Vernon, Revelstoke and Penticton will be included in a province-wide protest demanding a halt to old-growth logging on Tuesday. In Vernon, it’s being dubbed a “showdown at BC Timber Sales,” and the local organizers, which include the Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance and the Interior Watershed Task Force, are driving that adversarial image home by encouraging protesters to don western garb when they rally outside the Ministry of Forests office from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 18. Similar rallies are being held in Victoria, Nelson, Revelstoke, Smithers, Courtenay, Parksville, Prince George, Grand Forks, Penticton, Port Coquitlam, and Powell River. …Protest organizers took aim at Forestry Minister Ravi Parmar, saying seven B.C. mills have closed during his eight-month tenure. “Meanwhile he is off in Asia promising wood we do (not) have and opening trade offices … promising trees we do not grow,” the press release states. …A website, savewhatsleft.ca, contains information supporting the protests.
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Biologist Amber Peters and the Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) screened their highly-anticipated film, Safe Haven: The Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness, about the biodiverse and nearly-untouched inland temperate rainforest just north of Revelstoke. “This is the best example of a fully-intact inland temperate rainforest,” Peters said. … The Rainbow-Jordan is likely “the largest pocket of intact temperate rainforest in the region” around Revelstoke, Wildsight Revelstoke branch manager Reanne Harvey said. “The forest itself has been in that space for over a thousand years.” … The 30-minute film, produced in collaboration with Damien Gillis, advocates for the B.C. government to protect these expanses of hard-to-access and undisturbed old-growth from logging as a Class A provincial park. Unlike an old-growth protected area or Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, park status would ensure legislated protection for the Rainbow-Jordan, Peters told some 200 attendees at the screening.
Murray Wilson believes active forest management is crucial to reducing greenhouse emissions. The connection between the two is wildfires. “If you can reduce wildfires, just on carbon alone – your CO2 emissions – you’re doing a good thing,” said the retired Vernon forester… For the past year, Wilson has been sharing this message, about the need for active forest management, with residents and politicians through his new and first film, the documentary B.C. is Burning. …The Shuswap Climate Action Society, Forsite Consultants Ltd. and Canoe Forest Products will present the film in Salmon Arm on Nov. 26, with a Q&A moderated by Salmon Arm Mayor Alan Harrison. …Wilson will be screening the documentary at the B.C. Legislature. He said government officials, including B.C. Wildfire assistant deputy minister Rob Schweitzer, featured in the film, have taken part in past screenings and question periods. He views this as a sign the documentary is resonating with the Province.
Local residents are invited to share their input on the development of the Mackenzie forest landscape plan (FLP), which will guide long-term forest management in the area. “This is an opportunity for Mackenzie residents to share what matters most about your forests,” said Ravi Parmar, Minister of Forests. “Forests are part of who we are and your voices guide how they’re managed.” People can share their thoughts through a survey, open from Monday, Nov. 10 until Dec. 22, 2025. …FLPs are intended to be developed in partnership with First Nations to ensure meaningful participation in forestry planning and decision-making. Tsay Keh Dene Nation has partnered with the Province on the Mackenzie FLP. Engagement with other First Nations in the area continues. Community engagement is also a key part of every FLP, ensuring everyone in the area has an opportunity to be heard. 
A First Nations joint-venture forestry company is under fire for its burning practices. C̕awak ʔqin Forestry recently lit up a series of burn piles only a few metres from where a local company turns post harvest wood waste into much needed hogfuel for the Catalyst paper mill. Under provincial guidelines, forest harvesters are supposed to look for grinding or chipping opportunities ahead of burning. Keith Wyton from the local air quality council says local governments should push foresters to not burn. …Forest companies are allowed to pile and burn slash at this time of year, but Wyton wants the BC Government to step in. …C̕awak ʔqin General Manager Geoff Payne said they were operating within provincial guidelines and were permitted to burn. C̕awak ʔqin Forestry is a joint venture between Western Forest Products and the Huu-ay-aht First Nation.
Trouble in the Headwaters, a 25-minute documentary by Daniel J. Pierce, is coming to Golden! This film sheds light on the disastrous 2018 flood event in Grand Forks, BC, and features UBC forest hydrology and watershed management Professor Dr. Younes Alila. Both Daniel and Younes will be present to introduce the film and answer questions afterwards as part of a panel discussion with local experts and Wildsight’s forestry team. Join us to explore the complex connection between clearcut logging and the increasing frequency of floods, landslides and droughts across our province. 
ALBERTA — Crowsnest Pass, the lowest pass through the Rocky Mountains between New Mexico and Jasper National Park, is home to Alberta’s rarest, most tree-species-rich forest. Some species growing here are as rare in Alberta as sage grouse and woodland caribou. …Trees don’t thrive within this forest. They cling to life. …A question I’ve long posed to society and the managers of southwestern Alberta’s matchstick forest is this: Is it economically viable to manage this forest for timber production? …Some years ago, I was selected to sit on a Government of Alberta advisory committee creating a vision for future management of this forest. …Alberta’s forest managers, responding to the problem they helped create, have now placed a new prescription on the pharmacist’s cutting block. The old prescription — clear-cut logging. The new prescription — profoundly expanded clear-cut logging.
The PRT tree seedling nursery …with locations in Canada and the United States is North America’s largest producer of container-grown forest seedlings. …But at time when the forestry sector is facing hurdles such as softwood lumber duties and new American tariffs, the 2 Billion Trees program will be scrapped in the proposed federal 2025 budget. …a billion trees would have been grown from seed in nurseries like PRT and then planted across Canada. …Brinkman Reforestation is the largest tree planting company in Canada and says the industry is facing enough hurdles without having the 2 Billion Trees program cancelled. …In Black Creek, three generations of the same family have been growing tree seedlings at Sylvan Vale Nurseries. …manager Siriol Paquet says extra programs like 2 Billion Trees are important at at time when logging is declining, because if trees aren’t being cut, then they don’t need to be replaced with new ones.
OLYMPIA — The Washington Forest Practices Board took 200,000 acres of timberland out of production, voting 7-5 to require loggers to stay farther back from streams without fish. The close vote Nov. 12 capped a contentious debate over the environmental and economic consequences of widening and lengthening riparian buffers to shade streams. Forest landowners will lose $2.8 billion in harvestable timber because of the new buffers, according to a University of Washington analysis. Ten state representatives, five Democrats and five Republicans, questioned whether the board had thoroughly examined the social costs. And the Environmental Protection Agency said the bigger buffers are not needed to meet the Clean Water Act. But the Department of Ecology championed wider and longer buffers. The buffers will keep timber harvests from warming water temperatures in most cases, according to Ecology. “Not taking action is not an option,” said Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller, a member of the forest board.
On Oct. 17 … the Flathead National Forest’s district ranger in Swan Lake proposed an emergency logging and thinning project west of Blacktail Mountain called the West Truman Project. The project proposal … was published to the Flathead National Forest’s projects website, signaling a departure from the agency’s usual strategy of notifying members of the public about planning projects by email and issuing press releases. It also came with a caveat: The West Truman Project is being analyzed under the USDA’s newly established Emergency Action Determination and, as such, is exempt from the usual layers of permitting compliance — including public comment. …Keith Hammer, leader of the Swan View Coalition, said he wasn’t surprised to see the Flathead National Forest propose a logging project with the stated purpose of reducing wildfire risk; however, he was surprised by the covert way in which they proposed it.
Rising wildfire risk in the Pacific Northwest combined with volatile timber pricing may lower forestland values by as much as 50% and persuade property owners to harvest Douglas fir trees much earlier than planned, according to a new analysis. The optimal age to harvest Douglas fir trees — absent fire risk — would be 65 years. The study, from Oregon State University researchers, suggests that harvesting trees at 24 years would make the most economic sense under the worst-case scenarios. “Basically, under high wildfire risk that rises with stand age, every year you wait to harvest you’re rolling the dice,” said Mindy Crandall, an associate professor in the OSU College of Forestry. Co-author Andres Susaeta, an OSU forestry assistant professor, said the study was a simulation, but researchers are confident in the direction of results. Susaeta said earlier harvesting reduces both long-term timber revenue and impacts wood quality.
Policies by the Trump administration are putting communities at increased risk for wildfire because federal funding for fuels treatment work is becoming more difficult to obtain. That is the opinion of a group of policymakers and politicians who convened in Bend last week to discuss how best to manage local forests. Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler, Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang and State Senator Anthony Broadman — all Democrats — were among those in attendance… Members of the group said there is a lack of clarity over future treatments in the Deschutes National Forest following years of mitigation work that cleared the forest floor of fuels and thinned areas to prevent a fast-moving crown fire. …Chang said he is especially concerned with the Trump administration’s Fix our Forest Act … The bill relies mostly on logging and cattle grazing to clear fuels that cause catastrophic wildfire, but funding for prescribed burning isn’t part of the legislation. 
The Washington Forest Practices Board may vote Nov. 12 to widen and lengthen riparian buffers, taking millions of dollars worth of timber out of production. Forest landowners and the wood-products are mounting a last-ditch effort to persuade the board to not adopt what they say would be a massive taking of private property. The state Department of Ecology says wider and longer buffers would keep timber harvests from raising temperatures in non-fish bearing streams in most cases. Timber groups haven’t been in a battle this divisive since the industry, state agencies and tribes settled on seminal logging rules in 1999, Washington Forest Protection Association’s Darin Cramer said. …Studies confirmed logging raises water temperatures. The timber industry argues that even if temperatures rise, they soon go down and generally do not exceed acceptable levels. Massachusetts-based consultant Industrial Economics estimates the rule will take somewhere between 67,000 acres and 170,000 acres out of production.
Every year, there are thousands of landslides in Oregon. Geologists say the number is increasing due to climate change. …Swaths of the Pacific Northwest are particularly prone, thanks to a combination of mountainous landscape and heavy rainfall. “Over the last couple decades, the landslides and the surface processes and surface hazards that I’ve been working on have become much more prominent, primarily due to climate change and humans inhabiting more areas in hazardous terrain,” said Josh Roering, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Oregon. …Roering is one of the geologists involved in the newly formed Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH). A $15 million NSF grant jumpstarted the center that will study landslides and other surface hazards. While CLaSH is housed in the University of Michigan, it is a collaboration with more than a dozen academic, governmental and community partners across the country. 
Miles Ryan checked his harness one last time, gave an assured look to his ground crew, and started to climb. …There, balanced at the top of the forest, Ryan leaned out toward the tips of the limbs to get what he’d come for: cones. It was one of Cal Fire’s last cone samplings of the season, which usually runs from August to October across state forests and conifer species. Each cone contains anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of precious seeds. These have become more important in recent years, as an uptick in severe wildfires and the spread of insects and diseases have led to mass deaths of pines across California forests. But there are just a few dozen professional tree climbers like Ryan trained for high-elevation seed collection in California. …Cal Fire needs to collect 55,978 bushels of cones across species and locales to fully stock its seed bank.
Cal Poly Humboldt study in partnership with Save the Redwoods League reveals how second-growth forests respond to modern wildfires and what managers can do to protect them. California’s coast redwoods have stood for centuries, weathering a changing climate, logging, and time itself. But in an era of hotter, more frequent wildfires, their future resilience depends on how we care for them, according to new research published in Forest Ecology and Management. The study sought to understand the effects of wildfire on coast redwoods—the tallest trees in the world. Results revealed that redwoods in second-growth forests largely survived extreme wildfires in 2020 and quickly resprouted from their trunks and bases. Researchers also discovered that forest structure—how dense the trees are and which species are present—strongly influences fire severity, highlighting the importance of management efforts such as thinning, reducing fuel loads, and encouraging fire-resistant species.
A bipartisan piece of legislation that could have big impacts on the nation’s forest land continues to move quickly through Congress, pushing through a Senate committee last month. The Fix Our Forests Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate in April and co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Sheehy, along with Senators from California, Utah and Colorado. The legislation seeks to promote prescribed burns, expand the state-federal Good Neighbor Authority program, increase collaboration among fire agencies and improve reforestation efforts after fires. It also makes some rule changes that could impact how areas designated as high fire danger are managed and how projects in those areas proceed. …The legislation has received some support from environmental and outdoor advocacy groups… But there has also been some concern with it, namely around how it could change the process of forest projects, especially those in a declared “emergency fireshed management” area.
Albuquerque, NM — A new report by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters reveals a troubling decline in wildfire prevention work across the nation. According to the report, hazardous fuel reduction efforts on U.S. Forest Service land are down 38% since January 2025 compared to recent years, following significant federal budget cuts to staffing and resources. Hazardous fuel treatments are critical in preventing catastrophic wildfires. These projects include thinning overgrown forests, clearing brush, and conducting prescribed burns to reduce the vegetation that feeds wildfires. The group’s findings directly contradict recent public assurances from administration officials that land management agencies remain adequately funded and staffed. …The analysis shows mitigation work has fallen especially low in Idaho and Montana, where fewer than 30% of acres have been treated this year compared to previous averages. …Grassroots Wildland Firefighters warn that unless funding is restored, the nation’s wildfire season will grow increasingly severe and dangerous in the years ahead.
CORVALLIS, Oregon – Rising wildfire risk in the Pacific Northwest combined with notoriously volatile timber pricing may lower forestland values by as much as 50% and persuade plantation owners to harvest trees much earlier than planned, a 
BOISI, Idaho — The Trump Administration’s decision earlier this year to do away with the 2001 Roadless Area Conseravtion Rule on national forest lands sent shockwaves through environmental and outdoor recreation communities. According to environmentalists and an Idaho public official who has been involved in roadless rule politics since the issue’s inception, the move could transport stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest back to the rancor and political divisions of the timber war years. …“The national rule itself put the whole timber wars to bed. It really did,” said James Caswell, former director of the Bureau of Land Management. …The rule led to conditions in which environmentalists became less combative about forest management, according to Caswell. Instead, enviros became more willing to work with timber industry and Forest Service officials. …The decision puts the forest objectives of fishermen, hunters, ATVers, bird watchers and others on the back burner.
By 2015, the dense 1,385 hectares Kandowa Forest once filled acacia and mahogany … had vanished entirely. The disappearance of forests like Kandowa reflects a broader environmental catastrophe unfolding across South Darfur, where more than 70 percent of tree cover has been lost over the past decade… The violence that erupted between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces in April 2023 has only accelerated the destruction, pushing desperate families deeper into what remains of the forests. With gas supplies cut off and charcoal prices soaring fivefold, survival itself now depends on felling trees. …Salim outlined a more comprehensive approach: making alternative energy sources like gas and solar power affordable, launching large-scale reforestation…, and enforcing stronger laws to combat illegal logging and timber smuggling. …”If people have no peace, no jobs, no energy, they will keep cutting trees,” said Khaldi Fathi Salim, with South Darfur’s Ministry of Agriculture. 
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has confirmed that Motion 30/2025 passed at its General Assembly in Panama. The motion establishes a roadmap for a digital information and volume-control system designed to strengthen the integrity of FSC claims and reduce the risk of false or fraudulent declarations within the supply chain. FSC says the measure will support greater transparency and traceability across certified products. …The Policy Motion reads: FSC shall gradually phase in a requirement for Certificate Holders to use a universal information and volume control system. This system shall be implemented using a risk-based, stepwise approach with full implementation no later than 2030. FSC should also establish supporting tools and services to ensure that all producers and companies can comply with the requirement.
The controversial law was supposed to come into force in December last year but the latest proposal would see its implementation delayed for a second time to late 2026. European lawmakers backed on Thursday a proposal to slash due diligence requirements for business operators under the European Union’s anti-deforestation law, after pressure from industry groups and countries outside Europe claimed the law was too burdensome. The ballot followed the European Commission’s announcement last month of an IT glitch that effectively delayed the law’s implementation until the end of 2026. …Under the new draft bill to simplify the law, lawmakers backed a Commission proposal that seeks to reduce the data load handled by the IT system linked to the EU’s anti-deforestation law and to cut the administrative burden for farmers, foresters and other economic operators. …While most member states back the delay to 2026, many others continue to hold divergent views.
Sweden is one of the world’s largest exporters of forest-based products… Decisions made in Sweden about how forests are managed ripple outward far beyond the kingdom’s borders. That is why the Swedish government’s recent forestry inquiry should matter not just to those living in Sweden, but to anyone concerned about the global climate crisis. The inquiry’s central message is clear: increase forest growth, harvest more biomass, and thereby contribute to the green transition. This might sound promising. More trees mean more carbon absorbed, more wood products to replace unsustainable products. But the plan overlooks the most important part of the forest: the soil. …The government’s proposal even encourages fertilization with nitrogen to speed up tree growth. This can work in the short term, but after a decade, the effect largely disappears. …If Sweden does not get this right, what happens in Sweden’s forests will not stay in Sweden’s forests.
The Ministry of Family and Social Services and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry have launched the “Every Family One Sapling Our Green Homeland” campaign, a joint initiative that plants a sapling in the name of every newborn baby and newlywed couple across Türkiye. The project aims to support environmental sustainability while promoting demographic growth and family values. Announced within the framework of the “November 11 National Forestation Day,” declared by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the campaign reflects Türkiye’s commitment to both population development and ecological preservation. The initiative is designed to strengthen the country’s ongoing “Green Homeland Mobilization” by encouraging citizens to contribute to afforestation efforts starting from birth or marriage. As part of the campaign’s official launch, Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş and Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumaklı visited Ankara Bilkent City Hospital to meet with newborn babies and their families.