VANCOUVER, B.C. – West Fraser Timber and Mercer International announced an agreement to dissolve their 50/50 joint venture in Cariboo Pulp and Paper. West Fraser will continue as the sole owner/operator of the mill, doing business as Cariboo Pulp and Paper Company. Located in Quesnel, BC, Cariboo Pulp and Paper has the capacity to produce up to 340,000 tonnes of high-quality Northern Bleached Softwood Kraft (NBSK) pulp annually, employing nearly 300 people. …Sean McLaren, West Fraser’s President & CEO said “This agreement better positions West Fraser to support the mill and provides ongoing certainty to our talented workforce.” …Juan Carlos Bueno, Mercer CEO, said, “this dissolution will allow us to redeploy and direct resources to areas that are better aligned with our long-term focus.” No termination or other amounts are payable by either company in connection with the termination of the joint venture. Mercer will retain certain finished product inventory in connection with the transaction.
The lack of vision from the U.S. Forest Service Regional Supervisor …helped sink Pyramid Lumber, with it taking the livelihoods of over 100 Montanans along with rich opportunities to help the climate and reduce fire fuel hazard risk. Solid and innovative solutions to significantly help the housing issues in Seeley Lake and other communities have been presented to Regional Leaders for years without any meaningful action. A group of U.S. Forest Service District Rangers from the Northern Region began meeting in 2021 to work on solutions to the housing crisis faced by existing and future USFS employees. It was painfully apparent to the rangers that our ability to attract and retain high quality employees was unreachable unless we found solutions to the high cost of housing. …In my nine years as a USFS line officer in Region 1, I haven’t seen any indication there is meaningful leadership capacity in the USFS Regional Office to face the multiple crises we are encountering…
Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison pointed to three factors that are planted firmly in the positive column of the home improvement industry. He calls them “core demand drivers.” Disposable personal income is up. Home prices are up. And housing stock is getting older, and therefore in need of home improvement retailers like Lowe’s. Against these positive factors are several negatives and unknowns, including high interest rates and low existing home sales”. …All those factors played into the company’s performance of 2023, during which the company’s net income of $7.7 billion was up from $6.5 billion in the previous year. Net sales for the full year were $86.4 billion, down 11% from $97.1 billion in the prior year. …The big decline came in the lumber aisle. But despite lumber deflation, the company generated positive comparable sales for the pro customer for the year. And the stand-alone building materials category stands out starkly as a bright spot in year-over-year sales.
When U.S. governors gathered in Washington this February, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte… shared a practical political lesson about the nation’s housing shortage. He detailed his state’s efforts to add homes by removing restrictions on development, in response to a surge in the state’s population. Gianforte offered a simple sales pitch to disarm the opposition to new development. “Every time I got pushback from the left or the right in our legislature, I would say, ‘Do we want our nurses, teachers and police officers to live in the community where they work?’” the governor said. The result was a package of reforms passed in 2023, and he cited early progress: rents have dropped over the past year. Across the country, there are states and municipalities tackling the same pervasive but tedious problem: overly restrictive zoning that makes it challenging or nearly impossible to build new housing.
VERMONT – I’m writing to express my dismay at the misinformation again being spread about the Telephone Gap timber project. Timber harvesting on the Green Mountain National Forest is good for Vermont and the environment. Stopping harvesting is not a magic bullet to stop climate change, an incredibly complex problem with many possible pieces to the solution. Yelling “Stop harvesting timber and save the planet” makes for a catchy headline and pushes some fundraising but misses the mark. For more on our thinking about timber harvesting go to the Vermont Forest Products Association website video page: vtfpa.org/videos. I have been working in the forest products industry my entire 49-year career. I have learned that trees 80 to 150 years old are in the prime range for harvesting, providing the best quality forest products and fitting in with sound management practices. We harvest trees in that age range regularly and produce vibrantly healthy forests as a result.
GOLD HILL, North Carolina — Working Lands Trust (WLT), a key advocate for the conservation of North Carolina’s forestry legacy, proudly announces the receipt of a transformative $382,605.62 grant from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. This funding will bolster WLT’s tireless efforts towards forestry stewardship, community empowerment, and the support of military resilience within the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape. The awarded grant will underpin an initiative designed to support and bolster opportunities for forestry centric programming within North Carolina’s rural and BIPOC communities. The project will be implemented in collaboration with esteemed partners including the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape, the North Carolina Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation, the Sustainable Forestry and Land Retention Project, the Land Loss Prevention Project, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and the National Woodland Owners Association.
HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — The Florida Forest Service is deploying new drone technology to help fight fires and control prescribed wildfires. New legislation permits the Florida Forest Service to use American-made drones. Each drone is equipped with a series of chemical-infused balls that — upon deployment — fill with anti-freeze. The mixture causes a chemical reaction inside the ball, starting a fire. It’s changing the way firefighters are conducting prescribed burns. “It’s just going to make it safer for our folks not being entrapped,” said Keith Mousel, Withlacoochee Center Manager for the Florida Forest Service. “Not having to deal with the heat, fatigue, and the dangers that go with walking through unburnt woods.” …The drones will be used by firefighters across seven different districts, ranging from the Alabama state line down to Fort Myers.
The Sierra snowpack has reached its seasonal peak. The snowpack plays an important role in providing water to millions of Californians. Throughout the winter months, snow accumulates on the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada and slowly melts in the spring and early summer. The runoff fills dozens of major reservoirs downstream. Last year’s epic snowpack helped relieve a yearslong drought, reaching an eye-popping 252% of normal on April 8. By that date, the mountains held an average equivalent of 64.2 inches of water. The current snowpack now holds a healthy 27.3 inches of water on average after a series of winter storms alleviated concerns that California was facing a “snow drought.” The California Department of Water Resources tracks the snow water equivalent in the Sierra using a network of 130 electronic sensors. …This graphic plots a 20-year history of the Sierra snowpack, showing wet years interspersed with severe droughts.
U.S. scientists and policy experts with a broad range of expertise in the fields of climate and ecosystem sciences have outlined key recommendations aimed at bolstering the scientific foundation for implementation of nature-based climate solutions (NbCS) across the nation. These solutions, which include strategies like protecting carbon-dense forests and wetlands, improving land management, and restoring natural ecosystems, are crucial for enhancing carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The stakes are very high—getting NbCS right could mean the difference between achieving long-term global greenhouse gas reduction goals or missing those targets and further destabilizing the climate system. Although NbCS strategies have potential, on the ground implementation of NbCS has been controversial, often outpacing the scientific understanding of their long-term benefits. The group calls for a more robust, evidence-based approach for NbCS so they can be deployed when and where they are most likely to succeed as climate solutions.
In March, Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer for industrial energy, declared bankruptcy. That cataclysmic collapse triggered a rush of political and economic maneuvering in the US, and in Europe. …While Enviva publicly claims it will survive the bankruptcy, a whistleblower in touch with sources inside the company says it will continue failing to meet its wood pellet contract obligations, and that its production facilities — plagued by chronic systemic manufacturing problems — will continue underperforming. Enviva and the forestry industry appear now to be lobbying the Biden administration, hoping to tap into millions in renewable energy credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a move environmentalists are resisting. …Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user, is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South.
