The US Court of Appeals ruled that many of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, but Treasury Secretary Bessent expects the Supreme Court to rule otherwise (and he has a backup plan if it doesn’t). In related news: Bessent said Trump may declare a national housing emergency this fall to tackle affordability; lumber futures fell to a four-month low; and US consumer sentiment fell 6% in August. In other Business news: San Group’s credit-protection process requires more time; UK’s Kingspan Timber is closing after 60 years; and wildfires are hurting tourism in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
In Forestry/Wildfire news: Ottawa is just over a 10th of the way to is 2 billion tree planting goal; debate continues over proposed changes to the US Roadless Rule; misinformation helped kill Oregon’s wildfire risk map; ENGOs call for an end to native logging in New South Wales, Australia; and wildfire updates from Saskatchewan and Oregon.
Finally, the history and future direction of wood science, and Portland’s proposed mass-timber research and manufacturing campus.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
A federal appeals court 
CALGARY — Fewer tourists are coming to Jasper, Alberta than usual this year, but it’s not for a lack of people eager to visit the picturesque Rocky Mountain town. Numbers are about as good as they can be, considering about one-fifth of the town’s overnight accommodations burned when a ferocious wildfire swept through last summer, said Tourism Jasper CEO Tyler Riopel. …As the Jasper recovery continues, tourism operators affected by wildfires elsewhere this year are struggling. Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been particularly hard hit, which has taken a toll on outfitting businesses that cater to hunters and fishers. Roy Anderson, acting CEO of the Saskatchewan Commission of Professional Outfitters, said his group is surveying members to quantify the financial impact. “We’re talking millions of dollars in terms of lost revenue at a minimum,” he said.
To better compete with Canada’s transcontinental railroads, efficiencies within the trucking industry, and to capitalize on a more relaxed regulatory environment, the railroad industry is entering into a consolidation phase with the major operators all reportedly in play. On the heels of the 2023 merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern which connected Canada, the US and Mexico with the first single-line railway, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are pursuing a merger that would create the first coast-to-coast railway system in the US. The tie-up between Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific raised the possibility of further consolidation in the industry with investors eyeing a merger between CSX and BNSF, or with CPKC. While mergers might satisfy shareholders and activist investors, industry insiders see the trend creating more inefficiencies. …Freight Rail Customer Alliance is opposed to further consolidation given that past mergers have resulted in higher transportation costs and unreliable service for customers.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration may declare a national housing emergency this fall as the White House looks to highlight key issues for midterm campaign voters. …Bessent said housing affordability would be a critical leg of Republicans’ 2026 midterm election platform. Bessent declined to list any specific actions the president may take, but he suggested that administration officials are directly studying ways to standardize local building and zoning codes and decrease closing costs. President Trump has repeatedly used emergency declarations to avoid having to send legislation to Congress for approval. Some of those, particularly the emergency law he cited to institute his tariff regime, have faced pushback in federal court. …Trump also spoke out on the issue during the campaign and said he wants to open up federal land for housing development and pledged to help with affordability by eliminating regulations.
WASHINGTON – US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the USDA has taken the next step in the rulemaking process for rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule by opening a public comment period. …The USDA Forest Service is publishing a notice seeking public comment on its intention to develop an environmental impact statement for the proposed rescission of the rule. The notice details the reasons for rescinding the rule, the potential effects on people and resources, and how national forests and grasslands are managed. The USDA will publish the notice August 29, 2025. …While the rescission would apply to roadless areas in Alaska, state-specific rules for Colorado and Idaho would not be affected by the proposal. In total, the 2025 rescission would apply to nearly 45 million acres of the nearly 60 million acres of inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System. …The public is invited to comment no later than Sept. 19, 2025. 
Lumber prices, which shed more than 20% in August, have continued to fall to start September, hitting their lowest price this year thanks to a glut of wood that was piled up ahead of a big increase in duties on Canadian imports. “There has clearly been a speculative inventory accumulation at every level from mills to single location lumber dealers,” said Matt Layman, who publishes Layman’s Lumber Guide “For the first time in my 40-plus year career there is indeed a wall of wood that must be liquidated.” As with many raw materials, the lumber market has been whipsawed by President Trump’s tariff threats. The White House is studying tariffs on imported lumber in the name of national security. …Any lumber tariff will come on top of duties on Canadian softwood lumber that rose to about 35% for most producers, from 15% last year. [to access the full story a WSJ subscription is required]
Lumber futures fell to $550 per thousand board feet in September, the lowest in nearly four months, amid softer demand for new home building and ample supply. US building permits fell 2.2% in July to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.362 million, the lowest since June 2020. Although the market anticipates a potential rate cut in September, rates are expected to remain restrictive, and high inflation expectations are expected to support long-maturity yields, which dictate mortgage costs. Seasonal slowdown in construction is set to magnify the drop in housing construction. On the supply side, Canadian mills continue to push large volumes of surplus lumber into the US market, far exceeding actual demand and creating an oversupply situation. Additionally, ongoing tariff issues between the US and Canada add further uncertainty, as potential changes in trade policy could significantly affect US lumber prices.›
Lumber futures have come under strain after the initial tariff-driven upswing has fizzled out and the cracks in the housing market are beginning to show… retreating from an early August high of ~$695 per thousand board feet to about $560, a decline of nearly 19.5%, making it just shy of the 20% mark that would push it into a technical bear market. Lumber futures saw a surge driven by tariffs and optimism over lower interest rates, which pushed prices to their highest levels in more than three years. However, the enthusiasm soon faded away, as recent housing data disappointed, and builders scaled back due to higher input costs, weaker demand and looming affordability challenges. Housing affordability remains stretched even with potential rate cuts, requiring better wage growth or increased supply for meaningful improvement, according to Rafe Jadrosich, Senior US Homebuilders and Building Products analyst.
Construction spending in the United States reached $1,232.7 billion during the first seven months of 2025, a 2.2% decrease from $1,259.9 billion in the same period of 2024. Residential construction accounted for $524.7 billion, down 4.0%, while nonresidential construction declined 0.8% to $707.9 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Private construction dropped 3.8% year-to-date to $946.5 billion. …Public construction increased 3.8% to $286.2 billion over the same period. …For the month of July 2025, construction spending was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $2,139.1 billion, down 0.1% from June and 2.8% below July 2024. Private sector construction decreased 0.2% from the previous month, while public construction rose 0.3%.
COQUITLAM, BC — Gregor Robertson, Minister of Housing and Infrastructure and Minister responsible for Pacific Economic Development Canada (PacifiCan), announced an investment of over $6.8 million for two Coquitlam-based businesses that are developing technologies to reduce waste and advance sustainability in the energy and textile sectors. …Novo Textile Company is receiving an investment of over $1.8 million to expand its textile recycling capacity. Novo plans to bind recycled fibres with BC wood pulp fibres to produce Canadian-made textiles at a competitive price. This will strengthen Canadian supply chains and divert 15 million pounds of garment waste from landfills annually. …Novo Textiles was incorporated in 1991 as a supplier of fibre-filled home textiles. Most recently, Novo introduced a textile recycling production line, continuing its evolution within the textile sector. It is estimated that 92 million tonnes of textile waste ends up in landfills annually.
The Danish timber industry is warning of significant financial strain following the introduction of new packaging regulations, which came into effect on 1 January as part of the EU’s packaging directive. According to the Danish Wood Packaging Association (DTE), the rules on extended producer responsibility place the cost burden on manufacturers, even when customers dictate the design and specifications. DTE argues this “uneven” implementation could cost the sector over DKK 60 million annually, with pallet prices expected to rise by around 20%. …The association also criticised the fee structure, claiming it relies on outdated data and fails to differentiate between clean, recyclable wood and mixed wood waste, unnecessarily inflating costs and threatening Danish jobs. DTE is calling for reforms to align payment with design responsibility, adjust fees based on environmental impact, and ensure imported packaging is subject to the same standards.
The Government of Canada says it is just over a 10th of the way to its goal of planting two billion trees across the country. Launched in 2021, Canada’s 2 Billion Trees program has reached the milestone of 228 million trees planted, with agreements already in place to plant a total of nearly one billion within the coming years. As of June, 11 provinces and territories, 58 Indigenous partners, 30 municipalities and 88 non-governmental organizations has signed or are negotiating tree-planting agreements. The program aims to protect crucial wildlife habitat, restore areas impacted by wildfires and sequester carbon. …Some of these initiatives include creating at least 10 new national parks and marine conservation areas and 15 new urban parks, as well as designating 30 per cent Canada’s land and water as conservation areas by 2030. The federal government has also committed to reach an emissions reduction target of 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.
QUESNEL, BC — The Three Rivers Community Forest (TRCF) is showing how local control can bring fresh ideas to forest management, general manager Nick Pickles told Quesnel council this week. The area-based tenure, signed in October 2024, covers more than 38,000 hectares and is jointly owned by the City of Quesnel and the Esdilagh, Lhtako Dene, and Nazko First Nations. It comes with an allowable annual harvest of about 43,000 cubic-metres of conifer and another 10,500 cubic-metres of deciduous timber, Pickles explained at council’s Aug. 26 meeting. …Pickles said the TRCF mandate is more than just cutting trees. “It’s designed to provide long-term access to forest resources for community benefit. It focuses on local decision-making, stewardship, and sustainable forest use.” Profits are reinvested locally, whether it’s jobs, education, or infrastructure, Pickles added.
Harvesting in North Cowichan’s 5,000-hectare municipal forest reserve (MFR) is considered a primary issue for the rest of council’s term, which ends in October, 2026. On Aug. 20, council voted 4-3 to make harvesting, which hasn’t taken place since 2019, one of its strategic priorities. Coun. Bruce Findlay pointed out that the municipality has received no revenues from harvesting in the MFR for six years, and it may take several more years yet as negotiations with the Quw’utsun Nation on co-management of the MFR continue. …Despite the vote, CAO Ted Swabey advised council that he thinks that it’s unlikely that any harvesting could actually take place before the end of council’s term. …The public engagement aspect of the forest review concluded in early 2023, and the feedback from that process found very strong support for active conservation in the MFR, which would allow for targeted harvesting to provide some income, while restoring and enhancing biodiversity.
Under the 2001 Roadless Rule enacted by President Bill Clinton, millions of acres of roadless areas on national forests across the country are conserved, protecting vital habitats and watersheds. A “blank spot on a map,” in the words of the naturalist Aldo Leopold, is increasingly valuable in our urbanizing society. …The current administration is right to look for ways to address the growing wildfire threat in these areas. But instead of doing away with the Roadless Rule, the White House should look to a simple way to make our forests more resilient to wildfire without compromising the other benefits. …One way to allow forest thinning and prescribed burns to reduce the wildfire threat is to amend the roadless rule… to permit temporary roads in roadless areas that are near neighborhoods along the wildland-urban interface to allow for forest thinning or other ecological restoration. [to access the full story a NY Times subscription is required]
Industry concerns have been raised over a freshly-struck agreement between the EU and the US over future trading arrangements, which observers have asserted could lead to America being offered exceptions from complying with EUDR environmental laws, reports Neill Barston. As the Palm Oil Monitor non-governmental organisation noted, if America is to be permitted exemptions from data monitoring underpinning the entire basis of the much-anticipated deforestation laws following intense lobbying from its paper industry, then other trading partners including Malaysia and Indonesia – which have core interests in the supply of palm oils for the confectionery and snacks sector, should be allowed similar treatment. …Moreover, as the palm oil industry organisation stated, unveiling the broader US-EU Trade Framework Agreement presents an immediate major hurdle for the EU Commission. In seemingly offering preferential treatment for America, this could, in its view, lead to challenges from the World Trade Organisation over equal trading between nationalities.
A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk for every property in the state. It’s the kind of rating now available on real estate sites like Zillow. The state wants to use the results to decide where it will apply forthcoming codes for fire-resistant construction and protections around homes. Around the same time, insurance companies start dropping Oregon homeowners’ policies and raising premiums to limit future losses, much as they have done in other disaster-prone states. Insurers have their own sophisticated risk maps to guide them, but some brokers instead tell homeowners the blame lies with the map. The belief gets treated as fact both on social media and in mainstream news — even though insurers and regulators say it’s not true. …By the time the state pulls back the map, the myths about it have gained so much momentum there’s no stopping them. 
An executive order by Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove has put 77,000 acres of older forests off-limits to logging. …Some local activists call these old-but-not-quite-old-growth stands “legacy forests,” and have resorted to protests, including tree sits and road blockades, to stop them from being sawed down. Upthegrove’s order would also allow logging to go forward on 29,000 acres of those almost-old-growth forests. Some environmental groups praised the move, while others say it greenlights too much logging of the best remaining older forests. …Forest activists still hope to save some of areas slated to be logged over the next five years. …State officials say that timber harvest levels — and the revenue that goes to schools and counties — would be largely unaffected by the executive order. …The Department of Natural Resources has 346,000 acres of structurally complex forests on the 2.4 million acres of forestland it manages.
Ten members of the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources are making an unusual visit to Alaska this week during a break from business on Capitol Hill. The 45-person committee deals with a variety of issues pertaining to public lands in the United States, and the visit is giving eight Republicans and two Democrats a chance to put their literal hands on the topics they cover. …Among the group was the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas, as well as the home-state Republican Rep. Nick Begich. Also attending were Reps. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming; Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin; Pete Stauber, R-Minnesota; Rob Wittman, R-Virginia; Val Hoyle, D-Oregon; Paul Gosar, R-Arizona; and Sarah Elfreth, D-Maryland. …Several of the Republican lawmakers said they believe there is room to increase logging in the Tongass in order to meet the demand for lumber to build housing, particularly locally.
The Amazon rainforest is one of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems, playing a key role in maintaining regional and global climate stability. However, recent changes in land use, vegetation, and the climate have disrupted biosphere-atmosphere interactions, leading to significant alterations in the water, energy, and carbon cycles. …Here, we quantify the relative contributions of deforestation and global climate change to observed shifts in key Amazonian climate parameters. We analyzed long-term atmospheric and land cover change data across 29 areas in the Brazilian Legal Amazon from 1985 to 2020. …While the rise in atmospheric methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) mixing ratios is primarily driven by global emissions, deforestation has significantly increased surface air temperatures and reduced precipitation during the Amazonian dry season. Over the past 35 years, deforestation has accounted for approximately 74% of the ~ 21 mm dry season decline and 16.5% of the 2°C rise in maximum surface air temperature. 
Energy company Drax is under investigation by the UK’s financial watchdog over the firm’s sourcing of wood for biomass pellets in the wake of whistleblower claims. The London-listed group said the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) probe covers more than two years, from January 2022 to March 2024, and will also look at compliance of Drax’s annual reports from 2021, 2022 and 2023 with rules over listing, disclosure and transparency. Drax said it will “co-operate with the FCA as part of their investigation”. Shares in the FTSE 250 firm fell 8% in morning trading on Thursday. It follows accusations by Drax’s former head of public affairs and policy, Rowaa Ahmar, in March that the company had misled over its sourcing of wood for biomass pellets, which were made as part of her claim for unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal. Drax denied her claims. The firm and Ms Ahmar reached a settlement with Drax just over a week after the case opened.
STOCKHOLM — A political fight has erupted in Sweden over whether forest owners should be paid to delay harvesting trees as part of the country’s contribution to the EU’s ambitious carbon removal targets. The EU’s Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) regulation requires the bloc to remove 310 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030. With Sweden holding the EU’s largest forest area, the country is expected to play a central role in meeting that target. In 2022, the government commissioned a parliamentary committee to explore how to incentivize carbon storage. Its proposal: legally binding contracts offering landowners 400 SEK (~$42) per ton of CO2 if they delay felling their trees for 5 to 20 years beyond the minimum harvest age. …The plan has triggered fierce opposition. The Swedish Forest Industries Federation warns that 7,200 jobs are at risk, with smaller sawmills particularly vulnerable. …Supporters, however, argue that paying landowners reflects the forest’s true value.
Mechanization has reduced fatal injuries for loggers in the northeastern United States but introduced new health risks linked to prolonged equipment use, according to interviews with 29 loggers across New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Participants reported concerns over weight gain, back pain, and cardiovascular risks from extended sedentary work, as well as mental stress from financial burdens and limited access to affordable health insurance. The findings come 
Border Patrol agents arrested two firefighters Wednesday – who they say were in the United States illegally – while they were working to contain Washington state’s biggest wildfire. …The Bear Gulch Fire on the peninsula has already torched almost 9,000 acres in the Olympic National Forest. …The human-caused wildfire on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula has been burning since July 6 and was just 13% contained as of Thursday. …Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said he is “deeply concerned” about the arrests. Washington Sen. Patty Murray said, “Trump has undercut our wildland firefighting abilities in more ways than one—from decimating the Forest Service and pushing out thousands of critical support staff, to now apparently detaining firefighters on the job.” Under the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security said it would not conduct immigration enforcement “at locations where disaster and emergency response and relief is being provided” such as evacuation routes or areas where emergency supplies are being distributed.