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Forestry

Canada’s Forest Trust Corporation partners with Forests Canada to plant 250,000 trees across the country

Cision Newswire
February 10, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada

Canada’s Forest Trust Corporation (CFTC) and Forests Canada announced a new partnership, where the two national organizations will team up to plant trees from coast to coast. Together, the organizations will plant 250,000 trees this year, with Forests Canada contributing longstanding expertise and proudly delivering forest restoration programs focused on improving forest health and landscape connectivity to support diverse, healthy ecosystems. CFTC brings excellence in the use of technology to monitor forest health, biodiversity benefits, and climate impacts. The national collaboration will create up to 125 hectares of new forest. This will contribute to CFTC’s projections of planting 30 million trees over the next five years, and builds on more than two million trees that CFTC has planted and monitors in partnership with clients, local communities, and Indigenous partners. This collaboration will also contribute to Forests Canada’s all-time goal of planting a total of 50 million trees by the end of 2025.

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Wyden co-sponsors bill to reinvest ski area fees into Oregon public lands

By Zach Urness
The Register-Guard
February 10, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden co-sponsored a bill Monday that would take nearly $40 million in fees paid by ski areas to operate on public lands and reinvest that money locally. Ski areas that operate on U.S. Forest Service lands — which includes almost every ski area in Oregon — pay an annual fee for the ability “to have access to some of America’s most stunning public lands,” a news release said. Currently, the $40 million in fees — including $2 million from Oregon — is sent to the U.S. Treasury and isn’t earmarked for any purpose, Wyden spokesman Hank Stern said. “This would reinvest these fees to support recreation on national forests,” Stern said. The bill, known as the SHRED Act, would “establish a framework for local national forests to retain a portion of ski fees to offset the impacts of increased recreational use, giving them the flexibility to direct resources where they are needed the most.”

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Pineros in Southern Oregon: How Jackson County became a center for guest workers in forestry

By Justin Higginbottom
Oregon Public Broadcasting
February 9, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Non-logging forestry work, like planting trees or fuels reduction, is big business in Oregon. But if you’re picturing those doing this work as classic lumberjacks — plaid shirts, big beards, white guys — think again. Foreign guest workers make up much of this labor. And Jackson County is a national center for the industry. On a Saturday afternoon, the parking lot of The Laundry Center in Medford sees a steady stream of white vans, or “crummies,” come and go. Inside those vehicles are forestry workers, like Jose Luis Arredondo. He’s using his precious spare time to wash clothes before setting out to another work site to plant trees, clear understory or light prescribed burns to reduce the risk from wildfires.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Forest carbon credits seen as ‘tool in the toolbox’ in effort to curb climate change

By Katie Thoreson
Iowa Public Radio
February 10, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US East

Paul Martin

Paul Martin spent more than a decade searching for land in northern Wisconsin. For the last two years, roughly half of their land has been enrolled in the Family Forest Carbon Program. It calculates how much carbon is stored in trees, then sells the credits to companies to offset their carbon emissions… When it comes to carbon credits from forestland, the market has traditionally been open to corporations or governments that own thousands of acres of trees. More programs are popping up to help smaller landowners get into the carbon market. Family forests, those owned by individuals or families, make up nearly 40% of all forestland in the U.S. The Family Forest Carbon Program is a relatively new program from the American Forest Foundation in partnership with the Nature Conservancy. Its focus is on getting those people who own smaller forests into the carbon market — with as little as 30 acres of qualified trees.

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State poised to power planes with pulp, not petroleum

By Tim Walker
Minnesota Legislation
February 10, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US East

Can you fly airplanes with wood? The answer is: yes. It’s a very qualified “yes” — and it may not happen for many years — but the potential exists to manufacture sustainable aviation fuel from residual wood products and other non-petroleum-based sources that can reduce an airplane’s carbon footprint. “The technology to fly airplanes with wood exists but needs to be scaled up to show the true potential,” Rick Horton, executive vice president of Minnesota Forest Industries, told the House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee at an informational hearing Monday. Horton was one of several testifiers who said using sustainable aviation fuel to power airplanes is in its infancy and needs large-scale development — and probably government subsidies — to make it economically viable… Sustainable aviation fuel currently costs two to five times more than conventional jet fuel.

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