Economists Jock Finlayson and Ken Peacock opine on BC’s forestry decline and how to reverse course. In related news: why BC’s forests are an election issue; and the inaugural Global Wood Summit — what’s next for forest products. In Company news: Mercer’s Peace River, Alberta mill is fined for a Fisheries Act violation; PowerWood launched its new facility in Agassiz, BC; Kruger Kamloops employs AI technology; Rayonier (RYAM) reported a fire at its Jesup, Georgia mill; Enviva’s bankruptcy wipes out its shareholders; and International Paper’s shareholders approve acquisition of DS Smith.
In Forestry/Climate news: Bjorn Lomborg says despite green investments the world uses more fossil fuels than ever; Manitoba’s Interlake forests are back from the ashes; Stanley Park embarks on the next round of looper moth recovery; Ontario needs more Indigenous participation in forestry; Nebraska Tribes secure Arbor Day Foundation grants; and Oregon debates logging’s role in wildfire resiliency.
Finally, going back in time—the Pacific Northwest and Arizona logging history.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
Happy Thanksgiving to our readers in Canada! We’ll be back tomorrow with all the weekend News.
The forest products sector has long served as B.C.’s leading source of exports and a key driver of jobs and other business activity across the province. …A host of policy changes adopted by the province have slashed fibre supply, sterilized an ever-growing portion of the Crown land base, increased operating costs for logging contractors and lumber companies, and created endless delays and uncertainty across all segments of the industry. …Current policy directions point to further pain in the next few years. What can be done to improve the outlook for B.C.’s foundational forest industry? The near-term priority should be to stabilize and then gradually increase the accessible fibre supply. …A second priority is to advance agreements with First Nations to increase their role in the forest sector. Another policy commitment should be to accelerate innovative management and regulatory models to expedite land use planning, speed up regulatory decision-making, improve wildfire mitigation and pursue biodiversity goals.
The state of B.C.’s forest sector and the global forest products industry and market overall will be the topic of the first Global Wood Summit in Vancouver. B.C. forestry consultant Russ Taylor and ERA Forest Products Research have teamed up to organize the two-day summit which takes place Oct. 29 and 30. Industry experts on markets in the U.S., Sweden, Russia, China and Japan will discuss global forest products and pulp and paper markets and trade, and emerging sectors such as engineered wood manufacturing. …The summit will include a panel on the Chinese and North American lumber markets, and sessions on pulp and paper. Panel experts will include John Brink, the B.C. wood manufacturing veteran who recently announced plans to acquire shuttered Canfor mills. …“Companies are bleeding ink right now,” Taylor said. “The third quarter results have come out – they’re going to be horrible. But prices are now picking up, so we’re trying to figure out what’s next.”
VANCOUVER — It is not an exaggeration to declare that forestry’s fortunes in recent years have been nothing short of disastrous, with more than 9,000 jobs lost since 2018. …However, there is hope for the forestry industry in B.C., and that is Canada’s bi-partisan consensus that the country needs more housing. …The CMHC found that housing starts had declined by 7% in 2023 compared to 2022, with a particularly acute 25% reduction in detached, single-family home starts. For BC, where forestry is still a prominent industry despite its ongoing difficulties, the impact of the housing and construction downturn has harmed the province hard. …However, Canada’s political leaders have realized the need for a dramatic boost in the country’s housing supply to alleviate the chronic affordability challenges faced by ordinary Canadians. …If the softwood lumber dispute means an unfriendly American market, an explosion of new housing starts in Canada is an attractive alternative.
The EU is launching an anti-dumping investigation into cheap plywood imports after complaints by the bloc’s domestic producers, opening another front in its trade conflict with China. EU producers say there has been a surge in cheap hardwood plywood coming from China, much of which they believe originates in Russia. Brussels banned Russian wood imports after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. …“This investigation is crucial to protect the entire EU hardwood plywood value chain,” said the Greenwood Consortium, which represents forest owners, loggers and suppliers to producers. “Unfairly priced Chinese imports — now apparently also using cheap conflict Russian timber — threaten the survival of many European businesses and jobs.” …The main EU producers are in Poland, Finland, France and the Baltic states. The EU has already put tariffs on birch plywood imports from Kazakhstan and Turkey after finding they included some Russian content. 
WASHINGTON — Inflation in the United States dropped last month to its lowest point since it first began surging more than three years ago, adding to a spate of encouraging economic news in the closing weeks of the presidential race. Consumer prices rose just 2.4% in September from a year earlier, down from 2.5% in August, and the smallest annual rise since February 2021. Measured from month to month, prices increased 0.2% from August to September, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the same as in the previous month. But excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” prices, a gauge of underlying inflation, remained elevated in September. Core prices in September were up 3.3% from a year earlier and 0.3% from August. …The improving inflation picture follows a 
On 10 October 2024, the European Parliament’s (EP) Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI) fast-tracked the European Commission’s (EC) 
A plan by the British government to burn biomass imported from countries including North Korea has been described as “bonkers”. A bioenergy resource model calculates that only a big expansion in the import of energy crops and wood from a surprising list of nations would satisfy the UK’s plan to meet net zero. …About a third of the biomass used in the UK is imported. In 2021, about 76% from North America and 18% from the EU. But there is not enough wood in these regions to supply the large expansion that the government is banking on. The resource model sets out potential sources of bioenergy. Only the most ambitious scenario outlined would theoretically provide enough biomass to meet this demand, and it involves a huge increase in imports. …Serious concerns have been raised about the affect of large-scale use of biomass on biodiversity, air quality, agriculture and soil health in the UK and abroad.