream news. Thanks for being here with us – we think Lucky 13 will be a good year. Stay safe and stay tuned to the Frog.