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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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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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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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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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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Wood, Paper & Green Building

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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

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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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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