The housing outlook weakened in Canada and US as affordability and uncertainty dampened activity. In related news: US builder sentiment ticked lower; and Canada’s inflation rate edged down. In Business news: Canada announced its new CUSMA trade negotiator; Bell Lumber & Pole is expanding in Arkansas; Metsä created a lignin demo plant in Finland; and factory-built housing makes headway in Ontario and California.
In Forestry news: Tree Canada launched an urban forestry platform; the University of Alberta is creating new growth and yield models; activists spiked trees in Quebec’s Maurice region; a BC ENGO says herbicide use has declined but the NDP planned to phase it out; the mountain pine beetle outbreak intensified in Colorado; Vermont’s forests need management not mandates; and Georgia announced its Forestry for Wildlife award winners.
Finally, why Richmond Plywood refuses to shut down even when demand tanks.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
Trump’s move to revoke the 
We are gauging interest in a conference for students and young professionals across B.C. in the forestry industry. The goal of this conference is to create a more unified forestry sector throughout the province by bringing together students and young professionals to discuss current and future challenges in forestry, explore innovative solutions, and build relationships that can support us throughout our careers. This is a youth-led initiative and so having your opinions and participation is crucial to determine the topics and speakers for the conference. We have created a short survey (see link) to help determine the topics and timing of this conference. This is a chance for young professionals and students like yourself to build a more connected, informed, and forward-thinking forestry community and empower them to help shape the future of forestry in B.C. 
Vancouver — Forest Professionals British Columbia (FPBC) honoured seven individuals as part of its recognition program in Vancouver on February 5. Forest Professionals BC recognized three Distinguished Forest Professionals, one Forest Professional of the Year, one Jim Rodney Memorial Volunteer of the Year, and two authors for BC Forest Professional Magazine Best Article at the 78th Forest Professionals BC forestry conference recognition banquet. 
…Jeff Fisher (North Vancouver), BSF, RPF, Christopher Vukovic (Qualicum Beach), HBScF, RPF(Ret), and John Walker (Williams Lake), RPF, were honoured as Distinguished Forest Professionals for 2025. This category recognizes significant accomplishments over a career, for providing outstanding service to the profession of forestry and for furthering the principles of Forest Professionals BC. It is the profession’s highest honour for a registrant. 
Peter Flett, MSFM, RPF, of Penticton is the 2025 Forest Professional of the Year. Margaret Symon, RPF, PCP, of Duncan is the 2025 Jim Rodney Memorial Volunteer of the Year. Lastly, Vanessa Fetterly, BSc, RPBio, and Carl Pollard, BSc, RPF, collaborated on the 2025 BC Forest Professional Magazine Best Article.
Municipal leaders are on the front lines of BC’s economy, where the health of the forest sector directly impacts jobs, services, and long-term community stability. This timely panel brings together mayors from across the province for a practical, solutions-focused discussion on what a competitive and resilient forestry future means for families and local economies — and what’s needed to ensure forestry remains a cornerstone industry for generations to come. Featuring mayors Maria McFaddin (Castlegar), Brad West (Port Coquitlam), Leonard Krog (Nanaimo) and Gary Sulz (Revelstoke), the conversation will offer grounded municipal perspectives from communities both large and small. The session will be moderated by Karen Brandt, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Partnerships with Mosaic Forest Management. Expect candid insights, local realities, and a forward-looking discussion on strengthening forestry and the communities it supports.
B.C.’s export performance moved against the national pattern in November. Domestic exports to international markets rose 7.6 per cent year over year to $4.59 billion, whereas exports nationally declined by about four per cent on a customs basis. This contrast partly reflects differences in the types of goods each region exports. Nevertheless, provincial export trends remain soft, reflecting U.S. tariffs on key products like lumber, and end of de minimis treatment of low value exports. Year-to-date, B.C. exports slipped a mild 0.1 per cent from same-period 2024, which was slightly stronger than the national reading. …That said, a declining trend continued in the battered forestry sector (-13.7 per cent year over year), where tariffs have compounded weakness from timber supply constraints and other duties already imposed by the U.S.
International Pulp Week (IPW) is the premier annual gathering for the global market pulp sector, organized by the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC). Set for May 10–12, 2026 at the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver, BC, the three-day conference brings together producers, customers, logistics providers, analysts and other key stakeholders from around the world to share market intelligence, expert insights and strategic dialogue on trends shaping the future of pulp markets. Through keynote presentations, expert panels and extensive networking opportunities, IPW offers decision-makers high-value analysis, opportunities for business development, and collaboration across the pulp supply chain. The event has become a must-attend forum for those involved in international pulp production, trade and investment, with participants from more than 40 countries expected to attend.
Modern Methods of Construction Education (MMC Edu) is a national platform that connects education and industry to advance construction training in Canada. It is a key outcome of the Mass Timber Training Network: Advancing Trades for a Sustainable Future (MTAT) project, which brings together a national network to advance wood as a low-carbon building material by addressing major barriers to mass timber adoption across the country. Led by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in partnership with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) through the Green Construction Through Wood Program (GC Wood), the MTAT project focuses on education and training as a key vehicle for reducing barriers and preparing the next generation of the workforce. MMC Edu serves as a shared platform where network members, industry partners, and educators can exchange knowledge and access resources that support innovation, sustainability, and workforce readiness across Canada.
The Berkeley Wood Lab’s research on mass timber production has the potential to improve California’s sustainability by sourcing from local forests. The lab is collaborating with Northern Californian lumber company Mad River Mass Timber, or MRMT. The company will use Californian trees that otherwise would have either been turned into woodchips or burned in a forest fire to build panels that can be used in new housing and commercial buildings. This is the first time these types of panels will be produced locally in California instead of being shipped in from other countries. The technology to create dowel-laminated timber, or DLT, has existed for decades, but the Berkeley Wood Lab adapted it for use in Californian forests. Through the process of making DLT, glue is not required, which enables the timber to be recycled in the future and turned into new material.
BHUBANESWAR: India should explore inclusion of wood-based construction and buildings into the national building code to achieve optimal outcomes for climate change and the economy, opined experts at the 14th National Workshop of Japan International Cooperation Agency Assisted Forestry Projects. The three-day workshop is organised by the Odisha Forestry Sector Development Project focuses on strengthening sustainable wood supply systems, promoting forest certification and expanding agroforestry to meet both domestic and global demands. Odisha Forestry Sector Development Society officials said while the National Building Code of India advocates bamboo for use in construction … international experts at the workshop opined that production and use of wood-based and other natural construction materials can also be explored to reduce dependence on carbon-intensive materials further and encourage sustainable forestry.
Whistler is fortunate to be surrounded by temperate rainforest, which is essential to the resort’s appeal as a tourist destination. Forests have also proven to be highly beneficial for human mental and physical health. …Old-growth forests, defined as undisturbed for at least 250 years, are vital to addressing the interconnected biodiversity and climate crises. …On the climate side, old-growth forests store vast amounts of carbon in living trees, dead wood, and undisturbed soil. …Since the early 1900s, Whistler’s forests have been logged extensively, and low-elevation old-growth forests that once covered the valley are now found only in limited areas. Commercial logging and thinning have continued by the Cheakamus Community Forest (CCF) since 2009, though old-growth logging was deferred in 2021. …Given that old-growth forests thrive on stability, attempting to manage them doesn’t make ecological sense, especially since they are already among the most climate-resilient ecosystems on Earth.
WASHINGTON — Billions of American chestnut trees once covered the eastern United States. …But by the 1950s, this venerable tree went functionally extinct, culled by a deadly airborne fungal blight and lethal root rot. A new study provides hope for its revitalization, finding that the genetic testing of individual trees can reveal which are most likely to resist disease and grow tall, thus shortening how long it takes to plant the next, more robust, generation. …The American chestnut … had little defense against foreign-introduced blight and root rot. Another type of chestnut, however, had evolved alongside those diseases. The Chinese chestnut had been introduced for its valuable nuts and it could resist diseases. …So, the authors want a tree with the characteristics of the American chestnut and the disease resistance of the Chinese chestnut. …Breed for disease resistance alone and the trees get shorter, less competitive.
Biological legacies (i.e., materials that persist following disturbance; “legacies”) shape ecosystem functioning and feedbacks to future disturbances, yet how legacies are driven by pre-disturbance ecosystem state and disturbance severity is poorly understood—especially in ecosystems influenced by infrequent and severe disturbances. Focusing on wet temperate forests as an archetype of these ecosystems, we characterized live and dead aboveground biomass 2–5 years post-fire in western Washington and northwestern Oregon, USA, to ask: How do pre-fire stand age and burn severity drive variability in initial post-fire legacies, specifically aboveground biomass carbon and fuel profiles? …Our findings demonstrate the importance of pre-disturbance ecosystem state in dictating many aspects of initial post-disturbance structure and function, with important implications for managing post-fire recovery trajectories in some of Earth’s most productive and high-biomass forests.
With global temperature rising and extreme weather becoming the new normal, ballooning insurance premiums and shrinking coverage are hitting Canadians hard. Basement floods and severe winter storms have brought the financial fallout of climate change home—it is no longer a hypothetical. …“The fact that every insurance company has climate scientists on staff and insurance companies are all pricing in climate risk; there is no financial incentive for them to do that if it wasn’t real,” said Dr. Kate Marvel, a NASA climate scientist. If climate change were a hoax, insurers would simply undercut one another, offering cheaper coverage and dismissing long-term risk, Marvel explained. Instead, they are doing the opposite; quietly rewriting the rules of risk as extreme weather becomes more frequent, more destructive and more expensive. …The question is whether governments will act quickly enough to adapt to a warming climate and confront who pays for the damage when they don’t.
Strategically planting trees along the northern edge of Canada’s boreal forest could remove multiple gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the end of the century, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Waterloo. The research, published in 
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Scientists say multiple Earth system components appear closer to destabilization than previously believed, putting the planet at increased risk of a “hothouse” trajectory driven by feedback loops that can amplify the consequences of global warming. “The risk of a hothouse Earth 
When the time is right, a good love song can make all the difference. A study from the University of California, Davis, found that temperature affects the sound and quality of male frogs’ mating calls. In the colder, early weeks of spring, their songs start off sluggishly. In warmer weather, their songs pick up the pace, and female frogs take note. Better songs make the males more attractive mates and suggest to females that conditions are suitable for reproduction. …The results carry implications for conservation amid climate change. …Understanding when frogs breed, how that may shift as the climate warms, and what is driving those shifts is critical to their conservation. …females do not necessarily come to the pond just because the males are calling. The time has to be right for her eggs to survive. That clue lies in the quality of the male’s song, which is more attractive once it’s warmer. 
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Human-caused climate change had an important impact on the recent ferocious wildfires that engulfed parts of Chile and Argentina’s Patagonia region, making the extremely high-risk conditions that led to widespread burning up to three times more likely than in a world without global warming, a team of researchers warned on Wednesday. The hot, dry and gusty weather that fed last month’s deadly wildfires in central and southern Chile was made around 200% more likely by human-made greenhouse gas emissions while the high-fire-risk conditions that fueled the blazes still racing through southern Argentina were made 150% more likely, according to World Weather Attribution, a scientific initiative that investigates extreme weather events soon after they happen. That probability will only increase, the experts added, as humans continue to blanket the planet with heat-trapping gases.