Region Archives: International

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has issued a ruling on suspending logging to protect bird nesting sites in Estonia. However, the Ministry of Climate and forestry industry representatives interpret the ruling in opposing ways, each claiming their stance is the right one. The final decision on the matter is set to be made in the autumn by the Estonian Supreme Court, which should clarify whether current practices will be changed or not. Head of the Ministry of Climate’s Biodiversity Protection Department, Timo Kark, said overall the ECJ considered the suspension of logging to be justified. “In the opinion of the European Court, the birds directive must be interpreted such that its provisions apply to all bird species, including those that are not protected. So any activity that may result in birds being killed, such as logging during the spring-summer nesting period, can be suspended,” Kark said.

The First Minister has today opened a new £26 million facility to help grow more trees for Scotland’s forests and woodlands. Newton Tree Nursery, near Elgin, will support Forestry and Land Scotland to almost treble their tree production – from seven million to nearly 20 million trees per year by 2029. It will help support the sustainable management of Scotland’s national forests and land and help tackle the climate emergency, while also supporting the rural economy. Seedling operations at the redeveloped tree nursery began in March 2025 and 12 million trees have already been established within the glasshouse. The new nursery is the UK’s largest and most advanced tree-growing glasshouse and sets a new standard for bio secure, sustainable, and high-volume forest nursery production.  The facility ensures that an adequate supply of high-quality trees is available to supply the publicly managed forests of Scotland with those forests supporting rural economies, providing flood mitigation, improving biodiversity and sequestering carbon.

Recent research in the natural sciences journal Nature Communications confirmed an already well-held belief, that “human-caused climate change is raising the odds of extreme climate-driven fire years across forested regions of the globe.” Fire has long played a natural role in shaping the world’s landscapes. In certain regions, fires are necessary and beneficial but not all fires are created equal. As highlighted in a recent collection published on the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform, rising temperatures, lower humidity and prolonged drought have transformed fire into a destructive force. These supercharged wildfires now rank among the greatest threats to forests worldwide. They threaten the stability of ecosystems and communities and increase net carbon emissions from forests and other ecosystems, long considered stable carbon vaults. Instead of isolated local emergencies, we need to treat wildfires as a global, structural threat. This requires a fundamentally new, multi-national and tightly-coordinated effort, resting on five key pillars.

Forest fires have become a harsh new reality for millions globally, with their impacts felt near and far. Over the last few years, fires have destroyed billions of dollars in property, displaced thousands of people and coated cities in choking smoke, causing deadly air quality. It’s no coincidence that fires are becoming more intense as the planet warms. Fires need hot, dry conditions to ignite and spread. While fire is a natural part of some forest ecosystems, climate change is making forest fires worse, and vice-versa — creating a vicious “climate-fire feedback loop.” It works like this: Rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions lead to hotter, drier conditions. This makes it easier for fires to spark and grow. Worsening fires release larger amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere as trees and plants burn — further accelerating climate change and perpetuating the cycle.

In its report “Pandering to the loggers”, published 25 July 2011, Global Witness claims that the WWF scheme is fundamentally flawed; allowing organisations to benefit from being associated with the charity while still clearing protected forests and trading in illegally-sourced timber. Global Forest and Trade Network scheme, which forestry companies, manufacturers and retailers pay to join, requires forestry firms to commit to achieving a “credible” voluntary forestry certification and for trade partners to cease sourcing illegally-harvested wood within five years in a bid to encourage more sustainable practices across the market. However, Global Witness argues that a lack of minimum standards for participating companies combined with very little publically available information on the scheme’s participants bring into doubt the validity of the scheme… The group calls for a comprehensive independent audit of the scheme, how it is managed and what it has achieved in terms of real-world benefit for forests.

New research highlights concern from across Scotland about the role of industrial forestry corporations and asset management organisations who increasingly dominate the ownership and management of Scotland’s forests. The research concludes that more community ownership and management of woodlands, and more diverse ownership of forests across Scotland would increase community wealth and lead to greater environmental benefits, as well as producing more actively managed forests in Scotland. Three new discussion papers … analyse the effectiveness and impact of industrial forestry on local areas as well as for meeting national carbon and timber targets. Industrial forestry refers to predominantly single species, mostly unmanaged, Sitka Spruce forest, contrasting with more climatically resilient, sustainable, mixed species forestry. The papers recognise that, while mixed productive forestry has an important part to play in reaching Net Zero and delivering economic and social opportunities, basic assumptions about the benefits of industrial forestry can be questionable.

The forest products industry is an important part of the European economy and a crucial pillar for the transition to a low-carbon economy in the future. At the same time, this sector is not immune to trade uncertainty and geopolitical risks. As Europe looks to rely more on its own resources, there is an opportunity to better utilise the continent’s forests through investment and active management. …Although the EU has just 5% of the world’s forests, it produces approximately 20% of the world’s roundwood each year. Over the past decade, the EU has gone from being a net importer of roundwood and fuelwood to a net exporter – with the EU’s net trade surplus reaching 15.4m sqm in 2023. …Despite unpredictable trade flows… Research indicates that total demand for wood fibre in the EU will grow by 25% between now and 2050. 

High in the arid mountain forests of eastern California there is a living tree that’s older than the pyramids of Giza and the ancient city-state of Babylon — but its location is a secret. The Methuselah tree, named after an especially long-living character in the Book of Genesis, is estimated to have started growing roughly 4,857 years ago in the White Mountains just north of Death Valley. …Scientists believe it is either the oldest or second-oldest living tree known to humanity — excepting clonal colonies, in which individual trees live and die as part of the same ancient collective organism. …It’s a standout example of the Great Basin bristlecone pine, formally known as pinus longaeva. Because they are adapted to live in such harsh environments the trees are extraordinary resilient and resistant to infection. …Some scientists believe there is a Patagonian cypress tree in the rainy mountains of Chile that is around 5,400 years old.

Proposed changes to the EU deforestation law supported by a majority of member states will boost the potential for illegal trade of Russian and Belarusian timber, according to an NGO. In May 18 EU member states sent a letter to the European Commission proposing to simplify the EU Deforestation Regulation, the bloc’s legislation that aims to reduce the EU’s impact on global deforestation. …The European Commission decided to postpone its implementation to 30 December 2025. …The regulation boosts controls over illegal imports of timber by introducing more mandatory border checks and compulsory geolocation of timber. …“For so-called ‘no-risk’ countries, they would be exempt from geolocation requirements, and there would also be no obligation for authorities to carry out a minimum number of checks on those countries,” Ganesh said. …“NGOs have shown that wood, not just from Russia, but also from other high-risk tropical countries and deforestation hotspots, is regularly laundered through countries like China.

KALAVRYTA, Greece – Around the village of Kalavryta in southwestern Greece, hundreds of dying fir trees stand out among the dark green foliage, a stark reminder of how drought slowly drains the life from nature. Greek fir species Abies cephalonica are known to need cooler, moist climates. But prolonged droughts in recent years linked to a fast-changing climate in Greece are leaving them exposed to pest infestations, scientists and locals said. …Less water and moisture mean that fir trees become more vulnerable to attacks by pests that bore into their bark to lay eggs and create tunnels, disrupting the trees’ ability to transport nutrients between roots and branches and leading to their death. …In Kalavryta, authorities plan to remove dead and infested trees to limit the damage. But this might not be enough to save the forests. “We cannot stop climate change,” director of research at the National Observatory of Athens, Dr Kostas Lagouvardos said.

At the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Remedy Forum held in Jakarta, a group of stakeholders and rights holders interested in the implementation of FSC’s Remedy Framework shared a clear message with FSC. They expect to see restoration outcomes scaled up and delivered. They want the implementation of remedy to pick up pace so that degraded forest landscapes are transformed and people and communities get an opportunity to heal. And they want FSC to develop robust systems that ensure verified and holistic redressal of past unacceptable activities. …After reviewing all relevant considerations, FSC is now ⁠lifting the suspension on Asia Pulp and Paper’s (APP) remedy process. …The legal review is still ongoing and FSC will publish a summary of the conclusions once completed. …Further delaying their implementation of remedy puts rights holders’ access to remedy at risk. It is in the interest of speedy delivery of remedy, at scale, that APP will take its remedy process forward. 

In related coverage by Greenpeace: FSC Risks Reputation by Lifting Suspension of APP’s Remedy Process

A deadly wildfire in Seyitgazi, Türkiye that killed 10 forestry workers was the result of a lack of training and institutional expertise, a senior union leader has claimed. The accusation was made by Yusuf Kurt, president of the Agriculture and Forestry Workers Union, who said unqualified personnel were deployed to the scene, while experienced staff had been reassigned due to internal rotation policies. Kurt criticized the practice of assigning staff who had never responded to wildfires before, simply as part of internal rotation policies. “Fire has no school, but the institution used to train its own staff through in-house training centers,” he said. “Now those centers are being shut down. Sending untrained personnel into active fires leads to fatal consequences.” Emphasizing the complexity of fire management, Kurt warned that theoretical knowledge is not enough. “Fire has a language. If you cannot read it, you cannot control it,” he said. 

Costa Rica is advancing with the creation of a National Forest Traceability System, a key tool to guarantee the legality and sustainability of timber use. Public and private sectors came together for the first time to plan this initiative. This process is led by the Ministry of Environment and Energy through the Vice Ministries of Environment and Strategic Management of Costa Rica, with technical support from the FAO. It is part of a national strategy to strengthen forest legality, reduce the risk of illegal timber trade, and enhance the competitiveness of the Costa Rican forestry sector in demanding markets such as Europe (EUDR) and the United States (Lacey Act). “Costa Rica has made significant progress in forest legality, but the next step is to integrate technology and innovation into the process to ensure traceability from the farm to the primary wood product,” commented Franz Tattenbach, Minister of Environment and Energy.

In 2023 and 2024 the world’s forests absorbed only a quarter of the carbon dioxide they did in the beginning of the 21st century, according to data from the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch. Those back-to-back years of record-breaking wildfires hampered forests’ ability absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide, curbing some of the global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions. Those two years also marked the first time wildfires surpassed logging or agriculture-driven deforestation as the biggest factor lowering forests’ carbon-capturing ability. It’s an emerging pattern that’s different from the last big drop, in 2016 and 2017, which was largely the result of increased deforestation for agriculture. …Other recently published studies suggest that climate change is making extreme-forest-fire years more common, and the worst events more frequent and intense. …“We’re reaching the point where global warming is feeding the warming,” said Werner Kurz, an emeritus scientist for the Canadian Forest Service. [A subscription to the New York Times is required to access the full story]

Anthony Albanese

AUSTRALIA – The Albanese government was so worried a court case could halt native forest logging in northern New South Wales that it drew up plans to essentially sidestep federal environment laws in the event of a loss, documents released under freedom of information laws reveal. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, played a key role as the commonwealth and NSW governments worked to ensure some logging could continue in the face of any “adverse decision” and to manage a potentially volatile situation between loggers and environmentalists. In the end the governments won the case … despite the fact that the RFA was amended in 2018 without fresh scientific studies regarding the impact on threatened species. …If the federal and state governments had lost, there could have been an immediate halt to logging and lengthy processes to assess areas under the commonwealth’s environment laws. The government was concerned [this] could lead to environmentalists demanding an end to logging.

Alastair Collier is right to point out that to build forests that can withstand future conditions, we must invest in resilience from the outset (Britain’s forests need help to adapt to the changing climate Letters, 17 July). At Forestry England, forest resilience is our most critical challenge. We must ensure the nation’s 1,500 forests in our care can withstand and adapt to the threats facing them, including climate change, biodiversity loss, extreme weather, and pests and diseases. We are doing this by planning 100 years ahead in the way we manage these beautiful places, which are home to some of the UK’s rarest wildlife. …The benefits of the nation’s forests are enormous, from storing carbon and mitigating floods to supporting our health and wellbeing. They are an unsurpassed national asset. As their custodians, we are putting forest resilience at the heart of everything we do.

@Wikipedia

Lightning may strike in an instant, but its ecological toll lingers for years. According to a new global study published in Global Change Biology, lightning directly kills approximately 320 million trees each year — a number that rivals other major causes of forest disturbance but has gone largely unrecognized. These deaths release an estimated 0.21–0.30 gigatons of carbon annually, underscoring lightning’s surprising role in shaping forest structure and the global carbon cycle. While lightning has long been associated with wildfires, its direct impact on tree mortality has rarely been quantified. To address this gap, researchers at the Technical University of Munich integrated lightning mortality into a dynamic global vegetation model known as LPJ-GUESS. …Most of this mortality occurs in tropical Africa, where both lightning density and the prevalence of tall, vulnerable trees are high. However, the study also found that as climate change intensifies thunderstorms, lightning-induced tree deaths could increase in temperate and boreal forests.

At the southern tip of Europe’s largest river island, the ground falls away into a vast and unexpected vista. From a high, rocky ledge on Khortytsia Island, the view opens on to a sea of swaying young willows and mirrored lagoons. Some of the trees are already many metres tall, but this is a young forest. Just a few years ago, all of it was under water. “This is Velykyi Luh – the Great Meadow,” says Valeriy Babko, a retired history teacher and army veteran, standing on the former reservoir shoreline at Malokaterynivka village. For him, this extraordinary new-old environment represents more than nature alone. “It is an ancient, mythic terrain, woven through Ukrainian folklore,” he says. “Think of all those Cossacks galloping through its valleys of forests so dense the sun barely pierced them.”

The General Directorate of Forestry (OGM) under Türkiye’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has issued a stark warning, urging extreme caution as temperatures are forecast to rise by 6 to 12 degrees Celsius between July 19 and 25. As record-breaking summer heat and dry winds sweep across the Mediterranean basin, Türkiye is once again on the front lines of a growing global crisis: forest fires. Citing meteorological data, the OGM emphasized that a combination of soaring heat, low humidity and wind can create a dangerous trifecta, fueling wildfires that spread rapidly and with devastating intensity. “Even a moment of carelessness can ignite a fire of catastrophic scale,” the statement read. Citizens are urged not to burn brush, discard cigarette butts, light open fires or leave glass bottles in nature during this critical period. With 86% of wildfires caused by human activity, the risk is real and preventable.

Subhra Bhattacharjee

The Forestry Stewardship Council, a voluntary global certification was established in 1993 by environmentalists, Indigenous groups, human rights advocates and the timber industry to help ensure sustainable forestry practices. A recent report has raised alarm over the implementation of the remedy framework, which allows companies to reclaim certification if they redress past environmental and social harms. Mongabay interviewed FSC’s new director-general, Subhra Bhattacharjee, who stressed Indonesia’s role in how the remedy framework will be implemented worldwide. “When you think of Indonesia, you think of these lush natural tropical forests. You think of the breadth of the biodiversity … sometimes it takes my breath away, the kind of biodiversity we have. The world depends on these natural tropical forests,” she says.

STOCKHOLM — Qarlbo Biodiversity has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Woodland Biofuels to supply up to 500,000 tons of sustainably harvested pine forest thinnings from properties it manages using its Nature+ Forest Management Strategy. This agreement marks a significant milestone in implementing the Nature+ Strategy, an innovative approach to ecological stewardship that goes beyond traditional forestry methods. Designed for biomass-intensive industries, the strategy ensures a sustainable supply of biomass by combining biodiversity conservation, native species restoration, and responsible forestry production. This integrated approach helps sequester carbon, generate biodiversity credits, and promote resilient, high-performing forest ecosystems. …The pine forest thinnings supplied under this MOU will come from Qarlbo Biodiversity’s expanded properties in the U.S. 

Russia’s timber industry is warning of widespread production shutdowns as the sector reels from Western sanctions, declining demand and a surging ruble that has battered the country’s export competitiveness. …The Russian Association of Organizations and Enterprises of the Pulp and Paper Industry described the current moment as one of the industry’s most difficult periods in modern history. Industry data show that timber harvesting fell 13% in 2024 compared with pre-war levels in 2021, lumber production dropped 11% and plywood output declined 23%. Even pulp production, one of the sector’s more stable outputs, decreased by 3%. Major industry players including Segezha Group and ULK Group have been restructuring loans over the past two years in response to falling output, sliding prices and soaring costs. But the situation has continued to deteriorate, especially within the export-heavy pulp and paper sector. Compounding the problem is the Central Bank’s steep 20% key interest rate along with a hike in the profit tax rate from 20% to 25%.

BRUSSELS – Wildfires have scorched hotspots in several Mediterranean countries this month, with blazes forcing thousands of people into lockdown in Catalonia in Spain, and encroaching on France’s second-biggest city of Marseille. …European wildfires have burnt 227,000 hectares of land since the beginning of the year – more than double the average for this time of year over the past two decades, according to the EU’s European Forest Fire Information System. …It’s not yet clear if 2025 will be a record year, as that will depend on how the fire season evolves in the coming months. The number of fires in Europe has also surged this year so far, with 1,118 blazes detected as of July 8, versus 716 in the same period last year, EFFIS said. …Scientists say the Mediterranean region’s hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. …Climate change exacerbates this risk , by creating hotter and drier background conditions.

Oak trees change their fine roots and ‘energise’ soil microbes by supplying them with a cocktail of small organic compounds, all to supplement the trees’ supply of essential nutrients when exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide. Researchers at the unique University of Birmingham Institute of Forest Research’s Free Air CO2 Enrichment (BIFoR-FACE) outdoor forest research facility discovered that trees growing in a CO2-rich atmosphere tactically choreograph in-soil trading of carbon for nutrients through “do it yourself” and “outsourcing” strategies.Perspex-sided root boxes, buried in the forest, allowed scientists at BIFoR-FACE access to the soil and roots below giant ~180 years old English oak trees growing in what is expected to be a mid-21st-century atmosphere; that is, an atmosphere containing over a third more CO2. The trees demonstrated their ability to respond to the change of atmosphere by adjusting multiple carbon investment strategies for sourcing soil nutrients.

The current glorious weather provides an opportunity for all to recreate and enjoy. However, such weather patterns give rise to extreme fire risk. Teagasc Forestry advisors tell us more on the nature of such risks and offer practical advice on mitigating forest fire danger threats. On July 10, 2025, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine issued a Condition Red – Extreme Forest Fire Risk up to Monday July 14. Under such extreme fire risk conditions, any ignition source in dry vegetation will give rise to rapid and unpredictable wildfire development and spread. Such fires can be expected to cover extensive areas and pose extreme difficulties to suppression efforts and may potentially give rise to major emergency scenarios. Such conditions require very high vigilance, particularly in areas with intensive public access and recreational use. …Lighting open fires or barbeques in or around forest areas pose a huge risk and should not occur.

Last year, more than 112 thousand hectares of dry forests were listed in the Estonian Natura 2000 habitats. These are forests with minimal anthropogenic load, and in Estonia they are overgrown dunes, old natural forests and spruce forests with rich ground cover. The Estonian Environmental Service, the University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences are jointly developing a plan for the maintenance of dry forests. Taavi Tattar, Head of the Nature Conservation Planning Department of the Environmental Service, pointed out that dry forests are in poor condition both in Estonia and throughout Europe. “They’re either too uniform in age or have impoverished structure. Certain species need forests with diverse structures for their life and activities, coarse woody debris, dead trees, and so on. On a broader scale, diverse forests are also more resistant to disease and better able to adapt to climate change,” Tattar said.