Canada needs to create an office to co-ordinate responses to wildfire emergencies and fund a new national fleet of modern firefighting aircraft, says a new Senate report released Wednesday. Those recommendations were among 15 in a report from the Senate committee on agriculture and forestry. At a news conference in Ottawa, senators on the committee said one of the key requests they heard while assembling the report was for a single national point of contact to co-ordinate wildfire response. “We heard that Canada is the only country in the G7 that does not have a seat at the federal table, more or less, to manage and talk about and co-ordinate fire response,” Sen. Mary Robinson, the committee chair, told The Canadian Press. “I think the efforts to date are appreciated but the crisis is growing and escalating, and we need government to do more for sure.”
The first eight wolves arrived through the Roosevelt Arch on the morning of 12 January 1995, in a horse trailer escorted by two park service patrol cars. The wolves had been live-trapped in three different packs in Jasper National Park and the surrounding wilderness of Alberta, Canada, weighed, fitted with radio collars, and flown south. Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation lawyers had obtained a stay from a federal appeals court before the plane landed, and the wolves spent the next several hours confined in their transport crates while the legal status of the project was resolved. The stay was lifted just after midnight. …What happened in the thirty years after 1995 has become one of the most-cited and most-contested case studies in contemporary ecology.
LAKE COWICHAN, BC — Pumps will likely be required to sustain the river if dry conditions continue through the summer, according to Brian Houle, environment manager for Domtar Crofton Mill. Though the mill has shut down, Domtar remains the licenced operator. As of a June 4 report issued by Houle, Cowichan Lake has dropped to 80% capacity and the below-average snowpack has already fully melted. Updated modelling for the remainder of the year was analysed at a meeting of regulators and Cowichan Tribes on June 3. Domtar was guided to begin to reduce the flow to below 7.08 cubic meters per second (cms). …With no relief in sight, there’s been a push for a larger replacement weir to store more water in the lake to reduce the need for emergency pumping. …Domtar has been authorized to have qualified professional biologists monitor the river conditions. 
Through the Forest Enhancement Society of BC, the Province is committing $20 million per year over three years. …This investment funds projects that reduce wildfire risk, restore forest ecosystems and improve the long-term health and resilience of B.C.’s forests. “The best wildfire is the one that never starts. The best way to protect communities is to work together to prevent them,” said Ravi Parmar, Minister of Forests. …This year, 60 forest enhancement projects are receiving funding. These projects not only reduce wildfire risk, they also support forest-sector jobs in rural and remote communities. The projects include creating landscape-level fuel breaks, removing residual fuels, carrying out prescribed burns, and making improvements to egress routes that are important in the event of an emergency or evacuation. …“These projects reflect the innovation and commitment we continue to see from proponents throughout BC,” said Jason Fisher, executive director, FESBC.
A forestry group that was granted an interlocutory injunction halting a blockade by a family from Matachewan First Nation (MFN) so it could complete tree-harvesting work in northern Ontario will sit down in a listening circle with them later this month in a case that may see further court action. The Timiskaming Forest Alliance Inc. (TFAI) is a consortium of forestry companies and First Nations, including MFN. It has a licence from Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to harvest 101 hectares, referred to as Cairo 173… The family involved includes Dorothy Larkman, who said she decided to take action after seeing machines tearing out blueberry bushes on Cairo 173, which is about 60 kilometres west of Kirkland Lake and south of the Ojibway First Nation. …Listening circles are rooted in Indigenous traditions. …Michael Swinwood, Larkman’s lawyer, said the MNR will also have representation at the listening circle. 
A photosynthesizing tree is not necessarily growing — a new study of oak trees, published in the journal 
The Agriculture Department is making an ultimatum to thousands of its employees as part of its sweeping relocation plans — move to keep their jobs or quit. USDA is embarking on a multi-part reorganization plan that involves relocating more than half of its D.C.-area workforce to hubs across the country by the end of this summer. Employees impacted by these relocation plans work at the Food Safety and Inspection Service, Forest Service, Economic Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and Food and Nutrition Service. …The memo also states that NASS and all components under USDA’s research, education and economic mission area will offer buyouts and early retirement to employees who received relocation notices. The Forest Service told employees earlier this month that it will offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to staff impacted by its relocation plans.
SEATTLE — Few public universities get more federal research funding than the University of Washington. So as President Trump has already cancelled or suspended about a quarter of all funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, the atmosphere on this leafy Seattle campus is tense. The anxiety is even trickling down to lower profile places once considered safe from White House politics, like UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Here, newly proposed U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and a larger reorganization of the agency would have immediate consequences as the West looks poised for an epic summer of wildfires and smoke. “We have a wildfire crisis in the West [and] in the United States,” says Ernesto Alvarado, a fire ecologist and associate professor at the school. …But the Seattle smoke lab is now on a list of 56 out of 90 research stations identified for closure.
The U.S. Forest Service has faced budget and staffing cuts under the Trump administration, and a new analysis shows those cuts are impacting how much land the agency is able to treat to prevent wildfires. The Forest Service treated 35 percent fewer acres for wildfire mitigation in 2025, compared with the previous year. Mitigation efforts include tree thinning, brush clearing, and prescribed burning. That’s according to Forest Service data assessed by the public lands advocacy group, Center for Western Priorities. That means nearly one and a half million fewer acres were treated overall. These treatments lower wildfire risks, and make fires easier to fight, which better protects communities and keeps firefighters safe. In a state-by-state breakdown, the Center’s analysis found 63% less acres of Forest Service land in Montana were treated for wildfire risk. The Trump administration has proposed further cuts to the U.S. Forest Service’s budget, staff, and local support – including closing regional offices nationwide.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee and fellow Republicans added a repeal of the controversial roadless rule to a previously bipartisan wildfire bill on Wednesday. The amended Wildfire Prevention Act passed out of the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on an 11-9 vote split along party lines and now heads to the full Senate. The act would nullify the 2001 roadless rule. …This move comes nearly a year after the USDA began an effort to rescind the roadless rule through an administrative process. The environmental review is currently underway and a decision is expected later this year. …Democratic senators introduced a second amendment early in the meeting on Wednesday in an attempt to strike the repeal of the roadless rule from the bill. …Senators in both parties initially supported the Wildfire Prevention Act, which instructs federal land agencies to set targets and report on prescribed fire and forest thinning to reduce wildfire risk.
Extreme drought and rising temperatures in the US are poised to overwhelm the Trump administration’s plans to control wildfire by logging federal forests, scientists say. …The drought is expected to lead to catastrophic wildfires that stand to become the new normal amid climate change, the researchers say. “The type of drought we’re seeing this year across the West is a glimpse into the future,” said Erica Fleishman, at Oregon State University. …The US is on track in 2026 for more wildfires than 2025, a much wetter year. More than 5 million acres burned last year. As of April, 1.8 million acres had burned so far across the US—double the acres burned in the same period last year. Trump administration officials say wildfire risk makes it imperative to log forests and help the timber industry. The administration is taking an aggressive approach to quickly suppress wildfires as it increases logging by 25% this year.
…After decades of biologists going out into the woods and physically counting animals, the agency is now turning to sound recorders and AI because they’re cheaper and can gather a lot more information. “Autonomous recording units with rechargeable batteries, memory cards, and the software costs are coming in the $600-$700 range per device,” said Oregon Department of Forestry biologist Corey Grinnell. The agency is currently spending millions to send biologists into the forests to conduct callback surveys, where they mimic a bird call and count responses. …The agency now has 23 devices and plans to deploy more as it moves away from callback surveys. …There is some concern that using recorders might put biologists out of work. But lead ODF biologist Vanessa Petro isn’t so sure. She said that once the AI counts birds in a recording, the tally will need to be checked by an actual biologist.
…Decades of fire suppression have left many dry pine forests overcrowded with small trees and dense brush. …Foresters largely agree on the solution: restore forests through thinning and prescribed fire. The problem is that restoration work is expensive, especially when it involves removing small-diameter trees that have little commercial value. …Taxpayers shoulder most of the burden while hazardous fuels continue accumulating across millions of acres. …Oregon is well positioned to tackle this problem. New wood products such as mass timber can create markets for the very material that restoration projects remove. Instead of treating small trees as waste, we can turn them into building materials… The goal is to keep large fire-resistant trees while removing smaller fuels that make forests more vulnerable to extreme fires. …Oregon already has the tools and workforce to address this problem. The question is whether we are willing to act before the next historic fire season arrives.
Deming, Washington — Leroy Sande was pioneering a road with his excavator in Southeast Alaska when stumps, rocks, everything else — including his rig — started to pitch down the hillside. As if reaching out with his own arm, the logger instinctively grabbed at the slick sandstone beneath 10 feet of soil with the excavator’s bucket. “Well, you ain’t grabbing sandstone,” Sande, now 83, recalled. “…There was nothing to grab onto that wasn’t going down the hill.” About 400 yards down slope, the excavator tipped over and came to a stop. It was the only time in his 50-plus-year career in the woods that Sande put an excavator on its side, and even then, he emerged from the machine unscathed. Logging is the most deadly occupation in the nation… Injuries that aren’t fatal can put someone out of work for weeks, months, years or the rest of their life. The annual 
Wildfires are reversing decades of air quality improvements across much of the US. Expanded use of prescribed fire is a primary proposed solution, but air quality trade-offs—more initial smoke for less smoke later—remain poorly quantified. Using two decades of satellite-derived measurements of fire severity and smoke particulate matter across California, we assessed the causal effect of low-severity wildfire, a proxy for prescribed burning, on subsequent wildfire activity and air quality. We found that low-severity fire reduced the probability of very-high-severity wildfire by 92%, with reductions lasting a decade and extending 5 kilometers from treated locations. Reduced future smoke far outweighed the smoke produced during treatment, with benefit-cost ratios exceeding five after a decade. Sustained treatment of 500,000 acres annually would reduce cumulative smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by about 10% after a decade.
OREGON — A proposed new management strategy for the three national forests in Northeastern Oregon could more than triple the amount of commercial logging over the next two decades. The Forest Service hasn’t officially released a draft environmental impact statement for the revised management plans for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests, which will start a 90-day public comment period. …Shaun McKinney, Wallowa-Whitman supervisor, said on Wednesday that he expects the Forest Service will publish the draft in the Federal Register “any time.” …Typically, national forests update their plans every 15 years or so. But the current plans for the three forests in the Blue Mountains date to 1990. The three forests encompass about 5.5 million acres, including about 311,000 acres in Washington that are part of the Umatilla National Forest. 
ORANGE COUNTY, California — Environmentalists are trying to raise public awareness about a plan within the Trump administration to allow roads, and potentially long-term business development, in much of the nation’s federal forest system, including the biggest undeveloped stretch of Orange County. Recently, the effort has included rallies in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties. More rallies are planned in coming weeks in central and northern California. At issue is the fate of the “Roadless Area Conservation Rule,” an administrative regulation that has been in place since 2001 as a way to preserve 60 million acres of federal land for recreation and habitat protection. The rule, which is not a law, has survived every presidential administration of this century, and environmentalists say it has helped protect everything from the Pacific Crest Trail to the California Condor. …Environmentalists say ending the roadless rule would be bad for the environment and for local property values. 
On the B.C. government website, you can read the following: “B.C. is a world leader in sustainable forest management”. …However, if you talk to BC forest ecologist Rachel Holt… or former B.C. Liberal MLA Mike Morris, you get a very different perspective. …The Council of Forest Industries says, “in BC. three to four tree seedlings are planted for every tree that is cut”. That does not solve the problem. In the last 40 years, the rate of cutting has sped up. That means there are many very young forests, not suitable for wildlife habitat and not suitable for logging. …Several groups in BC are pushing for less logging, protection of our remaining primary forests and more ecologically sound forestry practices. The down side? Large forestry companies make less profit. The upside? More jobs, healthy forests… fewer wild fires and fewer greenhouse gases.
In fall, hoards of winter ticks latch on to New Hampshire’s moose — sometimes upward of 50,000 per adult animal. Over the course of the winter, the ticks drink their fill of blood, weakening adult moose and sometimes killing calves. …a team of New Hampshire researchers has a new hypothesis: Could the way forests are logged make moose more or less likely to encounter parasites? …Winter ticks are the driving force behind years of decline in Northeastern moose populations. …In recent decades, parasitism of moose by winter ticks has boomed… major driver was a boom in the local moose population… The sheer abundance of hosts helped tick populations in the region reach the high levels they remain at today. …One option is raising hunting quotas to reduce the number of moose… Another line of attack is the use of pesticides. …But there’s another idea … that has not been extensively studied: managing their habitat.
From the rainforests of French Guiana to ancient woodlands in eastern France, thousands of hectares of forest are gaining new protections. On 9 June, France said it has created seven new biological reserves and expanded two existing ones. Together, they safeguard an additional 157,000 hectares of forest as it works toward placing 10 per cent of its land under ‘strong protection’ by 2030. “This translates into less pressure on natural environments and stronger protection for species and habitats,” says Monique Barbut, France’s minister for ecological transition, biodiversity and international climate and nature negotiations. However, the vast majority of that land – around 99.5 per cent – lies in a single reserve in French Guiana, France’s overseas territory in South America. The new reserves in metropolitan France collectively cover under 1,000 hectares. …The remaining eight reserves, spread across metropolitan France, range from the mountain forests of Bannes-Ravines in the Vosges to the Mediterranean woodlands of Pas de la Lauze in Hérault.