We are gauging interest in a conference for students and young professionals across B.C. in the forestry industry. The goal of this conference is to create a more unified forestry sector throughout the province by bringing together students and young professionals to discuss current and future challenges in forestry, explore innovative solutions, and build relationships that can support us throughout our careers. This is a youth-led initiative and so having your opinions and participation is crucial to determine the topics and speakers for the conference. We have created a short survey (see link) to help determine the topics and timing of this conference. This is a chance for young professionals and students like yourself to build a more connected, informed, and forward-thinking forestry community and empower them to help shape the future of forestry in B.C.
Vancouver — Forest Professionals British Columbia (FPBC) honoured seven individuals as part of its recognition program in Vancouver on February 5. Forest Professionals BC recognized three Distinguished Forest Professionals, one Forest Professional of the Year, one Jim Rodney Memorial Volunteer of the Year, and two authors for BC Forest Professional Magazine Best Article at the 78th Forest Professionals BC forestry conference recognition banquet. 
…Jeff Fisher (North Vancouver), BSF, RPF, Christopher Vukovic (Qualicum Beach), HBScF, RPF(Ret), and John Walker (Williams Lake), RPF, were honoured as Distinguished Forest Professionals for 2025. This category recognizes significant accomplishments over a career, for providing outstanding service to the profession of forestry and for furthering the principles of Forest Professionals BC. It is the profession’s highest honour for a registrant. 
Peter Flett, MSFM, RPF, of Penticton is the 2025 Forest Professional of the Year. Margaret Symon, RPF, PCP, of Duncan is the 2025 Jim Rodney Memorial Volunteer of the Year. Lastly, Vanessa Fetterly, BSc, RPBio, and Carl Pollard, BSc, RPF, collaborated on the 2025 BC Forest Professional Magazine Best Article.
Snuneymuxw First Nation is calling on other levels of government to act to protect its waters following an oil spill and long-standing discharge of “toxic sawmill effluent” at Duke Point near Nanaimo. The nation is calling for a full environmental investigation following the incidents it says are caused by Environmental 360 and Western Forest Products. The nation has sent letters to the federal, provincial and municipal governments calling on them to act. This comes after an 
The CN railway running through 100 Mile House will not be discontinued after all. District of 100 Mile House Mayor Maureen Pinkney said that the consultant hired to assess the rail line’s future had told her, and around 87 other stakeholders in the region between North Vancouver and Prince George, that removal of the rails was off the table. …CN Rail announced it would be discontinuing service between Squamish and 100 Mile House… and that rails and ties are removed after discontinuance. …Potentials for the new use of the rail tracks include the return of passenger rail to 100 Mile House. …Pinkney said that there could be opportunities from the saved rail line to make up for lost tax revenue from the closure of the West Fraser Mill, as well as the OSB plant. 
The BC government is forecasting that the natural gas industry will play a larger role as the top driver of provincial resource revenue, while warning about tough times in the former economic powerhouse of forestry. Natural gas royalties are expected to ring in at nearly $1.3-billion for the 12 months ending March 31, 2027, up 38%. …The government is anticipating $521-million in forestry revenue for the 2026-27 fiscal year, up 3%, but still down sharply when compared with several years ago. …In the 2020-21 fiscal year, forestry revenue surpassed $1.3-billion and natural gas royalties reached $196-million. …Tuesday’s budget introduces a temporary Stumpage Payment Deferral Program in an effort to ease the cash crunch for companies. The voluntary program covers the first 11 months of 2026. …The government anticipates that the trend of depressed annual volumes of tree harvesting will continue over the next several years, restricting the production of softwood lumber. [to access the full story a Globe & Mail subscription is required]
The United Steelworkers union found positives in a difficult BC budget. …Recognizing the uncertainty created by US trade policy… USW Western Canada Director Scott Lunny said… “Today’s budget advances the government’s work towards long-term economic stability, including BC’s goal of securing $200 billion in private-sector investment over the next decade in sectors including mining, forestry and manufacturing”. …USW noted positives, including: a continued commitment in funding to strengthen permitting capacity in resource industries; a $400- million Strategic Investments Special Account to leverage federal government dollars for investment and job creation in key sectors like value-added forestry, responsible mining, manufacturing and clean energy; and unprecedented investment in skilled trades funding as well as a training grant to encourage apprenticeships. …”While we welcome the $20 million to help workers and employers in tariff-impacted sectors like steel and forestry, there is still a missing commitment to stabilizing and sustaining the primary forestry sector,” said Lunny.
B.C.’s export performance moved against the national pattern in November. Domestic exports to international markets rose 7.6 per cent year over year to $4.59 billion, whereas exports nationally declined by about four per cent on a customs basis. This contrast partly reflects differences in the types of goods each region exports. Nevertheless, provincial export trends remain soft, reflecting U.S. tariffs on key products like lumber, and end of de minimis treatment of low value exports. Year-to-date, B.C. exports slipped a mild 0.1 per cent from same-period 2024, which was slightly stronger than the national reading. …That said, a declining trend continued in the battered forestry sector (-13.7 per cent year over year), where tariffs have compounded weakness from timber supply constraints and other duties already imposed by the U.S.
VANCOUVER – Western Forest Products reported adjusted EBITDA of negative $6.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. In comparison, the Company reported Adjusted EBITDA of $14.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and Adjusted EBITDA of negative $65.9 million in the third quarter of 2025, which included a non-cash export tax expense of $59.5 million related to the determination of final duty rates from the sixth Administrative Review. Net loss was $17.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, as compared to a net loss of $1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, and net loss of $61.3 million in the third quarter of 2025. …For the full year 2025, the net loss was $82.4 million compared to to a net loss of $34.5 million in 2024. …“Despite more challenging markets and higher softwood lumber duties and tariffs in 2025, we enter 2026 with a significantly improved balance sheet to navigate the expected near-term market uncertainty,” said Steven Hofer, President and CEO of Western Forest Products.
Zoom Webinar | Wednesday, February 25, 2026 | 10:00am – 11:30am PST | Zoom. BC’s wood manufacturers are facing real challenges from labour shortages and export pressures to rising costs and growing sustainability expectations. The good news? There’s funding available to support your hiring, workforce development, technology upgrades, product innovation, and market expansion. Join this session designed specifically for processors, builders, and related businesses in the value-added wood sector. You’ll learn how to use grants strategically, not reactively, to achieve your business goals. What you will learn:
Modern Methods of Construction Education (MMC Edu) is a national platform that connects education and industry to advance construction training in Canada. It is a key outcome of the Mass Timber Training Network: Advancing Trades for a Sustainable Future (MTAT) project, which brings together a national network to advance wood as a low-carbon building material by addressing major barriers to mass timber adoption across the country. Led by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in partnership with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) through the Green Construction Through Wood Program (GC Wood), the MTAT project focuses on education and training as a key vehicle for reducing barriers and preparing the next generation of the workforce. MMC Edu serves as a shared platform where network members, industry partners, and educators can exchange knowledge and access resources that support innovation, sustainability, and workforce readiness across Canada.
International Pulp Week (IPW) is the premier annual gathering for the global market pulp sector, organized by the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC). Set for May 10–12, 2026 at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver, BC, the three-day conference brings together producers, customers, logistics providers, analysts and other key stakeholders from around the world to share market intelligence, expert insights and strategic dialogue on trends shaping the future of pulp markets. Through keynote presentations, expert panels and extensive networking opportunities, IPW offers decision-makers high-value analysis, opportunities for business development, and collaboration across the pulp supply chain. The event has become a must-attend forum for those involved in international pulp production, trade and investment, with participants from more than 40 countries expected to attend.
A community science initiative is uncovering previously unrecorded fungi across Greater Victoria, highlighting the region’s rich and still largely unknown biodiversity. Some discoveries may even represent species new to science. The project, MycoMap BC, invites the public to photograph, collect and submit mushroom and slime mould samples for DNA sequencing. Since launching last fall, nearly 14,000 collections have been submitted across British Columbia, including about 2,500 from Greater Victoria. “We’re building baseline data on fungal biodiversity that simply doesn’t exist yet,” said Elora Adamson, project coordinator at the University of Victoria biodiversity lab. As of mid-February, roughly 350 DNA sequencing results have been processed. Adamson said 11 collections represent species recorded for the first time in British Columbia. … Of those results, six newly recorded fungi were found in Greater Victoria, four in Sooke and two in Victoria.
By the time a so-called “raw log” is loaded onto a truck — or in a small minority of cases, onto a ship — it has already travelled through a dense web of economic activity that is anything but raw. It has been identified and cruised through professional forest planning. Roads have been engineered and constructed. Heavy equipment has been purchased, financed and maintained. Logging crews have mobilized. Mechanics and welders have serviced machinery. Truck drivers have hauled. Fuel suppliers have delivered. Silviculture obligations have been funded or secured. Stumpage has been paid to the Crown on public lands. In many instances, Indigenous partnerships and benefit agreements structure access and revenue sharing. Every log carries embedded value long before it ever approaches a mill gate or tidewater. Industry analyst David Elstone has noted that it can take more than 100 distinct job functions to sustainably plan, harvest and deliver timber from forest to primary manufacturing. 
FRASER CANYON — The Nature-Based Solutions Foundation in Vancouver says it has recently acquired two clusters of private land inholdings totaling just over 55 hectares within the traditional territory of the Kanaka Bar Band in the Fraser Canyon for conservation purposes. According to a news release from the conservation organization, the 55 hectares of land are inside the boundaries of Kanaka Bar’s proposed Indigenous Protected & Conserved Area (IPCA). The foundation says the acquisitions will safeguard exceptionally diverse old-growth forests, including habitat that features Canada’s largest documented Rocky Mountain juniper, and they build on NBSF’s earlier purchase of the “Old Man Jack’s” parcel in 2022, thereby bringing the total to three private properties to be returned to Kanaka Bar through Indigenous-led conservation, title-registered legal protection, and long-term stewardship funding.
A BC First Nation in the final stages of treaty negotiation is suing the province for allegedly breaching the “honour of the Crown” after an official extended an expiring timber licence in its traditional territory. Filed in a BC Supreme Court last week, the application for judicial review from ’Wuìk̓inux̌v Nation seeks to overturn an August 2025 decision… that gave Interfor a three-year extension to log an estimated 50,000 cubic metres of timber. The court application argues that allowing a third party to continue harvesting on the nation’s lands—without their consent and against their environmental concerns—is a step backward that the law no longer allows. The claim, which also names Interfor, arrives at a volatile moment for BC politics: by leaning on a landmark legal precedent set in December 2025, it lands squarely in the middle of a heated debate over how the province manages its natural resources in an era of reconciliation.
North Cowichan wants something done about the growing amount of fibreglass pollution in the Cowichan estuary. Council passed a motion at its meeting on Feb. 4 that the municipality write a letter to senior levels of government and the appropriate regulatory authorities asking that they raise awareness of the issue and take action to deal with the problem. Coun. Christopher Justice, who made the motion, said that the issue of derelict and deteriorating fibreglass boats is something that is becoming more acute in local harbours and waterways. …North Cowichan Mayor Rob Douglas said the municipality must signal its support for the continued operation of the Western Forest Products sawmill, which operates in that area. He said he spoke to officials at the mill before the council meeting. “They advised me that they are not aware of any fibreglass contamination coming from the mill site,” Douglas said.
PRINCE GEORGE – [Local forester and forestry advocate Michelle Connolly says what’s being suggested in a recent report, titled “From Conflict to Care: BC’s Forest Future,” is off the mark.] “One of the core beliefs is that people are better at managing nature, than nature is, even though forests have been self-organizing and self-managing for millennia,” says Connolly. “The lack of self-awareness right up front in that report is troubling, because it means that they’re not aware of their own biases and belief systems that are guiding the things they’re putting in this report.” Kiel Giddens, Conservative MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, says the report overlooks a lot of industry concerns. …Giddens says, while the report misses the mark overall, he agrees with Objective Number 2 around regional decision making. …But Connolly says where the report truly hits the mark is over what is seen as a lack of transparency in the decision-making processes.
Whistler is fortunate to be surrounded by temperate rainforest, which is essential to the resort’s appeal as a tourist destination. Forests have also proven to be highly beneficial for human mental and physical health. …Old-growth forests, defined as undisturbed for at least 250 years, are vital to addressing the interconnected biodiversity and climate crises. …On the climate side, old-growth forests store vast amounts of carbon in living trees, dead wood, and undisturbed soil. …Since the early 1900s, Whistler’s forests have been logged extensively, and low-elevation old-growth forests that once covered the valley are now found only in limited areas. Commercial logging and thinning have continued by the Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) since 2009, though old-growth logging was deferred in 2021. …Given that old-growth forests thrive on stability, attempting to manage them doesn’t make ecological sense, especially since they are already among the most climate-resilient ecosystems on Earth.
Fire departments across BC are concerned about changes to the FireSmart program and how funding is provided to communities as they plan for wildfires. The Ministry of Forests says it’s moving to a more “holistic approach” based on where risk is the highest but the fire chief who was at the centre of the Wesley Ridge wildfire on Vancouver Island last summer says the program is too important to change. Nick Acciavatti says funding from the provincial FireSmart program was instrumental in saving numerous homes in the Wesley Ridge fire. …The program provides funding to local fire departments that then go into local neighbourhoods to educate and undertake fire prevention work like brush clearing and cleaning properties of combustible materials. But that money may no longer be available to any fire department that applies for it is something Acciavatti is concerned about, considering the changing wildfire conditions here on Vancouver Island.
