Happy Thanksgiving to our readers in Canada! The Frogs will be back Tuesday.
Canada’s forest sector expressed disappointment that the Carney-Trump talks were silent on lumber tariffs. In related commentary: reciprocal tariffs ‘are not enough’ for some US hardwood producers; there’s no national security basis for Trump’s furniture tariffs; and the Vietnam wood industry is in shock. In other Business news: BC’s expanding strike includes professional engineers and foresters; US remodellers remain optimistic; the UK faces challenges despite record sales; and a new report on construction’s plastic problem.
In Forestry/Climate news: demand for wood fibre has changed in the US; new research on why some carbon projects overestimate their CO2 benefits; and an Arctic Bioenergy Summit and Tour is announced. Meanwhile: CIF’s 2025 National Award recipients; and BC’s latest mass timber project-support recipients.
Finally, The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canadian and American officials are currently “negotiating terms” of a deal on tariffs a day after he met with the U.S. president to try and bring the trade war to a close — and Canada will come out ahead when the two sides come to an agreement. Speaking in question period … about what he accomplished out of his Oval Office sit-down with U.S. President Donald Trump, Carney said Canada already “has the best deal with the Americans” — most products are still being sold into the U.S. tariff-free despite Trump’s trade action — and “we will get an even better deal.” …Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Carney “pathetically” offered up “a trillion-dollar gift” to Trump when speaking with the president, and it was an instance of him “bowing before the president in weakness.” …Daniel Smith said Carney is developing a rapport with the president…
Plans to institute an “extended maintenance shutdown” of the Interfor lumber mill in Grand Forks is not a permanent shutdown, according to the company. On Sept. 4 Interfor Corporation announced plans to reduce its lumber production by approximately 145 million board feet at all operations between September and December of 2025, representing approximately 12 per cent of its normal output. The temporary curtailments will be through a combination of reduced operating hours, prolonged holiday breaks, reconfigured shifting schedules and extended maintenance shut-downs. The curtailments are expected to impact all of Interfor’s operating regions, with both the Canadian and U.S. operations expected to reduce their production levels by approximately 12 per cent each. “The curtailments are in response to persistently weak market conditions and ongoing economic uncertainty,” read a statement from the company.
On 31 July 2025, Metsä Group announced it would launch the planning of a EUR 300 million cost savings and profit improvement programme. Planning is now complete, and Metsä Group will initiate statutory negotiations concerning its personnel as part of it. “Our profitability has been undermined by three factors. First, increased uncertainties in global trade have reduced demand for our products. Second, changes in exchange rates have weakened our result and will continue to do so. Third, the increase in raw material costs and the general cost level has eroded our profitability,” says Jussi Vanhanen, President and CEO of Metsä Group. …According to preliminary assessments, the planned measures may lead to a permanent reduction of 800 permanent jobs. A significant share – 540 jobs – are expected to be in Finland. In addition to redundancies, the planned changes may lead to changes in duties.
HUNTSVILLE — The Ontario government is investing $10 million through the Forest Sector Investment and Innovation Program to help Daiken North America upgrade its laminated board production line at its manufacturing facility in Huntsville. This investment will help the company bring a first-of-its-kind wood panel product to market, create jobs and boost productivity. As part of its plan to protect Ontario, the government is making strategic investments to help forest sector businesses adapt, compete and grow to stay resilient in the face of U.S. tariffs. …Daiken’s $70 million project will equip them to manufacture a new type of wood panel used in flooring, recreational vehicles and modular housing, while supporting 128 existing jobs and creating 10 new jobs. This made-in-Ontario forest product is the first of its kind in the world, offering a higher-performance, lower-cost alternative to imported material. 
Anderson Creek Timber is currently hauling logs from its property located just south of Nelson above the Rail Trail at Mountain Station. The work will continue for another three-to-four weeks, said Doug Thorburn, a forester with Monticola Forest Ltd. that manages Anderson Creek’s forest properties. … The 600-hectare Anderson Creek Timber property is private land and is therefore governed by B.C.’s Private Managed Forest Land Act, which provides much less regulation than the Forest Act in areas such as biodiversity, watershed protection, wildlife protection and harvest guidelines. …Anderson Creek Timber and Kalesnikoff, which has a public Crown land tenure over much of the Anderson Creek watershed, are working on a watershed assessment for the area… The reason the company has not done public information sessions about its logging plans … is that on privately owned land, compared with public land, there is less obligation to do so.
US civil society groups are urging the European Commission to resist Washington’s pressure to delay the EU’s deforestation regulation (EUDR) or tweak the rules to grant the country preferential treatment, according to a letter seen by Euractiv. The missive, sent this morning to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Commissioners responsible for green rules, the economy and trade, warns against any backtracking. “We are particularly concerned by the Commission’s apparent willingness to offer the U.S. special treatment under the EUDR as part of ongoing EU-U.S. trade negotiations,” the letter reads. The organisations refer to the joint statement issued by Brussels and Washington in September, which labels the US as posing “negligible risk to global deforestation.” Rick Jacobsen, senior manager for commodities policy at the US NGO Environmental Investigation Agency, told Euractiv that US interests have “ramped up the pressure campaign” to weaken the law before it even comes into force.
Despite the Trump administration’s pledge to aggressively clear overgrowth from national forests, the U.S. Forest Service is falling significantly short on wildfire mitigation work. By mid-September, the agency had only treated about 2.2 million acres through thinning and prescribed burns. That’s far short of the over 4 million acres treated during the last year of the Biden administration, and it’s also behind the agency’s annual average over the past decade. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz blamed “operational challenges” and said agency resources were diverted to help battle blazes in Canada. However, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is blaming the slowdown in fuel treatments on the Trump administration firing thousands of Forest Service employees earlier this year. …the government shutdown has stopped wildfire prevention efforts across the country’s entire 193 million acres of national forest land [at] the ideal time for the agency to conduct safe prescribed burns across the West.
Last April, a pair of teenage boys … set fire to wooden pallets someone had dumped in the woods. Within a few hours it became one of the fastest-moving and most destructive wildfires on record in the New Jersey Pinelands. By the time it was brought under control three weeks later, about 15,000 acres of preserved forest were destroyed, and thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and businesses. Most official accounts of what became known as the Jones Road Fire attribute its ferocious power to the intensifying cycles of drought and heat linked to climate change that continue to affect coastal areas. But forestry experts in New Jersey point to another cause. …On Sept. 18, the New Jersey Pinelands Commission took a big step toward more aggressive management of the state’s Pinelands National Preserve voting to thin out a 12,000-acre stretch of pine and oak woodland adjacent to the wildfire site.
In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years. The carbon emissions from fires in 2024 surpassed those from deforestation for the first time on record. Brazil was the largest contributor, accounting for 61% of these emissions, followed by Bolivia with 32%, the study found. “The escalating fire occurrence, driven by climate change and unsustainable land use, threatens to push the Amazon towards a catastrophic tipping point,” the authors write. …The researchers estimated that the total emissions from deforestation and fire-driven degradation in the Amazon in 2024 was 1,416 million metric tons of CO2. This is higher than Japan’s CO2 emissions in 2022, which ranked fifth after China, the U.S., India and Russia.