US trade representative Jamieson Greer said any trade deal with Canada will include tariffs. In related news: President Trump makes a new case for tariffs; Canada launches program to retool the forest sector; the US Lumber Coalition pans BC’s stumpage deferral program; and Quebec scraps its annual royalty charge for sawmills. Meanwhile: Ontario starts building first of its kind mass timber bridge; Steelworkers ratify BC forestry agreement; International Paper downsizes in South Carolina; and Boise Cascade and BlueLinx report Q4 earnings.
In Forestry news: the US Forest Service and Alaska sign forestry agreement; eight Western US states oppose Trump’s rollbacks; and BC Timber Sales include commercial thinning projects. Meanwhile: the Wood Pellet Association of Canada’s new safety plan; a CIF forestry event in Sault Ste. Marie; a Montreal conference on building with wood; and BC’s College of Applied Biologists’ 2026 conference keynote.
Finally, citing competitiveness and safety, BC business groups pan PST tax hike.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
Delaware – President Trump’s announcement of a 15% tariff following last week’s Supreme Court ruling has created uncertainty in financial markets. While some retailers and consumer companies may benefit from reduced trade barriers, domestic lumber and packaging firms face increased competition from cheaper imports. …On Monday, domestic lumber companies saw their stock prices drop amid concerns that cheaper foreign imports could undercut their pricing power. The court’s tariff decision threatens to erode the competitive advantage that domestic packaging and lumber businesses previously held against lower-cost foreign competitors, industry analysts warn. RBC analysts identified potential negative consequences for companies including Clearwater Paper, Rayonier, Sylvamo, and Smurfit WestRock. A recent industry survey revealed that most U.S. purchasers reported declining containerboard prices in February, as increased European imports expanded supply and created additional pricing pressures. Monday trading saw Smurfit and domestic competitor International Paper decline by 7% and 6%, respectively.
OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada will help decide the appropriate means of reviewing a company’s complaint about the service provided by a railway. In November 2023, the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled that Canadian National Railway Co. failed to meet the level of service it owed to Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Inc. The agency is a federal regulator and quasi-judicial tribunal and, under section 41 of the Canadian Transportation Act, its decisions may be appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal on questions of law or jurisdiction. CN wanted to contest factual findings so it pursued an appeal under a provision of the Federal Courts Act, not under section 41.
Snuneymuxw First Nation is calling on other levels of government to act to protect its waters following an oil spill and long-standing discharge of “toxic sawmill effluent” at Duke Point near Nanaimo. The nation is calling for a full environmental investigation following the incidents it says are caused by Environmental 360 and Western Forest Products. The nation has sent letters to the federal, provincial and municipal governments calling on them to act. This comes after an 
OTTAWA — The Canadian minister responsible for Canada-United States trade said Wednesday that Mexico was keen to maintain a trilateral agreement under the free trade pact between the three North American neighbors that is up for review this year. “I am reassured by the Mexican economy secretary … his desire to work with Canada and to ensure that the review of CUSMA results in a strengthened and ongoing trilateral trade arrangement,” Dominic LeBlanc said in a press conference from Mexico. LeBlanc is heading a group of over 370 delegates to Mexico for a six-day trade mission amid fears that U.S. President Donald Trump could ditch the decades-old three-way free trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada when it comes up for review later this year. “The Mexicans have very similar interests to Canada,” LeBlanc said. “We both remain absolutely committed to the trilateral free trade agreement and working together as this review process unfolds,” he added.
The Wood Innovations Funding Opportunity supports the growth and expansion of U.S. wood products and wood energy markets, advancing sustainable forest management and the long-term stewardship of National Forest System (NFS) lands and other forested areas. …The Wood Innovations Funding Opportunity provides a strategic platform for public, private, and non-profit entities to expand wood markets, promote sustainable forest management, and advance wood energy and mass timber technologies across the United States. By funding projects that create tangible economic and environmental impact, the program strengthens domestic wood product industries while supporting the responsible management of forest resources. Deadline is April 22, 2026
MESA COUNTY, Colorado. – Mesa County commissioners have passed a wildfire resiliency code that will affect the construction of new houses and projects on current structures, including re-roofing. The code, required by state legislation, applies only to buildings in the Wildland Urban Interface — a designated area marking locations close to potential wildfires. It mandates that projects in those areas use more fire-resistant materials and regulates where new structures can be built. “It’s not going to keep houses from burning down…,” Davis said. “What it’s designed to do is to keep it from burning as quick and as violently so that people can get out and get to safety.” Davis said the new code could make building in affected areas slower and more expensive. “To make things fire resistant, it costs money. The cheapest siding out there is wood-based and more affordable, but it’s also going to be more flammable,” Davis said..jpg)
FPInnovations’ latest newsletter pulls articles from their blog that feature several developments of interest to Canada’s forest sector. An update to its 
Applications Now Open For FPAC’s 2026 
The mood was jubilant at Mount Washington Alpine Resort on Vancouver Island after a weekend storm saw 108 centimetres of snow blanket the resort. The snow was a welcome reprieve from the warm and wet weather that started the season… A 
FRASER CANYON — The Nature-Based Solutions Foundation in Vancouver says it has recently acquired two clusters of private land inholdings totaling just over 55 hectares within the traditional territory of the Kanaka Bar Band in the Fraser Canyon for conservation purposes. According to a news release from the conservation organization, the 55 hectares of land are inside the boundaries of Kanaka Bar’s proposed Indigenous Protected & Conserved Area (IPCA). The foundation says the acquisitions will safeguard exceptionally diverse old-growth forests, including habitat that features Canada’s largest documented Rocky Mountain juniper, and they build on NBSF’s earlier purchase of the “Old Man Jack’s” parcel in 2022, thereby bringing the total to three private properties to be returned to Kanaka Bar through Indigenous-led conservation, title-registered legal protection, and long-term stewardship funding.
By the time a so-called “raw log” is loaded onto a truck — or in a small minority of cases, onto a ship — it has already travelled through a dense web of economic activity that is anything but raw. It has been identified and cruised through professional forest planning. Roads have been engineered and constructed. Heavy equipment has been purchased, financed and maintained. Logging crews have mobilized. Mechanics and welders have serviced machinery. Truck drivers have hauled. Fuel suppliers have delivered. Silviculture obligations have been funded or secured. Stumpage has been paid to the Crown on public lands. In many instances, Indigenous partnerships and benefit agreements structure access and revenue sharing. Every log carries embedded value long before it ever approaches a mill gate or tidewater. Industry analyst David Elstone has noted that it can take more than 100 distinct job functions to sustainably plan, harvest and deliver timber from forest to primary manufacturing. 
A community science initiative is uncovering previously unrecorded fungi across Greater Victoria, highlighting the region’s rich and still largely unknown biodiversity. Some discoveries may even represent species new to science. The project, MycoMap BC, invites the public to photograph, collect and submit mushroom and slime mould samples for DNA sequencing. Since launching last fall, nearly 14,000 collections have been submitted across British Columbia, including about 2,500 from Greater Victoria. “We’re building baseline data on fungal biodiversity that simply doesn’t exist yet,” said Elora Adamson, project coordinator at the University of Victoria biodiversity lab. As of mid-February, roughly 350 DNA sequencing results have been processed. Adamson said 11 collections represent species recorded for the first time in British Columbia. … Of those results, six newly recorded fungi were found in Greater Victoria, four in Sooke and two in Victoria.
PRINCE GEORGE – [Local forester and forestry advocate Michelle Connolly says what’s being suggested in a recent report, titled “From Conflict to Care: BC’s Forest Future,” is off the mark.] “One of the core beliefs is that people are better at managing nature, than nature is, even though forests have been self-organizing and self-managing for millennia,” says Connolly. “The lack of self-awareness right up front in that report is troubling, because it means that they’re not aware of their own biases and belief systems that are guiding the things they’re putting in this report.” Kiel Giddens, Conservative MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie, says the report overlooks a lot of industry concerns. …Giddens says, while the report misses the mark overall, he agrees with Objective Number 2 around regional decision making. …But Connolly says where the report truly hits the mark is over what is seen as a lack of transparency in the decision-making processes.
North Cowichan wants something done about the growing amount of fibreglass pollution in the Cowichan estuary. Council passed a motion at its meeting on Feb. 4 that the municipality write a letter to senior levels of government and the appropriate regulatory authorities asking that they raise awareness of the issue and take action to deal with the problem. Coun. Christopher Justice, who made the motion, said that the issue of derelict and deteriorating fibreglass boats is something that is becoming more acute in local harbours and waterways. …North Cowichan Mayor Rob Douglas said the municipality must signal its support for the continued operation of the Western Forest Products sawmill, which operates in that area. He said he spoke to officials at the mill before the council meeting. “They advised me that they are not aware of any fibreglass contamination coming from the mill site,” Douglas said.
Nearly 40 Indigenous land guardians, alongside hereditary and traditional chiefs, have filed a lawsuit seeking formal recognition of their rights over a vast stretch of Quebec. Their legal challenge aims to curb industrial logging and ensure the protection of their traditional way of life. The application, filed in Quebec Superior Court last week, covers a territory spanning between the St. Lawrence River, the Saint-Maurice River valley and the forested areas of northern Mauricie, according to the document. The plaintiffs are specifically asking the court to declare all supply guarantees and intervention permits granted to forestry companies null and void. This legal move follows a summer of tensions marked by numerous blockades across the ancestral lands of several Indigenous nations. These actions were spearheaded by MAMU First Nation — a collective of land guardians from the Atikamekw and Innu nations — to protest a proposed overhaul of the province’s forestry regime.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to promote the domestic production of phosphorus and the weedkiller glyphosate, which he said is critical to both defense and food security. Glyphosate is often targeted by supporters of the Make America Healthy Again movement as a harmful chemical. Trump aligned with the MAHA movement after Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the 2024 election. “I find that ensuring robust domestic elemental phosphorus mining and United States-based production of glyphosate-based herbicides is central to American economic and national security,” Trump said in the order. “Without immediate Federal action, the United States remains inadequately equipped and vulnerable.” Glyphosate … has been the subject of controversy over alleged links to cancer. Bayer, the company that makes the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup, recently proposed paying $7.25 billion to settle lawsuits claiming the chemical causes cancer.
Large, bipartisan majorities of voters across eight Western states remain concerned about the impacts of climate change and opposed to efforts by the Trump administration to weaken environmental rules and public lands protections. Eighty-four percent of Western voters say “rollbacks of laws that protect our land, water and wildlife” are a serious problem, up from 68% eight years ago, according to a poll released by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies project. The annual Conservation in the West poll has measured Western voters’ views of environmental and energy issues since 2011. The 2026 survey is based on interviews conducted in January with 3,419 voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. “After 16 years, it’s become a rare longitudinal data set that lets us track how public attitudes have shifted over time throughout the West,” said Ian Johnson, Colorado College’s director of strategic initiatives and sustainability.
Federal officials are proposing to ramp up logging on 2.5 million acres of western Oregon forests as part of a Trump administration priority to expand domestic timber production. The Bureau of Land Management is asking for public comment on its plan through March 23. The federal agency said last week it would update the Western Oregon Resource Management Plan that governs logging on the state’s checkerboard “O&C forests” located in 18 Oregon counties. Known as O&C lands for having once belonged to the Oregon and California Railroad, the forests produced more than 1 billion board feet of timber annually from 1960 and 1989. …BLM’s latest proposal, issued Feb. 19 … could mean a timber harvest that returns to 1 billion board feet. …Oregon’s timber industry celebrated the latest news… Environmental groups strongly opposed the decision…
Montana — Punch more roads through the forest, and you’ll get more people starting fires, fewer bull trout and an even heftier maintenance bill. Keep the 2001 Roadless Rule in place, and you’ll ensure elk have a healthy habitat, and you’ll still be able to reduce wildfire risk. Those were some of the arguments former U.S. Forest Service employees made Friday at the edge of the Silver King Inventoried Roadless Area east of Missoula. Montana Trout Unlimited and the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers hosted the event as the Trump administration takes steps to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule prohibits building roads and harvesting timber on 30% of Forest Service land in the country, or 60 million acres. In Montana, that’s 6.4 million acres, or 37% of Forest Service land in the state.
SALEM — A bill meant to reward Oregon landowners for wildfire risk mitigation with more affordable insurance rates will survive until the end of the 2026 legislative session. However, supporters of Senate Bill 1540 haven’t yet reached complete agreement with the insurance industry on the proposal, which could threaten its passage given this year’s time constraints. “It is a challenge to get this done in a 35-day session,” said Kenton Brine, president of the NW Insurance Council, which represents the regional industry. In broad terms, SB 1540 will require insurance companies to consider wildfire mitigation actions in their models for assessing risk, which inform pricing and policy decisions. Insurers will have to submit these models for verification with Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services, but if they don’t, they will still have to offer discounts to landowners who undertake wildfire mitigation steps.
A plan to revise the Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management plan, with a new emphasis on timber and other resource industries as mandated by President Donald Trump, is set to begin a 30-day public comment period. … The 1979 plan for the 16.7-million-acre forest has been revised three times, most recently in 2016, and the agency hopes to publish a new draft plan by this fall. A forest service press release spells out the past and new parameters that will be considered in the revised draft. “Public comments will help identify changes that are needed to the current plan, adopted in 1997, to align with best available science, as well as laws and regulations, including Presidents Trump’s Executive Order 14225 – Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production to support American economies and improve forest health and Executive Order 14153 Unleash Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential, benefitting the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home.”
Oregon entities funded by timber sales want to ensure revenue. For the third consecutive legislative session, a group of Oregon county governments hope to pass a bill requiring more predictable timber harvests in state forests. Similarly to past proposals, House Bill 4105 would require the Oregon Department of Forestry to annually log enough trees to comply with a 10-year “sustainable harvest level” adopted by the agency. If fewer trees are logged than required by the sustainable harvest level, that amount of timber would be added to the next 10-year plan, unless the reduction was due to wildfire, disease or storm damage. …Environmental groups are opposed to HB 4105, similarly to previous versions of the proposal that failed to pass in 2025 and 2024, because they say the ODF already does a good job of estimating logging levels.
CHEYENNE—A $5.1 million investment that would create the first two ground-based professional wildland firefighting teams in Wyoming history is gaining momentum in the statehouse. On Monday, the Wyoming House of Representatives passed House Bill 36, “Forestry division wildland fire modules.” The bill included an earmark of $2.7 million for one team of firefighters going into the day, but Buffalo Republican Rep. Marilyn Connolly brought an amendment that doubled the funding, providing enough to finance two crews — one each in the eastern and western sides of the state. The former Johnson County emergency management coordinator spoke about her experience being on the ground while wildfires were spreading and resources were lacking. “We need some strike teams, we need engines — and they’re not available,” Connolly said on the House floor. 
WILMINGTON, N.C. – The N.C. Forest Service (NCFS) is reminding the public to use best practices and common sense with outdoor fires ahead of the state’s spring wildfire season. NCFS officials say escaped yard debris burns are the leading cause of wildfires across the state, often due to carelessness. 99% of wildfires are caused by human activity, officials said, often when people work in their yards in spring and burn yard debris. Other causes of human-caused wildfires include machine and vehicle use, such as dragging tow chains, arson and escaped campfires. “With the recent rainfall combined with multiple winter storms earlier this year, some folks may not realize that most of North Carolina is still experiencing very dry conditions,” said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. “Our state’s gradual descent into drought and prolonged dry conditions are going to lead to wildfires igniting more easily, burning more intensely and spreading quicker.”
Canada should ensure its ‘project of national interest’ designation is helping build competitive clean industries, starting with four key focus areas, according to a new report from the 
A coalition of health and environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday, challenging the rescinding of a scientific finding that has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change. A rule finalized by the EPA last week revoked 
Warm, dry and windy weather in Oklahoma has fueled multiple wildfires and prompted authorities to urge nearly one-third of the residents of the small city of Woodward to flee. Matt Lehenbauer, director of emergency management for Woodward and its nearly 12,000 inhabitants, said the evacuation recommendation covers roughly 4,000 people. It is voluntary, he said, because Oklahoma prohibits mandatory evacuations. The wildfire in Woodward, about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, is approaching a “worst-case scenario,” Lehenbauer said, but it hasn’t moved into the most populated area of the city. A blaze in Beaver County at the base of the Oklahoma Panhandle, about 217 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, has consumed an estimated 15,000 acres alone, Oklahoma Forestry Services said.