“Indigenous-led conservation was front and centre Wednesday at COP15. One of our top priorities at the 12-day Nature COP is to show the world that Canada’s model for conservation is done in full partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Metis people. Prime Minister Trudeau announced up to $800 million over seven years to support up to four Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, including one in the Northwest Territories that could become the world’s largest Indigenous-led project of its type. Canada can only succeed in achieving our goal of protecting 30% of lands and waters by 2030 by incorporating Indigenous Knowledge, derived from their experiences as guardians of the land, water and ice.” The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada
Additional coverage:
- Looking out for Canadian biodiversity – Committee of the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
- With the planet in peril, Canada must get serious about protecting nature – The National Observer
The B.C. government appears poised to announce new protections for “high profile” species at risk of extinction, including boreal caribou and spotted owls, as part of a long-awaited nature agreement with the federal government, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal through a Freedom of Information request. One document suggests the B.C. government’s decision to sign a nature agreement with Ottawa is motivated by a desire to sidestep potential federal interventions to protect at-risk species and their habitat. Details of the nature agreement have not yet been announced but speculation is it will be released any day to coincide with COP15, the United Nations biodiversity conference that opened Nov. 6 in Montreal. …The briefing note also says… Old-growth management areas, ungulate winter range designations and wildlife habitat areas “are likely to be used for species at risk and for old-growth management.” 
MONTREAL
Canada supports the goals of the European Union’s forestry trade rules, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says, after a leaked letter recently revealed the country’s efforts to water down proposed EU regulations right before the United Nations’ global biodiversity conference kicks off in Montreal. …The leaked letter … was penned by Canada’s ambassador to the EU, Ailish Campbell. It called for a “phased” approach that would slow down the push to halt deforestation and asked the European Commission to reconsider “burdensome traceability requirements” meant to ensure unsustainably sourced wood products have no place in the market. The federal government is working with provinces and territories to “define pathways” to protect areas with large, intact old-growth forests, said Guilbeault. Ottawa is prepared to give B.C. a “down payment” of $50 million to help protect old-growth forest, he said, but as the Narwhal recently reported, B.C. has yet to accept the funds.
MONTRÉAL – Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Fondaction, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS Quebec), the Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science (QCBS) and Université de Sherbrooke have joined forces to conduct research with the goal of creating a series of biodiversity indicators specific to the Québec territory and its investors. These indicators will be used to provide a better measurement of the impact investments have on biodiversity. Once created, they will allow a first in Canada: mobilizing players in conservation, biodiversity, research and finance to rally around protecting Québec’s biodiversity. …The two-year research project, which aims to develop tools to better inform investors’ choices to preserve and protect nature and essential services for communities, is led by Félix Landry, a postdoctoral student of Professor Dominique Gravel at Université de Sherbrooke.
Faced with millions of acres of burned up forests and a need to replant them, a private timber company and the state of California are working together to build a new tree seedling nursery in Siskiyou County. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announced Tuesday that is has awarded Sierra Pacific Industries of Anderson a $3 million grant to build a nursery that within four years should be able to produce 25 million seedlings a year. The new production facility will be built on SPI land in the small community of Gazelle, northwest of Mount Shasta, and will cost about $10 million, Cal Fire said. The nursery will employ 10 people full time and another 110 seasonal workers, officials said. Current nursery capacity is not sufficient to keep up with the damage done from wildfires that have burned millions of acres of California forests in recent years, Cal Fire said.
EDENTON, North Carolina — Enviva is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world. The company has, from its inception, touted its green credentials. It says it doesn’t use big, whole trees, but only uses wood waste, “tops, limbs, thinnings, and/or low-value smaller trees” in the production of woody biomass burned in former coal power plants in the U.K., EU and Asia. It says it only sources wood from areas where trees will be regrown, and that it doesn’t contribute to deforestation. However, in first-ever interviews with a whistleblower who worked within Enviva plant management, Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso has been told that all of these Enviva claims are false. …These findings are especially important now, as the EU considers the future of forest biomass burning as a “sustainable” form of renewable energy./cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/F2TOJWY5JNOQLKJJDSJYRWD56Y.jpg)
SWEDEN — How do we meet the climate challenges and strengthen biodiversity and what is the role of the forest for the green transition? Together with the Forest Industries, Holmen wants to contribute to a positive social development, and we have the ambition to both improve our positive impression and increase the outside world’s insights into what we in the industry do and can do. With “Framtidsresan”, Skogsindustrierna is launching a long-term campaign that is part of making the forest industry’s contribution visible and seeking the answers to how we together can tighten the bow and contribute even more. The launch of the campaign was the LinkedIn event “How can Sweden become more circular” on December 2, where Holmen’s Sustainability and Communications Director Stina Sandell [and others] discussed what consumers, companies and politicians can do to facilitate the 
BRUSSELS – The European Union agreed on Tuesday on a new law to prevent companies from selling into the EU market coffee, beef, soy and other commodities linked to deforestation around the world. The law will require companies to produce a due diligence statement showing that their supply chains are not contributing to the destruction of forests before they sell goods into the EU – or they could face hefty fines. Negotiators… struck the deal on the law on Tuesday. It will apply to soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa and coffee, and some derived products including leather, chocolate and furniture. Rubber, charcoal and some palm oil derivatives were included at the request of EU lawmakers. Companies would need to show when and where the commodities were produced and “verifiable” information that they were not grown on land deforested after 2020. …Countries impacted by the new rules …say they are burdensome and costly. 