Blog Archives

Today’s Takeaway

Federal Timber Won’t Solve the US Lumber Shortage

Tree Frog Forestry News
March 18, 2025
Category: Today's Takeaway

Canada and Europe will continue to play crucial role in meeting US wood demand—as Washington state wonders if boosting timber production can counter tariffs. In related news: tariff uncertainty keeps Canadian home buyers on the sidelines despite a rise in building construction; while US housing starts surged 11.2% last month and falling permits signal a slowdown; and here’s what building homes on federal land in the US would look like. Meanwhile, good news for India and New Zealand in timber and lumber trade; and a new global platform for recycled wood.

In Forestry/Climate news: almost half of landslides in southwestern BC have been linked to logging or wildfires as the forest fire season gets underway; Arkansas asks EU leaders to reconsider deforestation regulation; the Northwest Forest Plan revision aims to solve multiple issues; and the US Forest Service remains silent on firings. Meanwhile: dozens of wildfires burn across Missouri and Kansas; and Southwest Idaho targets high wildfire risk; and it’s time to guard against pine beetles.

Finally, an alternative to wood caskets comes from an invasive vine in Australia.

Suzi Hopkinson, Tree Frog News Editor

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Froggy Foibles

‘Holy smokes’: Huge log believed to be 50 million years old unearthed at N.W.T. mine

By Liny Lamberink
CBC News
March 26, 2025
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

A log of wood believed to be 50 million years old has been hauled up from below ground at Diavik diamond mine in the N.W.T. — a find that researchers say is remarkable but not uncommon… the mine described it as a 136-kilogram (300-pound) log from a redwood tree that it found 240 metres below ground. In an email, a Diavik spokesperson said it was discovered on Feb. 20 during regular mining at the A21 pit while miners were scooping kimberlite ore.  The spokesperson said pieces of wood are regularly recovered from Diavik’s kimberlite pipes but this one is notable because of its size. Scientists know that 50 million years ago the region would have been a humid temperate forest ecosystem with metasequoia, hazel, chestnut and oak-like trees.”It would almost have looked like Nashville, Tennessee in a way, climate-wise.”

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Business & Politics

B.C. Insider: Softwood lumber showdown

By Wendy Cox
The Globe and Mail
March 18, 2025
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada

Despite decades of a fractious trade relationship between softwood producers in Canada and those in the U.S., the Canadian softwood lumber industry hasn’t liked to trumpet what it considers the superiority of its product because the two markets are so intertwined. Production has increased at U.S. sawmills in the past decade, including at facilities owned by companies with head offices in Canada. That’s now changing, with Canadian producers wanting to make plain to consumers in Canada, in the U.S. and no doubt, to potential new markets around the world, that the spruce, pine and fir grown north of the 49th parallel is a superior product. That’s because the growth rings are tighter than those found in the lumber in the U.S. South. It takes from 70 to 100 years before spruce, pine and fir (SPF) trees are considered ripe for harvesting in the B.C. Interior. By comparison, southern yellow pine trees are harvested after about 35 years. [a paid subscription is required to read this story]

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Policy to blame as B.C.’s forestry squeeze gets worse

By Jerome Gessaroli, senior fellow at ResourceWorks
Business in Vancouver
March 31, 2025
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Another wave of sawmill closures swept across British Columbia in 2024, from West Fraser’s Fraser Lake facility to Canfor’s operations in Polar, Vanderhoof, and Fort St. John. As the Northern View reported, Chief Robert Michelle of the Stellat’en warned that “the economic impact for our communities will be dire,” citing job losses not just in the Fraser Lake mill but also among log haulers, restaurant workers and gas station employees… It is clear that current conditions cannot sustain profitable operations, leaving businesses struggling and workers unemployed. The fundamental issue lies in how Victoria approaches forest policy. The government faces mounting pressure from multiple stakeholders. Environmental groups advocate for reduced harvesting levels, while Indigenous communities seek both greater access to timber supplies and a larger role in forest management. While environmental protection and Indigenous rights are important considerations in forest management, and rightly so, the government’s approach has failed to balance these priorities with economic sustainability.

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Forests minister in the Okanagan as industry braces for tariffs

By Colin Dacre
Castanet
March 18, 2025
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Forests minister Ravi Parmar is in the Okanagan this week meeting with an industry under siege. Longtime systemic challenges facing the forest sector have been exacerbated by escalating tariffs on softwood lumber by the Trump administration… Mill owners have been critical of BCTS for failing to get timber to market and not meeting its quotas. Parmar says he’s been tasked with getting the province back up to a harvest level of 45 million cubic metres annually. The province harvested 35 million cubic metres in 2023. “I think we can do that without a doubt,” he said, acknowledging that permitting is only half the battle… “A lot of people think it’s just permits that are holding us back from a strong and vibrant forest sector. And if that was the case, I think we could address the problem fairly quickly, to some extent. But it’s broader than that.”

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North Cowichan looks to respond to U.S. tariffs

By Robert Barron
Cowichan Valley Citizen
March 17, 2025
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Rob Douglas

The Municipality of North Cowichan is looking for ways to respond to the new U.S. tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump… Mayor Rob Douglas said North Cowichan has businesses and major employers, particularly in the forest sector, that are dependent on U.S. markets and are bracing for what the future is going to look like. He said he recently met with officials at Western Forest Products, which operates two sawmills and a remanufacturing plant in the municipality. WFP is one of North Cowichan’s biggest taxpayers and one of its largest employers. “I’m also going to meet Paper Excellence [owner of the Crofton mill] to discuss their challenges as well and what we can do to support them. I’ve reached out to the province for a meeting to discuss these issues.” said Douglas.

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Finance & Economics

U.S. Chamber Comments on Section 232 Investigation of Imports of Timber and Lumber

US Chamber of Commerce
April 1, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: Canada, United States

Dear Deputy Assistant Secretary Longnecker: The U.S. Chamber strongly opposes the establishment of tariffs or quantitative restrictions on imports of timber, lumber, and their derivative products such as paper, cardboard, and pulp. Imports of these goods do not represent a national security risk, as addressed below. Imposing tariffs on these goods would raise costs for U.S. businesses and home construction, undermine the export success enjoyed by the U.S. paper industry, and reduce incomes in many U.S. communities… It is unreasonable to suggest that imports of these goods represent a national security risk, in part because the chief source of imports in this sector is Canada, a NATO ally and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) partner… It is not reasonable to claim that imports of these goods from a close ally somehow pose a threat to U.S. national security.

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Trump Wants to Build Homes on Federal Land. Here’s What That Would Look Like.

By Rebecca Picciotto
The Wall Street Journal
March 17, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: United States

The Trump administration is creating a task force to identify federal land that would be suitable for building affordable housing. The initiative marks the administration’s first step toward a pledge to unlock vast swaths of federal land to address America’s housing shortage by transferring or leasing the land to local governments. The task force will be run jointly by the Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the two agencies’ secretaries wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Sunday. Developing even 512,000 acres of the Bureau of Land Management’s lots could yield between three million and four million new homes across western states such as Nevada, Utah, California and Arizona, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., center-right think tank.

[a paid subscription is required to read this article; however, the interactive map feature is freely accessible!]

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Homebuyers, remodelers set to pay more as tariffs on lumber and appliances take effect

Oregon Live
March 17, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: United States

Shopping for a new home? Ready to renovate your kitchen or install a new deck? You’ll be paying more to do so. The Trump administration’s tariffs on imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China are already driving up the cost of building materials used in new residential construction and home remodeling projects. The tariffs are projected to raise the costs that go into building a single-family home in the U.S. by $7,500 to $10,000… Such costs are typically passed along to the homebuyer in the form of higher prices, which could hurt demand at a time when the U.S. housing market remains in a slump and many builders are having to offer buyers costly incentives to drum up sales… “These prices will never come down,” Schnipper said. “Whatever is going to happen, these things will be sticky and hopefully we’re good enough as a small business, that we can absorb some of that.”

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Los Angelos Has Big Plans to Rebuild After the Fires. Good Luck Getting Insurance.

By Kevin T. Dugan
The Wall Street Journal
March 11, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: United States, US West

In her pop-art decorated office in the heart of Beverly Hills, real-estate broker Rochelle Maize got an early look at who would control the future of Pacific Palisades. It was eight days after the wildfires broke out— even then, the power of California’s insurance companies was becoming evident. Her clients buy and sell mansions in crown-jewel neighborhoods where listings bottom out around the single-digit millions. One client wanted to go ahead with a seven-figure purchase, risk be damned, even if he had to be self-insured—meaning he would proceed without a policy… The question for Los Angeles isn’t so much how to rebuild the Palisades, but who pays if it burns again. “Writing new policies doesn’t make any sense at this time,” State Farm General, California’s largest property insurer, wrote Tuesday to the state insurance commissioner. To shore up its finances, the company is seeking permission for a 22% rate increase for 1.2 million homeowners. [A paid subscription is required to read this article]

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New Forests, Oji set up US$300 million forestry fund

By Tom King
The Asset
March 26, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: International

In a move that merges sustainable finance with industrial-scale environmental stewardship, Sydney-based natural capital investment manager New Forests has partnered with Japan’s Oji Holdings Corporation, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper producers, to establish the Future Forest Innovations Fund. With an initial commitment of US$300 million ( US$297 million from Oji and US$3 million from New Forests ), the fund aims to acquire and manage 70,000 hectares of plantation forests across Southeast Asia, North and Latin America, and Africa… The partnership signals an alignment between traditional manufacturing and ecological impact investing. Oji Holdings, which already manages 635,000 hectares of plantation forests worldwide, is leveraging this initiative to meet its 2030 net sequestration goal of 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, integrating climate action into its global forest footprint.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Built by Nature Launches 2025 Prize to Celebrate Global Excellence in Responsible Timber Construction

Cision Newswire
March 26, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Built by Nature (BbN) is excited to announce the launch of its 2025 global Prize, recognising exemplary real-world applications of the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction in predominantly timber buildings. On April 7, the grant-funding network will open applications for completed and in-use projects, including new builds, renovations, and significant extensions. The Prize will highlight excellence in demonstration of the Principles, with winners announced at the annual Built by Nature Summit in October. Winning buildings will be showcased at high-profile events and a documentary film premiered at COP, included in an international study tour, and presented as examples of responsible timber construction on the Built by Nature Knowledge Hub.

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Self-densified super-strong wood: a sustainable alternative to traditional structural materials

EurekAlert!
March 21, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Wood, a traditional and sustainable structural material, has long been used in construction and furniture due to its availability and mechanical properties. However, natural wood’s strength is often insufficient for advanced engineering applications. Now, researchers from Nanjing University have developed a novel self-densification strategy to create super-strong wood that could replace metals and alloys. The team used a combination of partial delignification and a LiCl/DMAc swelling process to release and reorganize wood fibers. This method allows the fibers to move inward and fill the cell lumen, followed by air-drying to achieve self-densification. Unlike traditional compressed wood, which relies on unidirectional compression, this self-densified wood exhibits uniform shrinkage in the transverse area, maintaining its longitudinal dimension.

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Coffins made from invasive vine a sustainable alternative to wood

ABC News, Australia
March 17, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Ms Zimmi Forest, a basket weaver in northern New South Wales, has tapped into the desire to do death differently, and her workshops have been booked solid since they started 18 months ago… Ms Forest said the idea of weaving coffins came to her after she was invited to make baskets at a property where a Landcare group was working to remove invasive Cat’s Claw vine. The Brazilian vine is perfect for weaving; once it is stripped from the trees and pruned back, it forms long, flexible strands. “The great thing about a woven coffin is it’s permeable, all the microorganisms in the soil can get in and its breaks down so much quicker. “For cremation, why would you burn solid timber?” The process to make a woven coffin took about 150 hours, and Ms Forest said she had made about 15 coffins at the workshops and on her own as commissioned projects.

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Forestry

Industrial update: Helping Cariboo forests regrow

By Andie Mollins
The Williams Lake Tribune
March 31, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

When it comes to reforesting areas made bare by natural causes, it’s the Ministry of Forests’ job to oversee the progress. “Wildfire…really is the biggest thing we’re focusing on,” said Shelley Barlow, the ministry’s regional silviculture specialist for the Cariboo. According to a February 2018 report by the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, 80 per cent of the area affected by the 2017 wildfires in B.C. was in the Cariboo. About one million hectares of forests were burnt in the region, and 609,000 of those hectares were part of the Cariboo’s timber harvesting land base. Prior to 2017, the ministry was planting up to two million trees per year in the Williams Lake forestry district. Since then, Barlow said this number has at least tripled.

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BC Parks Foundation acquires over 80 hectares near Oliver

By Brennan Phillips
Vernon Morning Star
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

The BC Parks Foundation recently announced the acquisition of private land including a private portion of the road leading up to Mount Kobau near Oliver.  The land was acquire from Shawn Baenziger of HB Land Company Ltd. and covers over 80 hectares (over 200 acres) in the upper Fairview area of Oliver.  The road access will now be under the stewardship of the foundation, where previously it was Baenziger, Fortis and the BC Forest Service that managed access. Baenziger had worked with the others to install a gate to pro-actively reduce the risk of wildfires and protect a stand of old-growth trees. “I hope that the new owners will find effective ways to manage access to the area while ensuring its pristine condition is maintained for future generations,” said Baenziger.

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Crews rushing to finish wildfire mitigation projects before summer

By Rob Gibson
Castanet
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

If you’ve noticed smoke on days it hasn’t been snowing or raining recently, it’s likely from a prescribed burn. Local governments across the Okanagan including the Westbank First Nation are working to finish as many of their prescribed burn operations as possible before the weather gets too hot and dry. A prescribed burn, sometimes called a controlled burn, is a planned and intentional use of fire on a specific land area to reduce wildfire risk, improve wildlife habitat, or restore ecosystems… The McDougall Creek wildfire was one of the most destructive local wildfires in recent memory, destroying 303 structures in West Kelowna, Westbank First Nation, Kelowna and the RDCO. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimated the fire caused $480 million in insured damage.

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Courtenay air quality getting better thanks to local initiatives, report says

By Madeline Dunnet
Comox Valley Record
March 17, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Air quality in Courtenay is improving while pollution caused by wood stove smoke has been steadily decreasing over the past five years, according to a recent report presented to the City of Courtenay council. Wood is a common fuel source that is used to heat homes in the Comox Valley because it is relatively affordable, reliable and available. But wood stove smoke has also become the most significant source of air pollution in the region. According to the CVRD, a growing body of evidence gathered since 2008 shows that air quality in the area is concerning. There are high levels of fine particulate matter — a pollutant that can cause serious health problems — in the air and much of it is due to smoke.

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B.C. reminded of the bear necessities of safety as hibernation season ends

By Austin Kelly
Terrace Standard
March 17, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

As spring approaches flowers will bloom, leaves will come back to trees and hungry bears will be digging through your dumpsters. Angelika Langen the executive director and co-founder of Northern Lights Wildife Sanctuary says the best way to avoid bears at home is to make sure anything that might attract them, like dumpsters, are locked up because wherever they wander and wherever they roam, they’ll be looking for food. “They’re coming out of hibernation and they’re hungry, they will be looking for anything that provides them with as much calories as possible,” she said. Getting bear-proof garbage containers, avoiding leaving pet food outside and keeping gates to your property closed are ways to keep bears from being uninvited guests looking for a meal at your home.

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City of Nelson to conduct wildfire mitigation near Selkirk College’s Silver King Campus

MyNelsonNow
March 11, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

© City of Nelson

The City of Nelson is undertaking a wilfire mitigation project this spring on 3.4 hectares of forested land near the Selkirk College Silver King campus.   The work is part of the City’s ongoing wildfire risk reduction efforts and will be funded fully through the provincial Community Resiliency Investment (CRI) program.  The city says wildfire mitigation projects like this help reduce the potential for intense wildfires, while making it safer and more efficient for suppression crews to respond to any fires that do start… “A treated forest is much safer to fight a wildfire in. Fire crews can work more effectively, suppression efforts are quicker, and the risk to surrounding homes is greatly reduced,” said Fire Chief Jeff Hebert.   “Ultimately, this helps protect nearby homes, infrastructure, and the community as a whole.”

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New agroforestry maps plot benefits of trees

By Lauren Quinn
Agupdate.com
March 17, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

There’s a longstanding attitude in many farming communities that trees and agriculture don’t mix. But agroforestry — the intentional integration of trees and shrubs in agricultural systems, such as planting trees as windbreaks, integrating trees on pastures, or growing tree crops intercropped with annual crops — can provide a multitude of benefits to both farmers and landscapes. So far, in the U.S. Midwest, those benefits have gone unrealized, with vanishingly small adoption rates. Researchers say strategic plans that integrate environmental, social and economic considerations are needed to expand agroforestry throughout the Midwest. Ultimately, the team developed a map identifying areas where agroforestry could deliver the biggest impacts in terms of soil erosion, water quality, climate and profitability for lands that are not viable for other crops.

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What old trees can teach us about modern wildfires

By Sarah Kaplan
The Washington Post
March 11, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

It was a year when fire seemed to engulf the continent. Flames surged through the pinyon-juniper woodlands of the Southwest, the ponderosa pine stands of the Rocky Mountains, the mixed conifer forests of the Great Lakes region. The smell of smoke was everywhere. To this day, 1748 remains the biggest wildfire year in North American history, according to a sweeping new study of data recorded in the rings of trees. Hundreds of sites representing an estimated 29 percent of the continent’s forests show evidence of burning. The blazes that year were more extensive than even the worst fire seasons of the past decade, when the hot, dry conditions created by climate change have helped turn whole landscapes into tinder. Yet unlike modern wildfires — which increasingly burn hot enough to damage ecosystems and destroy human communities — the blazes that swept the continent in the middle of the 18th century did minimal harm to the landscape, researchers say. [A free subscription is required to read this article]

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Elon Musk’s layoffs would undermine wildfire protection. It’s part of a bigger plan

By Zora Thomas
The Los Angeles Times
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

What are Musk, Trump and the congressional right really after? Anyone who works in land management knows these agencies have long gone underfunded and unsupported by Republicans, rendering them less and less effective as the demands on them grow ever more pressing. Now this bloodletting is accelerating, and soon it will be time to go for the throat. As these agencies flounder, turning their lands over to private administration — to timber, mineral and oil extraction or to private ownership and development — will begin to seem logical and even appealing. While sustainable logging can be a valuable forest management tool, research shows that when lands are managed primarily for resource extraction, they become less resilient to wildfire. This is a shortsighted, profit-driven turn toward a land-use model that is ultimately unsustainable. What will the public be left with? Will we still have places to hike, fish, hunt, dirt-bike and ski? Or will a new landlord be setting new rates?

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Controversial logging bill makes it through Oregon committee

By April Ehrlich
Oregon Public Broadcasting
March 31, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Lawmakers have moved forward a controversial logging bill that could open the state up to lawsuits if Oregon doesn’t log enough timber in a given year. Representatives in the House Committee on Natural Resources unanimously advanced House Bill 3103 early Monday. The bill would allow counties and the timber industry to sue the state forester if Oregon logs less than the Department of Forestry forecasts in its once-a-decade estimates. There are exceptions if a large mass of trees are destroyed by wildfires, diseases or storms… Every decade, the Oregon Department of Forestry estimates how much timber it could log from state land for the next 10 years. Timber industry representatives and county officials say the department tends to over-promise and under deliver, making it difficult for them to plan ahead.

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Wilderness permits for Oregon parks returns despite uncertainty over ranger staffing

By Zach Urness
The Register-Guard
March 31, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

The sometimes controversial permit system meant to limit crowds in three of Oregon’s most popular wilderness areas will return this summer, despite questions about who will enforce the system following widespread layoffs and another round of anticipated cuts to the U.S. Forest Service… The agency stated: “For the Deschutes, we will still have a wilderness ranger presence this summer. We also have a dedicated cadre of trained volunteer wilderness backcountry rangers who focus on education and mitigating impacts as well as a robust volunteer group that staffs wilderness trailheads to ensure awareness of and to gain compliance with the permit system (including redirecting people who do not have permits to other opportunities within the 60 available self-issued permit wilderness trailheads).”

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Wood is key to building. Importing it is worse than responsible Washington logging – Opinion

By Amy Harding
The News Tribune
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

The Pacific Northwest is fortunate to have vast forests and ideal conditions for growing trees quickly. These forests have long been a cornerstone of our rural economies while also protecting streams, sequestering carbon and supporting wildlife. However, we face a troubling trend: a decline in local timber production and a growing reliance on imported lumber. We use science for active forest management with the toughest regulations in the world, we do forestry the best here. It’s time to prioritize local timber and rebuild a robust, sustainable industry right here in Washington… Prioritizing local wood production is a win-win for the Pacific Northwest. Wood is good, but local wood is best if we want to restore a vital, create economic stability and protect our environment.

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What will Trump’s order on logging mean for Montana’s timber industry?

By Ellis Juhlin
mtpr.org
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

It’s a cold day at Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge, Montana. Outreach Forester Sean Steinebach walks toward the mill’s massive kiln where freshly cut two-by-fours are dried. You can feel the heat radiating off the fresh boards. He stops and inhales. “It smells fresh and it smells bright and it smells wild,” he says. The mill’s lumber yard is filled with stacks of Douglas fir and lodgepole pine logs that will soon become lumber. Having a steady and reliable supply of logs is crucial to keeping the mill in business, says Steinebach. “We drive the economics of Powell County for sure, Anaconda, Deer Lodge County. We’ve got a lot of employees that live there. Granite County, we’ve got employees there. We’re a big impact in the whole state, I think. Forest products in general is a huge impact in the state of Montana.”

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Pests thrived in Colorado forests in 2024, report says

By Marilyn Moore
9News Colorado
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

A warm and dry 2024 wasn’t great for Colorado’s forests, according to the Colorado State Forest Service.  The agency’s annual forest health report released Wednesday found that after a wet and cool year in 2023, near-record-breaking temperatures and below-average precipitation stressed trees trying to build a defense from forest pests. The insects can create fuel for wildfires by filling forests with dead and dying trees… The report details how wildfires in Colorado’s forests impact the state’s watersheds. Colorado’s mountain watersheds are vital to the nation’s freshwater supply. The report recommends protecting the state’s watersheds through “ongoing collaboration among landowners, contractors and partners at the local, state and federal level.” Lastly, the report explains the importance of wildfire mitigation saying, “Active management is critical to help keep wildfires at a low severity and protect the many benefits that forests provide.”

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From coal to community forest: how one Ohio organization is reclaiming former mine land

By Erin Gottsacker
The Ohio Newsroom
March 18, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Lombard and Stanley are two co-founders of Rising Appalachia. The nonprofit is revitalizing 45 acres of former mine land, once owned by the Sugar Creek Coal Company… But the space won’t exist solely for recreation and education; they want to make it economically productive for the community again. The Sugar Creek Coal Company still owns 900 acres surrounding Rising Appalachia’s project. Lombard, Stanley and other community members are trying to raise approximately $4 million to purchase the rest of it and establish a community forest. “People can hunt on the land, they can gather food on the land, they can be involved in submitting public comments for projects and management proposals,” Stanley said. “But it’s not exactly managed by the community. A community forest in contrast, is designed by and managed by the people who live here and depend on the forest.”

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Don’t wait to battle beetles Forest experts warn, now is the time to guard against pine beetles

By Sierra Ferguson
Black Hills Pioneer
March 18, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

It might be time to treat your trees to prevent pine beetle infestations in the Black Hills. That’s according to US Forest Service Entomologist Kurt Allen, and Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Forest Health Specialist John Ball. The pair have been hosting talks and information sessions on mountain pine beetle outbreaks since 1999. Last week, they stopped in Spearfish with a handful of clear messages. For one thing, the Black Hills is not necessarily on the verge of a mountain pine beetle epidemic — at least not on the scale last seen a decade ago… “Between the larvae feeding and a blue stain fungus they introduce, they kill trees very quickly,” Ball said.

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Governor reveals Oklahoma’s Chief Forester is out of job after wildfires sweep across state

By Robby Korth
Kosu.org
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

Mark Goeller

Just weeks after devastating fires ravaged Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt revealed the man in charge of the state’s forest management is out of a job. Mark Goeller has roughly 40 years of forestry experience and has worked as Oklahoma’s State Forester since 2018. Stitt panned the agency’s response to the wildfires that raged across the state in mid-March, burning more than 170,000 acres, killing four, injuring hundreds and destroying more than 400 homes, including one owned by the governor near Luther. At a Wednesday press conference, the governor was asked why Goeller would no longer work in his role. “He’s the head of the forestry department, and we had a horrible, horrible wildfire in the State of Oklahoma, and I didn’t think they did a really good job,” Stitt said in response. It’s unclear what part of the wildfire response Stitt did not like.

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Proposed Bill Would Provide Tax Incentive for Landowners to Protect Wild Forest Lands

By Claudia Braymer, Protect the Adirondacks Executive Director
Adirondack Almanack
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

A new proposed bill would provide real property tax incentives to landowners who voluntarily place permanent protective easements on their forested lands. State law currently provides real property tax reductions for landowners who manage a minimum number of acres of their land for timber production for a period of at least ten years pursuant to a timber management plan approved by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Landowners who meet these criteria receive a real property tax exemption of up to 80 percent of the assessed valuation of the lands subject to the approved timber management plan. The new bill would provide similar real property tax relief for landowners who place at least ten acres of forested land under a conservation easement that ensures that the tract will be permanently maintained as wild forest land and prohibits the cutting, removal or destruction of trees on the tract (with certain exemptions such as DEC-approved actions to address invasive species).

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War ignited record-breaking wildfires in Ukraine last year, scientists say

By Kate Abnett
Reuters
March 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Last year was Ukraine’s worst year for wildfires in more than three decades of record-keeping, as shelling along front lines in the war with Russia triggered an unprecedented number of blazes, scientists said. Forest fires in Ukraine in 2024 burnt more than twice the area destroyed by fire in the entire 27-country European Union in 2024. Satellite data showed nearly 9,000 fires torched a total of 965,000 hectares in Ukraine in 2024. Ukraine has around 10 million hectares, or 100,000 sq km (38,610 sq miles), of forest. Around a third of the area burned last year was farmland… Maksym Matsala, a forest researcher at Sweden’s University of Agricultural Sciences, said the main cause was artillery and falling shells igniting fires. He said the jump in fires last year was partly because of a large build-up of dead and damaged trees since Russia’s invasion in 2022, which had created plentiful fuel for fires during extremely dry weather in 2024.

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Drone tree-seeding trial could ‘revolutionise’ the expansion of rainforests say exponents

By Angela Garwood
Positive News
March 18, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

A pioneering drone seeding initiative in south-west England – one of the largest of its kind using native tree seeds to date – has the potential to transform rainforest restoration, say those involved. The project, by the Woodland Trust, has seen high-tech drones scatter 75,000 seeds across the Bodmin landscape in Cornwall. The drones, which weigh 110kg and can carry up to 58kg of seeds each, hover a few metres above the ground and can access areas where the planting of trees by hand isn’t feasible. Joining forces with the South West Rainforest Alliance, the Woodland Trust aims to use the technique to triple the land area of temperate rainforest across Cornwall and Devon from 8% to 24% by 2050… Scattering tree seeds that are native to these rainforests, including common oak, alder, wild cherry, downy birch and hazel, the drones seeded 11 hectares of land in eight hours.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Canadians want next government to prioritize climate change, poll finds

By Stefan Labbe
Business in Vancouver
March 18, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: Canada

Two-thirds of Canadians agree the next federal government should prioritize action on climate change and protecting nature, a new poll has found. Sixty-two per cent of those surveyed said Canada should maintain its commitments on climate change despite the U.S. government’s recent decision to pull out of the United Nations Paris agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions. A similar share of respondents supported Ottawa investing in renewable energy over fossil fuels. The poll questioned a panel of 1,548 Canadian adults in an online survey from March 7-10. Michael Polanyi, a policy and campaign manager at Nature Canada, said his group is concerned the $6.5 billion promised to industry last week does not come with guidelines that would prioritize workers and limit harms to nature. “It’s in Canada’s economic interest in terms of accessing global markets that we’re not further degrading forests,” Polanyi added, pointing to tightening EU regulations. “There’s a risk of closing market off to Canadian forest products.”

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Are our forests full of biochar?

Alberta Land Institute – University of Alberta
March 13, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: Canada, Canada West

If forest fires burn organic matter, and biochar is created by burning of organic matter shouldn’t forest soils be full of biochar? Not exactly. There is a difference between the burnt product of wildfire and biochar. Forest fires do produce charcoal, but while both charcoal and biochar are types of pyrogenic carbon, they’re not quite the same thing… Forests in Alberta have been affected by the mountain pine beetle, leaving behind dead trees that act as easy fuel for fires. These dead, dry trees are extremely flammable. The Canadian government has looked into using these dead trees as biofuels and some companies do use them to create biochar. Another source of organic matter for biochar is the material removed from forests as part of fuel management… Both of these methods help manage wildfire and could potentially increase the carbon sequestration of forests if the resulting biochar was added back into the forest’s soil.

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Butterfly populations are declining. Meet the people moving a forest to save them

CBC Radio
March 28, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

A new study is bringing hard data to understand how butterfly numbers have declined steeply in recent years, due to the combination of habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide exposure. A group of scientists is hoping to fix at least one of these problems for one species, by moving an entire forest in Mexico. The sacred fir trees, where monarch butterflies spend their winters, are struggling under climate change. Recently a team of researchers planted a thousand sacred fir trees at a new location at higher elevations to kickstart a new, future-proof forest for the butterflies to overwinter. Quirks producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke to Cuauhtémoc Saénz Romero, a forest geneticist at the University of Michoacán in Mexico, and Greg O’Neill, a climate change adaptation scientist with the BC Provincial Government in the Ministry of Forests.

[This is an episode segment of Quirks and Quarks, on CBC Listen]

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The genetic diversity of our plants and forests is at risk, new FAO reports warn

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
March 26, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

The Second Report on the State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources, published on Wednesday, reveal concerning trends in global plant and forest diversity. For example, more than 40 percent of all taxa surveyed are no longer present in at least one of the areas where they were previously cultivated or occurred naturally, while about one-third of tree species are threatened… Globally, deforestation, forest degradation, climate change, fires, pests, diseases, and invasive species are threatening many trees and other woody plant species and eroding their genetic diversity. The report found that common and widely distributed tree species retain much of their genetic diversity, while rare and threatened species have lost significant amounts. More than two-thirds of countries have national tree-seed programs, but many are experiencing shortages of seed and other reproductive materials. This poses challenges for establishing new forests and achieving the target of a three-percent increase in the global forest area by 2030.

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If you want a fast-growing forest to suck up more carbon, pick slow-growing trees

By Warren Cornwall
Anthropocene Magazine
March 26, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

Maybe there should be a companion to Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare. This one could be about the spruce and the poplar. Fast-growing trees like poplars might seem likely to win the race to soak up carbon the fastest, making them ideal candidates for tree-planting campaigns aimed at helping to address climate change. But it turns out that slower sprouting trees, like the spruce, are frequently the growth champions. Outside of tropical rainforests or cozy, moist greenhouses favored by labs studying plants, trees that have long been considered “fast” aren’t so speedy after all, according to research published last week in Nature. The findings suggest that tree planters shouldn’t be seduced by the promises of certain trees that might not be best suited for harsh conditions. And it sheds light on a disconnect that has puzzled scientists for years.

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Forest History & Archives

Mud, water and wood: The system that kept a 1604-year-old city afloat

By Anna Bressanin
BBC News
March 26, 2025
Category: Forest History & Archives
Region: International

As any local knows, Venice is an upside-down forest. The city, which turned 1604 years old on March 25, is built on the foundations of millions of short wooden piles, pounded in the ground with their tip facing downwards. These trees – larch, oak, alder, pine, spruce and elm of a length ranging between 3.5m (11.5ft) to less than 1m (3ft)  – have been holding up stone palazzos and tall belltowers for centuries, in a true marvel of engineering leveraging the forces of physics and nature… The Venetian piles technique is fascinating for its geometry, its centuries-old resilience, and for its sheer scale. No-one is exactly sure how many millions of piles there are under the city, but there are 14,000 tightly packed wooden poles in the foundations of the Rialto bridge alone, and 10,000 oak trees under the San Marco Basilica, which was built in 832AD.

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