An image of a squirrel stuck in a tree has been named the overall winner of this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, with a frog in a bubble and a bream chasing a bald eagle among the category winners. “Stuck Squirrel” by Milko Marchetti was chosen as the winner from more than 9,000 entries. Marchetti’s photo shows the moment a red squirrel is entering its hide in the trunk of a tree, with its legs at right angles to the trunk. Marchetti said in the statement, “Whenever I show this image at the nature seminars at my local photography club, the audience always explode with raucous laughter, so I had to enter it!”
MILTON KEYNES, England — Rockwell Automation announced that West Fraser has made significant gains towards stringent carbon-reduction and energy saving targets at its plant in Cowie, 
The inventory destocking that occurred in virtually every industry in 2023 is coming to an end. Destocking occurred as supply chains normalized in a post-COVID world.
DUBLIN, Ireland —The housing affordability crisis that has frustrated young Americans for a decade has now taken hold in many big cities in Europe and beyond. The common threads: robust job growth, rising demand and not enough new development, causing rents and sales prices to rise faster than wages. Globally, homes are now less affordable than they were in the run-up to the 2008 housing crisis. …The resulting housing crunches are eroding living standards for poor and middle-class workers, intensifying wealth inequality and stoking political tensions. …In the 50 years through 2021, the countries with the sharpest rise in home prices around the world have been New Zealand, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Ireland. …Politicians in Canada, the U.K., Australia, Germany and South Korea are trying to boost construction by easing rules, including opening up undeveloped land for construction. National governments, though, are hamstrung by state and local rules that favor existing homeowners over renters, Hughes and Hilber said.
Exports from Finland’s forest industry reached Euro 3.16 billion in the third quarter of 2024, marking a 15% increase compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Key contributors to the export value included paper (22%), cardboard (29%), pulp (21%), lumber (16%), and plywood (4%). …For the third quarter, total wood imports reached 1.37 million m3, 74% higher than in the corresponding period last year but down 1% from the second quarter of 2024. Of these imports, 68% were pulpwood, 21% were chips, and less than 2% were sawlogs. The wood product industry contributed Euro 0.76 billion in Q3 exports, reflecting an 18% year-on-year increase but a 16% decrease from Q2 2024. Lumber exports rose by 30% in value and 14% in volume compared to Q3 2023, while plywood exports increased by 9% in value and 19% in volume.
The U.K. is expected to import a record 9.641 million metric tons of wood pellets in 2024, according to a report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network in November. The expected record in wood pellet imports for 2024 follows a significant decrease in U.K. wood pellet imports in 2023 and 2023, which the report attributes to changes in global wood pellet prices and competition from other energy sources. The U.K. primarily uses wood pellets for industrial energy production, with more than 93% of the country’s wood pellet demand in 2024 expected to be used for that purpose. …The U.S. is the largest supplier of wood pellets to the U.K., accounting for 73% of imports in 2023 by volume. Other sources of U.K. pellet imports are Canada, Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and Brazil.
Answer: Yes, at least for well-being. Wood has many qualities that are impossible to replicate. There are many academically approved studies highlighting the positive impact of forests and trees on humans. Recently, there has also been high-quality research on the benefits of using wood as a construction material. Wood is a restorative material that supports well-being. A Slovakian study found that wooden materials with brownish colours are ideal for relaxation. Another study highlighted that the use of wooden materials positively impacts the human nervous system due to their appealing aesthetics. Seeing or smelling wood in a building boosts positive feelings and reduces negative perceptions of the environment. And this – a positive feeling about the environment – is not a minor thing, says Riina Muilu-Mäkelä, Research Manager and Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke).
The European Council has formally adopted the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, meaning it will now enter into force in EU law. As the final step in the ordinary legislative procedure, the Council’s approval of the Regulation allows it to be published in the EU’s Official Journal; in turn, its rules will apply eighteen months after its entry into force. It is hoped that the rules will cut down on the generation of new waste by encompassing the full life cycle of packaging. Among the Regulation’s targets are minimum recycled content thresholds, ranging from 10% for contact-sensitive packaging made of non-PET plastic by 2030 to 65% for single-use plastic bottles by 2040. The amount of recycled content in a pack, its material make-up, and other sustainability-related information must be provided to consumers through on-pack labelling, marking, and information. …Reuse targets have also been set for 2030, alongside indicative targets for 2040. 
The European Council has given the green light to the certification framework for carbon removals which includes carbon storage activities that capture & store carbon in long-lasting products for at least 35 years such as wood-based construction products. It is the first EU-level certification framework for permanent carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products. This voluntary framework will facilitate and encourage high-quality carbon removal and soil emission reduction activities in the EU, as a complement to sustained emission reductions. …Carbon removal activities will have to meet overarching criteria in order to be certified: they must bring about a quantified net carbon removal benefit, they must be additional, they must aim to ensure long-term storage of carbon while minimising the risk of carbon release and do no significant harm to the environment. In addition, activities eligible for certification will need to be independently verified by third-party certification bodies.
We are informed that Jackson Wijaya is becoming the beneficial owner of both Domtar, formerly known as Paper Excellence, and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). Domtar is a company in good standing that has maintained FSC certification since 2008, covering over 7 million ha of forest area, as well as mills and processing plants. 
A new report, “Browsing Damage – What is Happening in the Forest and What Happens in the Statistics?”, published by the Swedish Forest Agency, provides new insights on the ongoing debate surrounding moose management and its impact on Sweden’s forests… The report challenges the prevailing conclusion that increasing pine tree densities is the most effective way to reduce browsing damage and suggests that moose density plays a more significant role. The study uses an extensive database and an updated calculation model and demonstrates that moose density has a greater impact on browsing damage than pine density… By comparing observations with spatially matched estimates of moose densities, the study reveals a noticeable browsing damage reduction as moose density dropped and pine density increased over the years.
Bonn – The European Parliament, Council of the European Union (EU), and EU Commission have agreed to a 
HOBART, Tasmania — In news that surprises no-one, a coalition of formerly ‘moderate’ green groups have renounced their apparent prior support for native forestry. Under the 
The value of U.S. tall oil exports to Finland and Sweden increased significantly last year, according to a report filed with the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agricultural Information Network. The increase is primarily attributed to increased demand for tall oil as an advanced biofuel feedstock. Both countries are expected to further expand their advanced biofuel production capacity over the next five years, and import demand for tall oil is forecast to grow accordingly. Tall oil is produced from back liquor generated by the pulping of wood.
Changes in cloud cover may account for why global temperatures for the past two years have exceeded the predictions of climate models. 2023 and 2024 saw temperature records repeatedly smashed, with both years now showing average temperatures around 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level. Climate change plus an El Niño weather pattern are partly to blame, but neither factor fully explains the extraordinary warmth. Now, 
Most of the world’s airlines are not doing enough to switch to sustainable jet fuel, according to a study, by Brussels-based advocacy group Transport and Environment, which also found too little investment by oil producers in the transition. The airline sector is calling for more production of the fuel, which can be made from materials such as wood chips and used cooking oil… As it stands, SAF makes up about 1% of aviation fuel use on the global market, which needs to increase for airlines to meet carbon emission reduction targets. The fuel can cost between two to five times more than regular jet fuel. A lack of investment by major oil players, who have the capital to build SAF processing facilities, is hampering the market’s growth, the study says.
Diplomats agreed earlier this month to new rules governing carbon credits. But while they were deliberating, the scientists who defined “net zero” in 2009, found something wrong with the math underlying those debates. “Achieving ‘net zero’ no longer means what we meant by it,” said Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at University of Oxford, an author of a new paper in the journal Nature. Their new analysis skewers an assumption at the heart of how countries and companies track emissions — that a ton of CO2 is the same everywhere, whether it’s dispersed in the atmosphere, embedded in forest wood or pulled from the air and pumped deep underground. That fungibility is the foundation of carbon markets. It lets a ton of CO2 in a forest stand as a fair trade for a ton put in the atmosphere. That rule-of-thumb turns out to be a vast oversimplification that could render many well-meaning net-zero efforts meaningless.
Wood burning stoves are now the UK’s biggest source of toxic particles in air pollution and could be giving you cancer, according to a new report. A third of all PM2.5 emissions now come from log and coal-burning fires in homes. PM2.5 particles are too small to be filtered out and studies suggest they enter the bloodstream and have been linked to serious heart disease and lung cancer. One analysis of 17 studies found breathing in PM2.5 particles increases the risk of dying from lung cancer by 11 per cent. One US study found using a wood-burning stove indoors increase the chance of women developing lung cancer by 43 per cent. Another US study found people who use their wood burner for more than 30 days a year increase their lung cancer risk 68 per cent.