Ahead of public hearings, US industry groups urge renewal of Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement. In other Business news: New Brunswick woodlot owner says the tariff situation is not sustainable; BC looks for new markets in the Far East; and no injuries reported at BiOrigin paper mill fire in Ontario. Meanwhile: Roy O. Martin III is recognized by Louisiana Tech; New Zealand welcomes the world’s first mass timber aircraft maintenance hangar; and Burnaby, BC, employs mass timber to add warmth to new ice arena.
In Forestry/Climate news: no roadmap emerged to end deforestation, but COP30 still delivered for forests; ENGO questions AAC determinations in BC; Montana thins to create grizzly bear habitat; ENGOs sue the US Forest Service over Nolichucky River logging; Colorado’s burned forests hold less snowpack; and Metsä Group sets up its own PEFC certification group. Meanwhile: the Forest History Association of BC’s AGM is tonight.
Finally, the BC Marmot Recovery Foundation is making progress, and it has the video to prove it.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
For more than 80 years, the annual 
Sponsors enjoy high-profile recognition before, during, and after the convention, ensuring your brand stays top of mind among key industry players. Tracey Russell, Vice President-Equipment, Inland Truck & Equipment Ltd. is a regular at the Convention, “We sponsor the TLA Convention + Trade Show every year because it’s one of the best opportunities for exposure and relationship building – connections that have made a lasting impact on our business and our brand.”
“The BCIT School of Construction and the Environment offers two Associate Certificate programs designed to support workforce development in the North American lumber and sawmill sector: 
The audience of dedicated urbanists at Vancouver’s Robson Square Theatre was startled earlier this year when the first speaker at a debate about mass timber—which B.C. has been promoting vigorously—said it isn’t the for-sure climate-change silver bullet that everyone likes to think it is. Adam Rysanek, a UBC professor of environmental systems who specializes in energy efficiency, poked hard at the assumption that, because everyone thinks of mass timber as just wood—a plant! that comes out of the ground!—it must be natural and environmentally friendly and surely better than concrete. But Rysanek kept making the point at the Urbanarium debate that those ideas are not fully proven. A study he cited, which aimed to factor in all the uncertainties of carbon emissions in different types of building materials, found there is not a clear answer yet about the differences between mass timber and concrete.
SALT LAKE CITY — Homeowners in high wildfire risk areas should soon expect home assessments and a new fee. HB48 Wildland Urban Interface Modifications requires the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands to draw a high wildfire risk boundary across the state. The division will inspect homes within the boundary for fire risk, and property owners will pay a fee based on their risk and square footage, which will cover the cost of the program and lot assessments. State Wildfire Risk Reductions Programs Manager Joseph Anderson said the assessments will focus on the vegetation surrounding the home and the materials used in the structure. “The goal is to remove any vegetation or anything that could catch an ember and allow that ember to burn and catch the structure on fire,” Anderson said. The bill comes after catastrophic wildfires across the West, like the California Eaton Fire from January 2025. 
Modern-day circumstances are slowly transforming the Christmas tree farming industry. …weather is a challenge Michael Cormack faces on the Christmas tree farm he owns and operates in Ontario. … “Mother nature is a big, big factor in the business,” Cormack said. “This year in July, we were averaging over 29 C. So we had trees from two to three years ago that just died. … Four years ago, we had a tornado here that wiped out a bunch of our stuff.” …Another major factor is the cost of living crisis. …“Right now many of the farms are owned by elderly growers, and they’re aging out. So we’re losing a lot of farms year after year, which is unfortunate,” said Kelsey Leonard, founder and director of the Christmas Tree Lab at the University of Waterloo. …U.S. tariffs are also likely to have an impact on the costs associated with growing Christmas trees this year, Leonard said.
I am writing to express my concern for the fate of B.C.’s remaining old growth forests, including the globally rare and at-risk Inland Temperate Rainforest. Most of this endangered forest is still not protected, and thus all creatures who dwell therein are equally unprotected. The Valhalla Wilderness Society … is putting forth a plan to protect the remaining intact Inland Temperate Rainforests through its three park proposals: the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness proposal; the Selkirk Mountains Ancient Forest Park proposal; and the Quesnel Lake Wilderness proposal. This protection is crucial for the survival of these rare temperate rainforests. David Eby, you are undoubtedly well informed as to the many scientific reasons for protecting more forest, especially old growth forests…Importantly, only the BC Park Act and the BC Protected Areas Act can provide secure protection to preserve forest for future generations. Please adopt and implement the VWS park proposals as quickly as possible. 
A proactive new tool that can help preserve old forests in British Columbia has been developed by University of Alberta researchers. A new study gives crucial insight into where to focus conservation measures, by identifying areas of old-growth forest in areas predicted to be stable in the face of climate change. The approach shifts the focus toward what can still be protected, says Nick Pochailo, who led the study…. “Old-growth forests located in areas of potential climatic stability offer exceptional long-term conservation value. By identifying these places, land managers can prioritize and plan conservation efforts more effectively.” …old-growth forests account for about 25 per cent of BC’s forested areas. They’ve shrunk from 25 million hectares to about half that due to logging, wildfires, and pests like the mountain pine beetle… computer models predict how these ecosystems might shift by the 2050s, then mapped the changes to geographically pinpoint areas most likely to survive. 
B.C. has invited stakeholders, experts, Indigenous partners and government representatives from throughout the country to a wildfire symposium in Vancouver on Dec. 5, 2025. The focus will be the 2025 wildfire season, wildfire technology, active forest management and national readiness for future wildfires. The symposium includes advancing discussions on a national leadership strategy and stronger collaboration that will shape the framework of wildfire resiliency in Canada. Enhancing a national framework for wildfire resilience, including the challenges and opportunities people and communities are facing, is one intended outcome for the upcoming symposium on wildfires to be hosted in B.C. After the second-worst wildfire season nationally, B.C. is leading the symposium to bring together national and international experts, provincial, federal and territorial governments, as well as key industry and Indigenous partners, with the goal of sharing best practices and considering mitigation and preparation steps for 2026.
A First Nation in north-central B.C. says it is banning the use of herbicides across all of its territory, which includes Prince George and the Robson Valley. The Lheidli T’enneh First Nation says the ban is being put into place because of the negative impacts herbicides, and glyphosate in particular, have had on the environment and wildlife for which they are stewards. “It is our duty to disallow toxic chemicals in our territory that reduce biodiversity and have negative impacts on our members’ health, wellbeing and the environment where we exercise our living rights and traditions,” Lheidli T’enneh Elected Chief Dolleen Logan said in a statement. She also says the nation expects both government and private industry workers operating in the region to adhere to the ban. It was not immediately clear if the ban would also apply to private and municipal property. More details coming Tuesday morning.
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OTTAWA — The Carney government will still pay to help plant a previously announced 52 million trees in New Brunswick, even though hardly any of them are in the ground and the program’s funding has been cancelled. The recent federal budget scrapped a program to plant two billion trees across the country by 2031 in order to find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. It was a climate change initiative first announced by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign with $3.2 billion over 10 years earmarked to carry it out. New Brunswick was one of the last provinces to reach an agreement for its cut of that money. It didn’t sign on until March 2024. A few months after that, the feds and the New Brunswick government announced $71.6 million to plant more than 52 million trees on Crown lands across the province over the next eight years. [A Telegraph-Journal subscription is required for full access]
Kremmling, Colorado — The Mill in Kremmling is contributing to the natural carbon-storing success of trees in Routt County by purchasing and reusing standing dead trees logged during wildfire mitigation projects and turned into usable wood products. The company’s goal is to support the local economy and Colorado’s timber industry by creating a demand for forest products sourced entirely from fire mitigation projects, said Lisa Hara, owner and CEO at The Mill. Some 90% of the trees processed at The Mill come from Routt County, with 10% from Jefferson County for Douglas fir wood, Hara said. “We help Routt County by creating a demand for materials that come directly from fire mitigation and watershed projects,” said Hara, who purchased The Mill in spring 2023. “Instead of being treated as waste, this wood becomes a resource, one that supports forest health and rural jobs at the same time.”
Oregon — Deschutes County is preparing to deploy $3.4 million for wildfire mitigation projects to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic wildfire in La Pine. The money comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is part of a $200 million funding package to assist fire-prone areas across the country. Work is expected to begin in the spring on a variety of projects ranging from fuels reduction to community education, according to Lauren Street, a natural resources specialist with Deschutes County. The project is expected to continue for five years. La Pine was one of 58 recipients nationwide to benefit from community wildfire defense grants. The grants are funded by the Biden-era bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021. Elsewhere in Oregon, the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District is set to receive $8.7 million, the largest grant for any project in the state.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It’s one of nature’s mysteries: How can woodpeckers, the smallest of which weigh less than an ounce, drill permanent holes into massive trees using only their tiny heads? New research shows that there’s much more at play, anatomically: When a woodpecker bores into wood, it uses not only its head but its entire body, as well as its breathing. In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, a team led by biologists at Brown University reveals how woodpeckers combine breathing and whole-body coordination to drill into trees with extraordinary force. “These findings expand our understanding of the links between respiration, muscle physiology and behavior to perform extreme motor feats and meet ecological challenges,” said lead author Nicholas Antonson… The team studied downy woodpeckers, the smallest species of woodpeckers in North America, which populate forested areas throughout the United States and Canada.
Conservative Forestry Critic Ward Stamer wants to decrease regulation of the logging industry and an increase to the annual allowable cut. Logging proponents love to cite how important and valuable the industry is to B.C. communities. The reality, however, is quite different. Here are some figures that show clearly – in almost every metric – that logging is less valuable to B.C. communities and the B.C. economy than tourism. … These figures of the logging industry are from 2022 and the tourism figures are from 2022 and 2023, so they are roughly comparable. Tourism employed over 125,700 people; logging and related industry employed approximately 100,000. Tourism resulted in $5.9 billion in wages and salaries in 2023, 11.8 per cent higher than in 2022; Logging and related industries resulted in approximately $9.1 billion. There were 16,860 tourism businesses in operation in 2023, mostly in small communities, many of them remote and, increasingly, more of them Indigenous owned.
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, will host a premier in-person event for Canada’s bioenergy sector from January 26 to 28, 2026—the 
BELÉM, Brazil
Greenwashing experts are cautiously optimistic that Ottawa’s plan to roll back nearly half of Canada’s anti-greenwashing rules does not represent a wholesale abandonment of federal efforts to curb climate disinformation following comments by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne. …Champagne did not elaborate on what could be included in the standard. A Department of Finance official told Canada’s National Observer in a statement that the “provisions are creating investment uncertainty and having the opposite of the desired effect with some parties slowing or reversing efforts to protect the environment.” …Announced this month in the 2026 budget, the changes ditched a requirement that companies prove their green claims using international, though unspecified, standards. The changes also prevent third parties from filing a greenwashing complaint with the Competition Bureau. …The budget claims the provisions were “creating investment uncertainty and having the opposite of the desired effect with some parties slowing or reversing efforts to protect the environment.” [A National Observer subscription may be required for story access]
Nanaimo city council Coun. Paul Manly tabled a motion that asked staff to prepare a report with options for a zoning amendment for industrial lands that would exclude emissions-intense heavy industry such as “waste energy, incinerators, chemical plants, thermal electrical generators, petroleum refineries and [liquefied] natural gas export facilities” from existing industrial zones in order to require site-specific zoning. …Ryan Prontack, a manager for Harmac Pacific, Nanaimo Forest Products, also appeared as a delegation. He said Harmac is looking to diversify its operations and has about 61 hectares of industrial-zoned land ready to develop. “While this motion represents many different activities we currently do, it also represent many that we have plans to diversify in the future,” Protack said. Manly said the motion does not affect Harmac’s current operations and is not about “blocking industry uses in perpetuity” but is about ensuring the city has a democratic process to evaluate project proposals.
Domtar Corp. and Eastman Chemical Co. said they will continue to record and report climate-warming emissions even with the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to end a reporting program for them. The EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which went into effect in 2010, requires about 8,000 facilities to annually report their greenhouse gas emissions. That includes chemical plants and pulp and paper manufacturing facilities like Eastman and Domtar’s Kingsport locations. …Domtar said in a statement to Six Rivers Media that it plans to continue reporting greenhouse gas data and reducing those emissions are part of the company’s objectives. “Many of our customers and stakeholders are concerned about climate issues, and carbon footprints are increasingly being considered in purchasing decisions,” said Jan Martin, Domtar’s director of U.S. Public Affairs. …Other industry trade groups have shared their own concerns over the end of the program, saying it could complicate their processes or add new costs. 
In response to an article published by The Guardian regarding our Canadian sustainable biomass operations, Miguel Veiga-Pestana, Drax’s Chief Sustainability Officer, wrote this response: The environmental non-profit Stand.earth fails to see the wood from the trees when it comes to the Canadian forestry industry and Drax’s limited role within it (
A new study has shown for the first time that waste cardboard can be used as an effective source of biomass fuel for large scale power generation. Engineers from the University of Nottingham have provided the first comprehensive characterisation of cardboard as a potential fuel source and created a new method to assess the composition of the material providing a practical tool for fuel assessment for cardboards. The study has been published in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy. This research demonstrates that cardboard shows differences in physical and chemical properties, including lower carbon content, reduced heating value, and a high prevalence of calcium carbonate fillers, particularly in printed grades. The researchers have also developed a new technique to analyse the calcium carbonate content of cardboard. Calcium carbonate is added to cardboard to improve its optical properties and stiffness, but forms ash during combustion which can reduce a boilers performance.
The December issue of Forest Safety News is here, bringing timely insights and practical tools for safer forestry work this winter. One standout feature explores how RPAS drones are transforming field safety, reducing worker exposure during steep-slope layout, post-fire assessments, and difficult terrain navigation. It’s a look at technology that’s not just impressive — it’s making real crews safer in real time. This issue also recaps the 18th Annual Vancouver Island Safety Conference, where powerful keynote speakers shared stories of perseverance, leadership, and the importance of mental and physical well-being. The message was clear: safety culture is built person by person, conversation by conversation. You’ll also find a useful update on winter driving and hauling preparedness, including tips for planning routes, managing changing conditions, and supporting drivers during the toughest season of the year. Packed with practical advice, inspiring stories, and forward-looking innovations, this issue offers a strong finish to 2025 for BC’s forest sector.
WorkSafeBC is holding a virtual public hearing on 
