Robert Gray
The greatest threat to the forest industry in Canada and to the rural communities that are dependent on it is wildfire. Yet, you wouldn’t get that impression from recent policy announcements. …The forest industry is heavily dependent on predictability for its survival — predictable access to fibre, predictable forest growth rates, and predictable volumes. Right now, thanks to drought, insects and wildfire, the ability to predict any of these things is questionable. …This leads to an interesting dilemma: Is a concept like the annual allowable cut even relevant if we can’t predict how much fibre is available to a forest company next year or over the next five to 10 years? …The focus needs to be on wildfire risk reduction at scale, strategic reforestation focused on using forest types to impede fire flow and alter severity, and realigning the industry to respond to a changing wood profile.
OTTAWA – The 2026 wildfire season has been manageable so far, largely because of significant amounts of rain across Western Canada, but federal officials cautioned Thursday the summer forecast is hotter and drier than normal in much of the country. … The southern Prairies and eastern Quebec have had more rain than usual this year, and it’s expected that above-average precipitation will continue in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. Forecasts for July and August are calling for higher than usual temperatures for Ontario, Quebec, northern parts of the Prairies and the territories. …The latest information from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre shows there have been 3,100 fires across the country so far this season, compared to around 2,900 at this time last year. …But the total area burned this year is less than last year, at around 12,000 square kilometres, down from 46,000 square kilometres.
British Columbia is expanding the BC Timber Sales Value-Added Manufacturing Program by creating a new dedicated category that will secure fibre for custom cutters and processors. BC’s action builds on Canada’s Forest Sector Transformation Task Force, which was commissioned in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s new duties and tariffs on Canadian wood products. The task force recommends strong support for value-added operators so Canada can build high-quality products at home. “British Columbia’s path forward for forestry can’t just be providing dimensional lumber to Americans. We have to make more in B.C.,” said Ravi Parmar, Minister of Forests. …Custom cutters and processors are a group within the value-added wood-manufacturing sector without their own sawmilling facilities. …BC Wood Specialties Group Association’s chair, Kelly Marconi said “our custom cutting and processing members were part of the task force’s public consultation, so we are pleased to see this inclusive change.”
…As some resource roads across the province fall into disrepair … outdoor groups are working to save them. 
Open letter to Premier David Eby, B.C.’s Minister of Forests, Ravi Parmar, spoke in Revelstoke about his hopes for sawmills, old- growth and caribou protection (recently). It is evident Parmar is misinformed about the issues critical to the Revelstoke community and other British Columbia residents, and is failing to act on your government’s commitments to climate action, environmental protection, and sustainability. When asked about protecting old-growth within the Revelstoke region, such as the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness (RJW), Parmar stated: “What I wouldn’t support is just saving land for the sake of saving land and seeing mills close down.” That response demonstrated a lack of understanding of community priorities. …The minister’s comments also show a lack of understanding of the Old Growth Strategic Review, which your government commissioned and committed to implementing. Rather than perpetuating the volume-based resource extraction model, a shift to a value-added sustainable forestry is needed for the provincial economy and long-term employment opportunities.
Mayor Scott Gillingham announced today he will bring forward a proposal to City Council next week to maintain full funding for tree planting in the 2026 Urban Forest Renewal Program. The move follows public feedback about a proposed budget amendment that would have reduced 2026 tree planting work by $1.236 million to offset a provincial government change to the City’s Strategic Infrastructure Basket funding allocation. “Winnipeggers care deeply about our urban forest, and I’ve heard that clearly,” said Mayor Scott Gillingham. “The public wants this tree planting funding protected. I agree, and I’ll be bringing forward a plan to Council next week to do exactly that.” City Council adopted Winnipeg’s first Urban Forest Strategy in 2023, setting a long-term plan to protect, preserve, and grow the city’s tree canopy.
ALBERTA — Harvesting plans for forestry companies operating in the High Prairie and Slave Lake regions were presented June 17 at a joint open house in High Prairie. Plans were displayed by West Fraser Timber that operates High Prairie Forest Products, Tolko Industries, and by Millar Western Forest Products that bought the Slave Lake Pulp Mill from West Fraser and became the owner in April 2024. No representative was present from West Fraser. Companies hosted the event to allow citizens to comment on the proposed plans. Tolko plans to have operations in the Sweathouse area south of Snipe Lake, Salt Prairie and Whitemud, says woodlands supervisor Callie Skellett. …Millar Western plans to harvest trees in three areas, forestry superintendent Stuart Adkins says.
A historic drought is turning Colorado’s mountain landscapes into a tinderbox. After last winter’s record-low snowpack, wildland firefighters who continuously monitor indexes of weather and climate data to help predict wildfire risk and how conditions might affect fire behavior say they’re staring down unprecedented levels of dryness. “That lack of snowpack has had a very real impact on the fuels, the vegetation — specifically the large logs that are on the ground,” said Jim King, the fire behavior analyst for the Willow Fire burning near Leadville. “Those are 1,000-hour fuels. The way we measure those in this line of work, they’re just at the very peak. They’re basically as dry as they can get.” …King described how bone-dry logs in the dense forest near Turquoise Lake, along with high winds, contributed to 100-foot columns of flames and extreme fire behavior that at times threw “spots” …more than a half mile ahead of the blaze.
CALIFORNIA — A bipartisan bill intended to protect people and forests from wildfires in the Shasta-Trinity and other national forests is dividing lawmakers and conservationists in Northern California and nationwide. Supporters of the Fix Our Forests Act say it speeds up the bureaucratic process for approving projects that reduce wildfire risk in national forests. These include control burn and vegetation removal projects. A chorus of conservationists opposed to the bill say they worry about uncontrolled logging in some of the country’s pristine forestlands. …According to the bill’s wording, it would limit how much environmental protection oversight projects that reduce vegetation would have to surmount before they’re approved. It also would limit legal challenges to those projects from community and environmental groups. The latter has been dividing lawmakers across both parties for more than a year.
Officials at the U.S. Forest Service are proposing new management plans for eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains that include potentially tripling the amount of logging across 5.5 million acres in the next decade. The Forest Service published a draft of proposed changes to the 35-year-old Blue Mountain Forest Plan last week. It would allow more logging, mining and grazing across four national forests spread across eastern Oregon, as well as parts of southeast Washington: the Malheur, Ochoco, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla National Forests. The public has until Sept. 30 to submit comments on the 350-page draft proposal. The draft plan … predicts everything from habitat conservation to forest carbon storage would improve over the long term if more logging is allowed because strategically logging and grazing parts of the forest would prevent wildfire, which officials characterize as the biggest threat to habitat and forest loss. Environmental advocates disagree with the framing.
To Caleb Chaplin, it’s clear what sets a patch of old forest on his family’s land in Naples apart from the woods around it. …Some of the trees are up to 200 years old. Foresters call these woods “late successional and old growth.” They’re also some of the rarest features on Maine’s landscape, trap lots of greenhouse gas and provide critical habitat for unique species. Chaplin said his family was planning to harvest the stand this year. …Then they learned the New England Forestry Foundation would pay them to delay harvesting. Chaplin said it was a tough decision at a time when these big trees are drawing some of the highest prices in the timber market. Ultimately, the family agreed to leave the stand alone for 10 years, and work with the foundation to develop a permanent conservation plan.
ITALY — The good news is that European forests continue to grow: according to the 2025–2026 Annual Report of the European Organisation of the Sawmill Industry (EOS), a body representing around 80 per cent of European sawn timber production, European forests now cover over 232 million hectares, equivalent to 35.4% of the continent’s land area, and over the last 35 years they have expanded by more than 23 million hectares, with an average increase of around 665,000 hectares each year. At the same time, Europe’s forest stock has reached 38.3 billion cubic metres, an increase of around 45% compared with 1990. Yet – and this is the less positive news – the availability of raw materials for the timber industry remains one of the main challenges to the sector’s competitiveness and to Europe’s sustainability objectives, as emerged from the Forestry-Timber General Assembly organised in Bologna by Filiera Legno (an association representing almost 600 companies in the timber industry). 