Some highlights from the January newsletter include:
- Project Learning Tree Canada launches a new forest management educational and career game, Forest Quest!
- Share Project Learning Tree Canada’s upcoming Green Workforce Panel with young professionals in your network.
- SFI and Project Learning Tree, in partnership with the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources,and Related Sciences, are releasing: Black Faces in Green Spaces: Journeys of Black Professionals in Green Careers guide
- SFI opened its request for proposals supporting community-focused projects.
- A commitment to 30×30, to designate 30 percent of Earth’s land and ocean as protected areas by 2030, was among four goals and 23 targets for achievement of COP15
A Kaslo resident filed a complaint with the Forest Practices Board about Cooper Creek Cedar Ltd.’s (CCC) harvesting in the Salisbury Creek area south of Argenta. The complainant believes that CCC’s harvesting is inconsistent with the visual quality objective (VQO). The complainant believes that Cooper Creek Cedar Ltd.’s (CCC) harvesting is inconsistent with the visual quality objective (VQO). Did CCC comply with FRPA when it planned and logged? Board investigators completed a visual impact assessment (VIA) of the harvested area from three significant public viewpoints that CCC had identified in the VIA.
PRINCE GEORGE – As forestry operations across the province struggle to obtain adequate fibre to keep the gears turning on sawmills and pulp and paper mills, changes are being made. After calls from Joe Nemeth, Manager at the BC Pulp and Paper Coalition to fund a fire-damaged fibre recovery program, the province has sprung into action. The $50 million program will be administered by the Forest Enhancement Society of BC, targeted at salvaging fire-damaged stands across the province. Nemeth said this will aid pulp mills to keep the doors open for years to come, with big benefits especially in Southern BC where forest fires have burnt across landscapes in recent years. Northern BC will also see some benefit to the program. “This is a major positive step towards resolving the single biggest issue the B.C. forest sector is currently facing: lack of economic fibre.
WINNIPEG, MB
HALIFAX: Crown land in Antigonish and Guysborough counties has been set aside in zones promoting what the provincial government is calling ecological forestry. …the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables (DNRR) announced that it dedicated a “high production forest zone,” which will complete its “triad model of ecological forestry.” They noted that this will ensure that 90 per cent of Crown land is “managed with biodiversity as the top priority.” …The province said 10 per cent of Crown land, about 185,000 hectares, will be allocated for the high production forest zone where clear-cutting is allowed. …Once forestry licensees have harvested an area in this zone, they are expected to prepare and add nutrients to the soil, plant high-quality, fast-growing seedlings, and manage the crop for decades, said the province. …The department estimates that each year for the next 35 years, licensees will establish about 5,000 hectares of Crown land in the zone. 
Ecosystems are
A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that a forest’s management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed. Findings of the research, led by associate forest engineering associate professor Catalina Segura and graduate student Arianna Goodman of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, were published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Probing the factors behind landslide frequency and magnitude is crucial because slides occur in all 50 states, causing an average of more than 25 deaths per year, according to the United States Geological Survey. The USGS puts the total annual average economic damage resulting from landslides at greater than $1 billion.
In a reversal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service issued a final repeal of the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule. The move formally reinstates the 2001 roadless rule in the Tongass National Forest, and effectively prohibits timber harvest and road construction within designated Inventoried Roadless Areas. Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the decision is major loss for Alaskans. “It’s yet another way the Biden administration is singling out Alaska,” he stated on Jan. 25. “Alaskans deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides – jobs, renewable energy resources, and tourism, not a government plan that treats human beings within a working forest like an invasive species.” …Numerous environmental safeguards currently ensure that economic survival is balanced with conservation practices and resource protection.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finalized protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. USDA’s final rule repeals the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule and restores longstanding roadless protections to 9.37 million acres of roadless areas that support the ecological, economic and cultural values of Southeastern Alaska. …At 16.7 million acres, the Tongass National Forest represents the largest intact tract of coastal temperate rainforest on earth and is considered critical for carbon sequestration and carbon storage to help mitigate climate change. …The announcement reflects the Administration’s commitment to strengthening nation-to-nation relationships and incorporating Indigenous knowledge, stewardship, and Tribal priorities into land management decision-making. …Repealing the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule, which exempted the Tongass from roadless protections, will return the inventoried roadless areas of the forest to management under the 2001 Roadless Rule, which prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest in inventoried roadless areas, with limited exceptions. 
While campaigning, one of Gov. Maura Healey’s climate priorities was to place a moratorium on commercial logging on state-owned forest land, a move that foresters and environmental advocates say would be detrimental to forest health, the state’s climate goals and the economy. Harvesting timber …is a vital forest management tactic… according to local and state experts. Additionally, the state’s tight forest regulations mean any sort of harvesting or forest management practices are heavily scrutinized before work is done on the ground. “For all of those reasons, we and all these major environmental organizations — a long list of them — have urged the administration to not take that step,” said Chris Egan, the executive director of the Massachusetts Forest Alliance, a Marlborough-based forest advocacy group. “It’s not a free-for-all — these are carefully managed and planned projects based in science. Forest management in Massachusetts is among the most tightly regulated anywhere in the world.”
CALIFORNIA –Wildfires have long been a facet of California’s ecosystem, as varied forest land covers much of the state and often benefits from some types of fire. Indigenous communities were using controlled burns to manage forests long before Europeans were part of the equation. But a new study from UC Davis researchers found Sierra Nevada forests are facing more extreme wildfires, which could be bringing changes to ecosystems. …Fires that burn more than 95% of organic matter above ground — classified as high-severity wildfires — have increased across California at “unprecedented rates” since the mid-19th century, the authors wrote. The amount of low-to-moderate severity wildfires, which can be beneficial to forest ecosystems, also decreased during the same time period. Authors noted that a large portion of those changes have been felt over the last decade, as the state has seen nine of its largest fires in recorded history.