Andrée Morneault is a Silviculture Forester with Nipissing Forest Resource Management. Silviculture Foresters are responsible for forest regeneration – making sure the trees grow back healthy and strong! In this video, Lacey learns from Andrée how to find the best pine cones to grow new trees, how to extract their seeds, and she drives a massive skidder through the forest! Project Learning Tree Canada (PLT Canada) believes in a society that values and benefits from sustainably managed forests and the great outdoors. We are committed to fostering inclusive environmental education and growing a diverse and resilient Green Jobs workforce, using trees and forests as windows on the world.
In 2017 … Teal-Jones purchased two ads in both the Lake Cowichan Gazette and the Cowichan Valley Citizen. Following B.C. law, the company was announcing its new forest stewardship plan, which set out how it intended to log in the region — including at the now-infamous Fairy Creek — and asking for public comment. …Teal-Jones wasn’t required to post the ad online. If you didn’t get the paper those weeks or lived outside of the Cowichan Valley, you probably would have missed it entirely. …While it might be tempting to point the finger of blame at Teal-Jones for not doing adequate outreach, the company’s approach was guided by the province’s own laws — specifically, the Forest Range and Practices Act. …Last Thursday, following years of requests from First Nations, environmental advocates and local governments, the B.C. government finally introduced major changes to the act through Bill 23.
B.C.’s forestry industry is rallying to get its voice back into the polarized debate over logging of old-growth forests as the province considers protecting more of the forests. …More bans on old-growth logging are expected and forest companies want to make sure their “voices are also part of that conversation,” said Susan Yurkovich, CEO of the Council of Forest Industries. …Yurkovich said the groups are not opposed to further protection of old-growth trees, but that a regional approach is needed. “We have to get input from (First) Nations, from communities.” Jeff Bromley, wood-council chair for the United Steelworkers union, said he has heard some decisions on logging deferrals could come as early as next week. He fears they will be “one-sided and could have very detrimental effects on a lot of remote communities, a lot of high-paying jobs and a lot of my membership, to be quite honest.”
PENTICTON– The BC Wildfire Service, in conjunction with Okanagan Shuswap Resource District and Penticton Indian Band, plans to burn approximately 1,100 piles of wood debris in several locations throughout the Penticton Fire Zone as part of fuels management projects intended to reduce the wildfire hazard present in the Penticton area. …The estimated commencement date for the project is November 1, 2021. Staff from the Penticton Indian Band and BC Wildfire Service will carefully prepare, control, and monitor these fires. Smoke and/or flames may be visible throughout the central and south Okanagan valley. Particularly from Kelowna, Peachland, Summerland, Penticton, Okanagan Falls and HWY 97. The exact timing of the burns will depend on site, weather, venting and snow conditions. Burning will proceed only if conditions are suitable and allow smoke to dissipate. 
We have developed this monthly newsletter to curate the good news stories we share throughout the province featuring FESBC-funded projects which are generating excellent economic, social, and environmental benefits.
Katrine Conroy, the B.C. minister of forests, introduced a bill on Oct. 20, to reshape forest management in this province. She says the proposed changes align forestry legislation with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. I quickly took to my computer to read between the lines of Bill 23 – 2021 – The Forests Statutes Amendment Act, and I discovered some key things of concern regarding Indigenous rights. …There is another question at the top of my mind – who are the Indigenous governing bodies that British Columbia will choose to do this forestry business with? And why? …Having now seen the clauses, in this new bill, regarding the decision-making power of the chief forester and the minister, I believe that this Bill does not fit the intentions of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, and therefore should not be approved as such.
Kelly Cooper, founder and president of the Centre for Social Intelligence (CSI), is clear – gender equality is everybody’s issue, not just for women. Cooper will address that in a free ABCFP webinar, How to Overcome Resistance to Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace, on October 28, 2021, 1:00 PM. Cooper guides leaders and change agents to create a diversity and inclusion transformation within organizations by conducting gap audit assessments, and developing strategies and action plans. She is working with the Canadian Institute of Forestry on a national action plan for gender equity in forestry (the ABCFP is a sponsor of this initiative). The plan led to the creation of the Free to Grow in Forestry campaign, which aims to achieve gender equality and meaningful inclusion of women, Indigenous Peoples, and new Canadians at all levels, from technical to executive positions in the forest sector.
Curiously, as partisan and ideological divisions deepen in America, something that looks an awful lot like consensus has been forming around wildfire policy in the West. Government agencies, academic researchers, Native American tribes, rural dwellers and environmentalists have all been reaching a similar conclusion: The 20th century approach to forest management was a long, tangled, disastrous mistake. …The unfettered, overgrown forests that resulted are not only far denser and more hazardous than those of a century ago, they are a radical departure from thousands of years of forest maintenance by indigenous Americans who employed fire to keep local forests healthy and productive before Europeans arrived. …“Many tribes in Oregon and California have evolved fire-dependent cultures and continue to use fire to this day,” said Belinda Brown, a member of the Kosealekte Band of the Ajumawi-Atsuge Nation.
Dear Members of the FSC Board, We are writing to express our concern about the integrity of the FSC label and its continued relevance to a climate-conscious future. We are a group of national and international NGOs working to protect forests, some of whom are FSC members and all of whom support FSC’s original aims and mean it well. FSC could be a powerful tool to protect and help restore the world’s forests and has had beneficial effects in some regions. However, we share urgent and serious concerns over its failure to transform in response to the challenges forests face in the 21st century, and believe it is increasingly serving to undermine rather than support its own stated goals. …Unfortunately, the FSC of today is vastly different from the FSC of those early years. …As one voice we ask the members of the Board to address our concerns and to urgently call for the changes we outline above. 