Blog Archives

Business & Politics

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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New Democrats Party Workers for Canada plan to support B.C. jobs and workers

New Democrat Party of Canada News Release
March 10, 2025
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

In the face of Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada, Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have a plan to protect workers, fight for Canada and its economy, and build, build, build using British Columbia forestry products and other resources and skills. “Let’s build, build, build—from hospitals to bridges to the affordable homes we need, and let’s do it using 100 per cent Canadian lumber and other B.C. grown and B.C. built products as much as possible,” said Singh. “We can make sure B.C. workers keep working, keep putting food on the table and keep building this great country.” B.C. businesses say Trump’s tariff fight is already causing layoffs and chaos. Forestry supports over 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in B.C., paying $9.1 billion in wages, salaries and benefits annually. More than 4,800 Indigenous people are directly employed in the forestry industry in the province.

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Finance & Economics

Tariff uncertainty slows February housing activity in B.C. by over 9%

By Joe Hernandez
CBC News
March 12, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: Canada, Canada West

B.C.’s real estate association says there was a sharp drop in home sales last month. Purchases fell by just under 10 per cent provincewide. As Jon Hernandez reports, tariffs and economic uncertainty could be making buyers think twice.

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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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Increase of domestic timber to boost UK economy and housebuilding

Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
GOV.UK
February 27, 2025
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: International

A new roadmap to get Britain building with the use of sustainable and low carbon building materials, will help solve the housing crisis and achieve 2050 net zero targets. New, ambitious plans to increase the use of timber in construction to boost the domestic timber industry, economic growth, rural jobs and housebuilding targets, have been announced today at the Timber in Construction Summit in London. The government has outlined new methods to deliver on its Plan for Change that will help to build 1.5million sustainable and affordable homes, create a low-waste circular construction sector and drive further investment into domestic timber and wood-processing supply chains. Speaking at the Summit, Minister Creagh confirmed the government will recommit to the Timber in Construction Roadmap, which outlines measures to increase the use of timber in the construction sector.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Energy efficiency meets novel technologies in emerging housing trends

By Kathy Kerr
Special to the Globe and Mail
March 10, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada West

Chris Hill

Innovative residential construction practices such as off-site factory building and on-site 3D printing are making inroads in Canada’s massive home-building sector. While they represent a small percentage of overall builds, which are still dominated by traditional stick-framework, these sustainability-focused techniques can add speed and labour-force efficiencies. Vancouver-based off-site construction management firm B Collective specializes in wood-frame panelization, a process that uses factory-built flat panels, which are assembled into houses on location, says company president Chris Hill. Panelization allows the use of a variety of materials, including dense-pack cellulose, a recycled paper fibre that is naturally carbon-storing, Mr. Hill says. Building walls off-site also improves quality control to ensure greater airtightness and waste reduction, he adds… Speedy construction pairs with structural longevity in 3D-printing construction, another innovation that is relatively new to Canadian residential job sites. Nidus 3D, based in the Kingston area, has been using 3D printing to construct residential buildings for three-and-a-half years.

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Natural Resources Canada invests $6 million in Ontario green construction projects

By Robin MacLennan
Ontario Construction News
March 11, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada East

The federal government has announced $6 million for four green construction and technology initiatives across Ontario, aimed at promoting the use of low-carbon and processed wood materials. The funding includes more than $900,000 for Assembly Corp. to develop a seismic system and design for a 62-unit, all-wood residential building in Toronto. The eight-storey, mixed-use rental building will serve as a model for future projects across several sites, advancing sustainable construction practices that reduce the environmental impact of the industry… “Investing in Canadian timber not only supports forestry jobs but also helps us meet broader goals such as increasing housing supply and lowering emissions,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, minister of natural resources… The funding comes from Natural Resources Canada’s Green Construction through Wood (GCWood) and Investments in Forest Industry Transformation programs.

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Northern Ontario First Nations create DIY housing kits to tackle housing crisis

By Faith Greco
CBC News
March 10, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada East

In northern Ontario, First Nations communities have watched modular homes arrive, only to deteriorate and be condemned within two decades. Frustrated with temporary solutions, three First Nations in the Chapleau area launched a non-profit initiative in 2019 to build homes using do-it-yourself building kits named One Bowl… These kits include doors, windows, a prefabricated frame, and thermal logs — a material designed specifically for cold climates. The logs consist of white pine on the exterior and interior, with expanded polystyrene insulation in the middle. Those logs are currently made from white pine harvested in Québec, but One Bowl hopes to soon be producing that material in northern Ontario. ‘Living in a full white pine building itself is gorgeous. The smell is amazing, and it’s definitely a shift over conventional construction technology,; said Candace Larsen, a business development manager for One Bowl.

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Mass timber, 3D printing may be future of military construction for Army, Navy

By C. Todd Lopez
US Army
March 12, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

Army and Navy barracks may one day be 3D printed or built using mass timber construction that involves large wooden structural beams manufactured from smaller lumber… Additive construction — 3D printing buildings — high performance cement and concrete mixes, geosynthetics, mass timber, composite materials, industrialized construction, tension fabric structures and carbon fiber reinforced polymers were all part of the discussion with lawmakers about how the Army and Navy can develop the most cost efficient and resilient military construction projects… In Hampton Roads, Virginia, the Navy is now piloting the use of mass timber, also called cross-laminated timber (CLT)… “Department Of Defense (DOD) has expressly acknowledged the applicability of CLT with the creation of a guide specification,” Hamilton (chief engineer for Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command) said. “As the CLT construction industry matures, CLT may prove more competitive and could be utilized more broadly in DOD construction.”

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One of the United States’ Largest Cross-Laminated Timber Manufacturing Facilities is Underway in Oregon

PR Newswire
March 11, 2025
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

Timberlab Inc. (Timberlab), a subsidiary of Swinerton Incorporated (Swinerton) and leading national provider of holistic mass timber systems, has teamed up with Swinerton Builders, Lindgren Development, LEVER Architecture and other project partners to design and build a 190,000-square-foot world-class cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufacturing facility. This facility will be one of the largest CLT production sites in the United States… The manufacturing facility will be built with glue-laminated timber (GLT) produced at Timberlab’s other Oregon facilities using locally harvested timber.  Timberlab has sourced top-tier equipment for advanced timber and wood processing. Kallesoe is providing a complete CLT processing line, including an automated feeding system, high-speed cross-cut saws and a top-of-the-line finger-jointing system. The facility and its cutting-edge equipment will revolutionize the timber industry by delivering a superior product.

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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

Forests Canada Announces Award Winners Making a Difference in Forest Conservation and Education

Cision Newswire
February 27, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada

As Canadians face the growing threat of extreme weather events, high-intensity forest fires, and biodiversity loss, Forests Canada hosted The Forest Conference on February 19 and 20 in Mississauga, Ontario to bring experts from different fields together to talk about how we can conserve, restore, and grow Canada’s forests. During the conference, Forests Canada announced its annual award winners and would like to congratulate the award recipients.

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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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Three new Ktunaxa biodiversity projects on the horizon

By Gillian Francis
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Ktunaxa First Nation has launched three major projects in East Kootenay to help protect the land from wildfire and restore ecosystem diversity. Ktunaxa Nation Council and the communities of ʔaq̓am and ʔakisq̓nuk are undertaking prescribed burns to help protect against wildfire. Two burns are planned for the ʔaq̓am area in 2026 on the community’s Kootenay IR#1 lands, near the Canadian Rockies International Airport and on Crown land to the north of Cranbrook. The community is partnering with the City of Cranbrook and B.C Wildfire Service to thin dense sections of forest to create new habitat, and remove dense woodland material on the forest floor that serves as fuel for rapidly spreading fires… The forest is going to be thinned to help protect nearby communities and culturally and archaeologically important sites from wildfire and help special wildlife and plant species like Rocky Mountain big horn sheep and woodland strawberry, thrive.

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Seeing the forest through the trees in Mexico

By Bev Betkowski
University of Alberta
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada West, International

In the mountains of Mexico, trees are harvested differently than in Alberta’s comparatively flat forests… Home to 138 million hectares of trees and a growing number of timber production industries, Mexico offered students a look at different types of forests and forest management, says associate forestry professor Brad Pinno. “The country has a huge variety of forest ecosystems; we saw five different forest zones going up one mountain. That’s not a level of diversity we can show students in Alberta.” The trip also included visits to the headquarters of Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, a family-run sawmill operation, a research station, a national park and university forestry labs. “By seeing different ways of practising forestry, students are able to think through and improve on the ways we are doing things,” Pinno says. “It makes you a better forester where you are.”

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Houston residents give input on forest planning project

By Alexander Vaz
Houston Today
March 11, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

A new Bulkley Valley Lake forest planning project is now in the public input phase. The Bulkley-Morice Forest Landscape Planning (FLP) project is one of five new provincial projects that are shaping a revamped framework for sustainable forest management in B.C. The Province held an open house on Feb. 26 at the Houston Community Hall about its newest forestry project. In addition to the open house in Houston, the province also held open houses in Granisle on Jan. 29 and Smithers on March 6, inviting communities within the Bulkley Valley to get involved in the development of the new FLP project. “What excites me about forest landscape plans is they provide the opportunity to bring the community together, said minister of forests Ravi Parmar.

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The Best Way to Save Caribou Can’t Just Be Killing Wolves

By Ben Parfitt
The Tyee
March 10, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

The proposed road is called the Anahim Connector and its proponent, British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests, says it would be a “secondary fire-exit route” linking isolated First Nations and rural communities in the remote Anahim Lake area with Vanderhoof and Highway 16 to the northeast. It would slice between the Tweedsmuir and Itcha-Ilgachuz woodland caribou herds… Resource roads are punched into new areas of forest. Logging ensues. For a brief time following logging, the opened areas are attractive foraging grounds for moose and deer. As deer and moose move in, wolves do too. The wolves use the roads to more easily track and kill their prey. Any caribou in the area then fall prey to the wolves as well…

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What to expect this summer from the Tłı̨chǫ tree planting project

By Aastha Sethi
Cabin Radio
February 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

The Tłı̨chǫ Government in the Northwest Territories signed an agreement in late 2023 with a goal of protecting boreal caribou habitat while addressing wildfire-related deforestation. Representatives from national non-profit Tree Canada and British Columbia-based Let’s Plant Trees Ltd provided an update on the project’s progress in Behchokǫ̀ earlier this month. David Tonkin of Let’s Plant Trees Ltd said the company has been successful in collecting seedlings from five different species – white spruce, black spruce, birch, tamarack and aspen. “This has never been done anywhere this far north, and the experiences and the knowledge that we all gain from this will hopefully be to the benefit of many Tłı̨chǫ citizens,” Tonkin said during a presentation… Joshua Quaite, of tree planting firm Spectrum Resource Group, Quaite predicts that 100,000 trees will be planted every day during this project.

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Prescribed Burn Planned To Start February 27th Within The Williams Lake Community Forest

By Pat Matthews
mycariboonow.com
February 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

BC Wildfire Service, in partnership with Williams Lake Community Forest and Williams Lake First Nation, will conduct a prescribed burn approximately 10 kilometres West of Williams Lake, North of Highway 20, beside the Fraser River. “The prescribed burn will cover approximately 29 hectares within the Williams Lake Community Forest,” Jeromy Corrigan, Information Officer at the Cariboo Fire Centre said, “Burning is expected to begin as early as Thursday, February 27, and continue periodically until Sunday, March 2.” Corrigan said ignitions will proceed only if conditions are suitable and allow for quick smoke dissipation.

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Money grows on trees: Forest harvests $2.5M in revenues for Orillia county

By Nikki Cole
OrilliaMatters.com
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

Simcoe County forests are growing — and not just up. Councillors got a brief update Tuesday on the county’s forest management activities last year, as well as finding out what the future holds as the county moves into its 103rd year operating the local forest system… The fact the county has been managing these forests for more than a century is “quite exceptional,” Graeme Davis, who works as a forester for the county, said during Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting… Of particular note is that the county forests are very active and working forests, Davis added. While harvesting does play an important role, Davis said it’s also important to note that they are about much more than forest harvesting — they also provide “incredible” recreational uses.

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Thunder Bay recognized as a 2024 Tree City of the World

By Nicky Shaw
Tbnewswatch.com
March 10, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Arbor Day Foundation have recognized the City of Thunder Bay as a 2024 Tree City of the World. This international designation honours cities excelling in urban tree care and planning. “The City of Thunder Bay is honoured to receive this recognition as a 2024 Tree City of the World,” said Cory Halvorsen, the manager of the City of Thunder Bay’s parks and open spaces, in a written statement. “Our commitment to urban forestry is reflected in our dedication to preserving and expanding our tree canopy. Trees play a vital role in our city’s environmental and social well-being and we will continue to invest in sustainable initiatives that enhance the quality of life for our residents.”

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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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Opinion: Southeast Alaskans want sustainable economies, not extractive industry, within the Tongass National Forest

By Kate Glover
Anchorage Daily News
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Decades of industrial logging left deep scars on the Tongass – and on the people and communities of Southeast Alaska. Many Alaskans do not want to return to large-scale old-growth logging. Instead, they support projects that uplift Indigenous cultures and community uses of the forest and benefit the region’s current economic drivers—fishing and the visitor and recreation economies—if done responsibly and sustainably. The timber industry is no longer an important economic force in Southeast Alaska. Far from it. According to a regional economic report, the timber industry makes up less than four percent of Southeast Alaska jobs while the visitor and seafood industries combined make up nearly a quarter of the region’s workforce, with only government providing a similar share of employment. The economic impact of subsistence, sport, and commercial fishing within the region is estimated at nearly $1 billion annually, according to the Forest Service.

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Pacific Northwest Forest Proposal Reflects Advisory Committee’s Diverse Views

By Blake Busse
The Pew Charitable Trusts
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Businesses, communities, and wildlife across a vast portion of western Washington, western Oregon, and northwestern California rely on healthy national forests. Since 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) has guided conservation, recreation, timber production, and other uses of these 19.2 million acres of species-rich and economically important lands and rivers, and now, as it does periodically, the U.S. Forest Service is updating the NWFP… The scientists and land managers who authored the original NWFP recognized the importance of drawing on the best available science. They also had the foresight to incorporate ways to monitor the forests and adjust management if their assumptions—for example, about the plan’s impact on nature and communities—proved wrong… The Forest Service is accepting public comment on the DEIS through March 17.

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Acoustic monitoring network for birds enhances forest management

By Kathi Borgmann
The Cornell Chronicle
March 11, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

A new study using the largest network of microphones to track birds in the United States is providing crucial insights for managing and restoring fire-prone forests across California’s Sierra Nevada region. The research, published March 11 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, demonstrates how emerging bioacoustics technology can enhance wildlife monitoring and forest management… The team focused on 10 important bird species, including spotted owls and woodpeckers, that can provide information about the forest’s health… This information is particularly valuable now, as forest managers face tough decisions about preventing destructive wildfires while protecting wildlife. The study creates detailed maps showing where different birds are likely to live, helping managers make better-informed decisions about where to thin forests or conduct controlled burns.

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Lawmakers urge Trump administration to cancel owl-killing plan, say it would cost too much

By Matthew Brown
The Columbian
March 10, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday urged the Trump administration to scrap plans to kill more than 450,000 invasive barred owls in West Coast forests as part of efforts to stop the birds from crowding out a smaller type of owl that’s facing potential extinction. The 19 lawmakers claimed the killings would be “grossly expensive” and cost $3,000 per bird. They questioned if the shootings would help native populations of northern spotted owls, which have long been controversial because of logging restrictions in the birds’ forest habitat beginning in the 1990s, and the closely related California spotted owl. Barred owls are native to eastern North America and started appearing in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. They’ve quickly displaced many spotted owls, which are smaller birds that need larger territories to breed.

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Oregon’s Burning Question: Why Are We Still Ignoring Indigenous Fire Wisdom?

By Tyler James
thatoregonlife.com
February 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

For over a century, the American environmental movement has been animated by an intuitive and simple idea: Protecting trees means leaving forests alone. This stance—championed by figures like John Muir—was based on the belief that any alteration, including thinning or intentional burning, of wilderness harms it. While this ideology helped prevent widespread destruction by timber companies, it also created unintended consequences. Research now shows that overgrown forests are fueling unnaturally severe wildfires, causing irreparable ecological damage and massive economic loss… A key issue remains limited funding. Budget cuts to state and federal land management agencies have reduced the resources available for proactive fire prevention… Insurance and legal concerns further complicate matters. While the need for improved wildfire mitigation is widely recognized, legislative gridlock, environmental regulations, and partisan divisions have slowed progress.

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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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Carolina Forest wildfire shows need for more prevention efforts, state forestry chief tells lawmakers

By Adam Benson
WBTW News 13
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. — The still-burning Carolina Forest wildfire highlights the need for more investments into education and prevention programs, the state’s top forestry officials told lawmakers Wednesday. “The agency’s risk of losing these important positions reduces its ability to implement successful prevention campaigns, and (to) assist communities with wildfire mitigation projects which would result in more, larger wildfires and more damage to homes,” Scott Phillips told a Senate Finance subcommittee. “I want to give you a real-world example. At the Covington Drive fire, there were two communities that were severely impacted: Walkers Woods and The Reserve at Walkers Woods,” Phillips said. “Those two communities had very different outcomes.” While no structures were destroyed, Phillips said homes in The Reserve were damaged, while those in Walkers Woods weren’t, since the latter is part of Firewise USA –– a nationwide preparedness program spread across 42 states.

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University of Georgia research evaluates bat activity in winter

By Savannah Peat
UGA Today
March 13, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

Winter in the South can bring about a sharp change in conditions that impact forests and their many inhabitants. However, new research from the University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources finds that, despite these seasonal shifts, forest management efforts are supporting healthy bat populations. As white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease, ravages bat populations, wildlife ecology and management professor Steven Castleberry wanted to ensure all other aspects of bat livelihood were being maintained. “There’s nothing really we can do about that disease. All we can do is continue to provide proper habitats,” Castleberry said. “As those populations recover, we ensure that those quality forests and habitats are still there.”.. Castleberry points out that most privately owned forests already provide a suitable balance for bats during the winter. Moving forward, forest managers should maintain this equilibrium rather than make drastic changes.

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Indianapolis program killed by federal government sought diversity … among trees

By Karl Schneider
IndyStar
February 26, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

The US Department of Agriculture revoked a federal tree-planting grant to Keep Indianapolis Beautiful in a move the nonprofit’s CEO Kranowitz said may be the result of anti-DEI initiatives coming from the Trump Administration. The money would have helped KIB plant more trees throughout the city, and those plantings should not be all the same kind of tree, Kranowitz explained. The $400,000 grant for urban forestry projects was awarded to the organization in January through the Arbor Day Foundation, but was then clawed back on Tuesday. There’s growing evidence that words like “biodiversity” are being targeted by federal agencies bent on terminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives across the country. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins recently cancelled a federal contract in Hawaii for an agency meeting on biodiversity and has identified and canceled other training programs on environmental justice claiming they run “contrary to the values of millions of American taxpayers.”

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Want to preserve biodiversity? Go big

By Morgan Sherburne
University of Michigan News
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Large, undisturbed forests are better for harboring biodiversity than fragmented landscapes, according to University of Michigan research. Ecologists agree that habitat loss and the fragmentation of forests reduces biodiversity in the remaining fragments. But ecologists don’t agree whether it’s better to focus on preserving many smaller, fragmented tracts of land or larger, continuous landscapes. The study, published in Nature and led by U-M ecologist Thiago Gonçalves-Souza, comes to a conclusion on the decades-long debate… Previous research didn’t properly compare fragmented landscapes to large, continuous forests, Gonçalves-Souza said. For example, prior research may have looked at only one component of diversity, or may have compared a few continuous forests to dozens of fragmented patches… Additionally, the findings suggest that generalist species—species that are good at surviving in various environments—primarily live in the fragmented areas.

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Discovering the world’s oldest surviving trees

By Clare O’Halloran
ABC News, Australia
March 12, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

In wild Tasmania there are trees whose direct ancestors lived with dinosaurs. Many of those alive today are thousands of years old, and some have been growing for ten millennia or more. They are mostly hard to reach, hidden in forest valleys or on remote mountains, survivors of human greed and fire.

[This is a 15-minute radio interview from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with guest Andrew Darby, author of The Ancients]

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Logging and prescribed burning do not make Australian forests more flammable

By Dr. Tony Bartlett
Forestry Australia
March 1, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

The views of Australian academics Professor David Lindenmayer and Associate Professor Philip Zylstra, as reproduced in recent CFA Newsletters, that logging and prescribed burning are making Australian native forests more flammable are highly contested by many Australian forest scientists and fire management practitioners. These academic scientists advocate that timber harvesting in native forests should cease, prescribed burning should be confined to areas close to high value assets and that when fire is excluded for more than 40 years the native forests do not burn at high intensity, because the vertical connectivity of the forest structure is reduced through natural ecological processes… None of the claims made by Lindenmayer and Zylstra about the impact of prescribed burning on forest flammability are supported by evidence from long-term monitoring of replicated trials where prescribed burning has been conducted.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

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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Trump officials decimate climate protections and consider axeing key greenhouse gas finding

By Oliver Milman
The Guardian
March 12, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States

Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health. The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a supreme court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.

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The Forest Service is cutting down more trees despite their ability to capture carbon

By Brian Chou
Wisconsin Watch
March 12, 2025
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States

President Trump is pushing federal agencies to expand timber harvests… The U.S. Forest Service is already set to increase the number of trees it harvests to one of the highest levels since 2019, a result of Biden-era policies.  But advocates argue that we need trees now more than ever and that this increase in timber harvest doesn’t make sense. The Forest Service is facing a lawsuit challenging the timber target policies that they say put the climate at risk. Advocates say the agency should protect mature forests with trees such as red oaks, which play a crucial role in storing and sequestering carbon. A single tree can store as much as 28,000 pounds of CO2 in its lifetime, the equivalent of annual emissions from generating electricity for one to two American homes.

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