Canada’s premiers met June to talk infrastructure but were distracted by the small matter of the forest fires raging across the West at the time. …Six weeks later, the country is well into one of its worst wildfire seasons ever. …“Suppression alone is no longer adequate to address the growing challenges from wildland fire,“ the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers said in a report last year. ”Wildland fire management in Canada needs to be transformed.” That means creating a national regime of prescribed burns – the deliberate setting of fires under controlled circumstances to reduce the number and intensity of forest fires, and to limit damage to property. It’s a practice that Indigenous peoples in Canada and elsewhere used for millennia to manage their lands. But its use is sharply limited in Canada, mostly because politicians are scared to the point of paralysis by the off-chance that a government-sanctioned burn could get out of control.
It is estimated that 130 million trees in the Tłı̨chǫ region alone were burned in the devastating 2023 fires. An ambitions new reforestation project is taking on a unprecedented initiative to plant over 1 million trees as part of a six-year plan to plant 13 million trees to bring back the forest. The Tłı̨chǫ Government is holding a special opening ceremony tomorrow at the Behchokǫ̀ Culture Centre at 10:00 a.m. in celebration of the launch of their major reforestation project. “This will mark the beginning of the largest reforestation effort ever undertaken in the Northwest Territories,” said Paul Cressman, who is working with the Tłı̨chǫ government on the new reforestation project. Over the summer, 1.4 million trees will be planted around Behchokǫ̀, Russell Lake, and James Lake. Using locally harvested seeds, the tree planting is “the first step” in a six-year plan to plant 13 million trees across Tłı̨chǫ lands.
Vancouver Park Board staff are seeking commissioners’ approval to proceed with the next phase of a tree removal project in Stanley Park due to an extensive looper moth infestation. Work has been underway to cut down thousands of trees in Vancouver’s biggest park since the summer of 2023, due to fire and public safety risks posed by dead and dying trees. …While the tree removal plan has faced sharp criticism staff say they have a plan that will see the least number of trees removed. “This aims to balance key public safety risks resulting from the hemlock looper outbreak while leaving a moderate extent of internal forest areas to undergo natural forest stand regeneration,” the staff motion says of its preferred approach. If commissioners approve of the staff plan, planning for tree removal and mitigation work would begin later this year and conclude in the first quarter of 2027.
Clear-cutting can make catastrophic floods 18 times more frequent with effects lasting more than 40 years, according to a new UBC study. In one watershed, these extreme floods also became more than twice as large, turning a once-in-70-years event into something that now happens every nine. “This research challenges conventional thinking about forest management’s impact on flooding,” said senior author Dr. Younes Alila, a hydrologist in the UBC faculty of forestry. “We hope the industry and policymakers will take note of the findings, which show that it matters not only how much forest you remove but also where, how and under what conditions.” The UBC-led study draws on one of the world’s longest-running forest experiments at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in North Carolina and is published in the 
The Coastal Fire Centre will put a campfire ban into effect this week. The ban will be in place starting at noon on Thursday, July 17, noted a Coastal Fire Centre information bulletin issued Tuesday, July 15. Campfires will be prohibited on Vancouver Island and throughout the Coastal Fire Centre region with the exception of Haida Gwaii and the portion of the Central Coast Regional District within the North Island Central Forest District. Existing open fire prohibitions in the Coastal Fire Centre’s jurisdiction enacted May 30 will remain in place, and fireworks and burn barrels are restricted in most areas. “Open fire is the largest cause of human-caused fires provincially,” noted the information bulletin. “Human-caused wildfires are entirely preventable and may divert crucial resources from naturally occurring and/or existing wildfires.” The campfire ban and previous burning bans will be in place until Oct. 31 or until the orders are rescinded.
With the wildfire season intensifying in recent years, post-wildfire restoration has become increasingly critical. A Vancouver tech company drawing investor attention says it has an answer for not only replanting trees, but helping to rebuild forests that are more resilient to future fires. Veritree Technology Inc. is a platform that uses ecological data and monitoring tools to support tree planting, tracking and reporting. “Today, areas that historically wouldn’t have burned from wildfires are actually burning much hotter. At times, that burns the seed stock that would otherwise naturally regenerate after a wildfire,” said Derrick Emsley, CEO and co-founder of Veritree. He said that without intervention, deciduous species could grow back fast, crowding out the chance for a mature, healthy natural forest to regenerate, which leaves the area more vulnerable to wildfires in the future.
As wildfires become more frequent and intense across Canada, fire officials are seeing stark differences between northwestern and northeastern Ontario. They say it all comes down to what’s burning, how it burns, and where. More than 2.2 million hectares have burned in Ontario’s northwest since 2015, compared with around 287,000 hectares in the northeast. “The three things that we need to consider are the weather, the fuels and the topography,” said Chelene Hanes, a wildland fire research scientist at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie. Northwestern Ontario typically gets a minimal amount of rain, whereas the northeast has a wetter climate and vast peatlands, she explained. …”On the [northwest] side of the province, and moving into the prairies, they’ve experienced a bit more drought, which is influencing the moisture of the fuels. So that is causing more ignitions to happen as well, because it’s drier,” Hanes said.
WHITBY, Ontario — Ryan Turnbull, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance… highlighted a $4-million federal investment for tree-planting projects in urban and suburban areas in southern Ontario. Trees For Life will collaborate with planting partners to plant an average of 24,000 trees annually over five years, for a total of 120,000 trees in communities across southern Ontario. The collaboration with Trees For Life is already ahead of target, supporting the planting of 83,000 trees in southern Ontario with 35,000 trees planted in 2024 and 48,000 trees planted across 40 projects in 2025 to date. This project builds on a successful regional model piloted in the Durham Region. 
With the announcement that there won’t be a new kraft pulp mill being built in Liverpool, the long and expensive Northern Pulp saga begins winding down. Here’s the little we know about what Northern Pulp and its associated companies are worth, who’s likely to get paid and what the taxpayer might be on the hook for. When it filed for creditor protection in 2020, Northern Pulp estimated it had $254 million in assets and $311,019,464 in liabilities. But half of those assets – what it estimated as $130 million worth of equipment and land associated with a cold-idled pulp mill at Abercrombie Point – comes with a large and undetermined liability for whoever gets stuck with the cleanup costs. How much the taxpayer ends up on the hook both for unpaid loans to Northern Pulp and cleanup of the mill site will rely on how much gets paid for the companies’ assets.
A new peer-reviewed scientific study [
DOLORES, Colo.— Forest health advocates have finalized an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service that will preserve tens of thousands of the largest, oldest ponderosa pine trees in Colorado’s San Juan National Forest. “Large, mature trees are critical for climate resilience, habitat and forest health” said John Rader, public lands program director for the San Juan Citizens Alliance. “We are pleased to reach a common-sense agreement that helps safeguard our forests from climate change and biodiversity loss.” In June 2023 San Juan Citizens Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Forest Service in federal court over its approval of a nearly 23,000-acre timber project in the Dolores District of the San Juan National Forest. The project area is a watershed for the Dolores River and provides important habitat for elk, mule deer and raptor, including imperiled goshawks. It was extensively logged throughout the 1900s, and few mature ponderosa pines remain.
A new tool sheds light on the impact of wildfires across California. The 
New federal laws could “lock up” timber land for decades at a time, raising concerns big companies could elbow out smaller competitors and that timber revenue for counties could be delayed for years. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and spending bill, which he signed into law earlier this month, increases the length of federal logging contracts to a minimum of 20 years. The contracts, which determine how long a logging company has to harvest on the land under contract, have typically averaged three to four years, and the longest contracts extended up to 10 years. The concern raised by a coalition of timber companies and local governments is that companies could sign long-term contracts, then wait years to harvest trees. “If the timber volume is tied up in these 20 year contracts,” Doug Robertson, executive director of the Association of O&C counties, said, “that volume then is no longer available to generate revenue for the counties and the state.”
Oregon’s forestry board has long had the power to hire and fire the state forester, who oversees logging and environmental protections on state lands, as well as firefighting across millions of acres of public and private land. But the board lost that hiring-and-firing power this session with Senate Bill 1051, which handed it over to the governor. This bill has left many forestry board members wondering how much authority they still have. “Right now, after the passage of this senate bill, I have very little reason to trust your office,” vice chair Brenda McComb told members of Gov. Tina Kotek’s staff at the board’s Wednesday meeting. There’s a lot riding on forest management in Oregon. Revenues raised from logging trees on state lands help fund rural schools and some county budgets. Timber sales are also a key revenue source for the Oregon Department of Forestry, which fights fires on about 12 million acres of private land.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and Representative Joe Neguse, along with other politicians, introduced the Joint Chiefs Reauthorization Act. This legislation would reauthorize the program to better support forest and grassland restoration projects on both public and private lands. “Our Western forests, grasslands, and watersheds are as important to our economy as the Lincoln Tunnel is to New York, but they are under threat from a changing climate and consistent federal underinvestment,” said Bennet. …Bennet mentioned that strengthening the program will ensure that restoring landscapes, protecting water supplies, and reducing wildfire risks can continue for future generations. “Western and Northern Colorado are all too familiar with the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires,” said Neguse.
Could President Donald Trump’s strategies help revive Washington’s diminished timber industry? For nearly a century, Washington’s timber industry produced everything from paper and two-by-fours to the massive wood beams that hold up the Tacoma Dome. Lumber mills were the backbone of logging towns throughout the Northwest. But the industry has been on a long decline since the 1990s. Now, Trump wants to reduce foreign competition and increase US logging to bring back those jobs. To find out whether it could work, KUOW visited a sawmill in Morton, a small town in the foothills of Mount Rainier. …Today, the state has about 100,000 timber-related jobs, including mills. That means Washington has lost about a quarter of its timber jobs in the last thirty years. The loss has been devastating to rural communities built around those sawmills, like Morton, Washington. …The Hampton Mill is still the economic heart of the community today. It’s survived the waves of closures over the years.
A new analysis reveals that many of Eastern Oregon’s ancient trees are dying at an alarming rate. The study, conducted by a team led by James Johnston, an assistant research professor at the University of Oregon, found that between 2012 and 2023, a quarter of trees over 300 years old in roadless areas of the Malheur National Forest had died. Johnston attributed the decline to a combination of drought, insect infestations, and competition with younger trees. “It’s sad to see so many old trees dying,” Johnston said. He emphasized the need for active management to protect these ancient trees, particularly in the dry forests of Eastern and Southern Oregon. The study, published in the journal 
WYOMING — The future of roadless areas in the Bighorn National Forest and other national forest system lands is uncertain after the Trump administration announced that it would rescind the 2001 roadless rule. …Of the Bighorn National Forest’s 1.1 million acres, 600,000 acres are managed as inventoried roadless areas. In these areas, road construction and reconstruction and timber harvesting are prohibited. Rollins’ action will require environmental analysis, compliance with the Endangered Species Act, tribal consultation and coordination with affected states, according to the U.S. Forest Service. So, at this point, how the proposal will impact forest management is uncertain. …Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson said he planned to seek a technical correction to the forest’s roadless boundaries from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. Johnson said that roughly 50% of the forest’s suitable timber base is located in areas designated as roadless.
For a few years, foragers and fungi enthusiasts around the Midwest have been seeing something yellow. The butter-colored flushes of the golden oyster mushroom are difficult to miss. They bloom on dead or decaying trees, and they have become profuse in states around the Great Lakes. The fungi, which are native to Asia, are good to eat and easy to grow. But a new study shows that they may also be sapping the resources of native mushrooms. And their footprint is spreading fast. “I don’t think anyone would hesitate to call it invasive,” said Aishwarya Veerabahu, a mycologist and doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an author of the 
On a day in early June, state forester Will Phifer carried a pill bottle-orange canister into a southeastern Oklahoma forest, tied it to a shaded tree trunk and left. The area was a confirmed spot for a growing population of tree-killing beetles called emerald ash borers, which likely seeped into the state from the east. The container held what scientists hope is a solution to controlling the harmful pest: more than 100 minuscule parasitoid wasp eggs. “These emerald ash borer eggs are laid on the outer bark of the tree,” Dieter Rudolph, forest health specialist for Oklahoma Forestry Services, said. “So, this wasp will go find them and basically inject an egg into the emerald ash borer egg.” Instead of producing an emerald ash borer larva, the host egg will hatch a new wasp.
The General Directorate of Forestry (OGM) under Türkiye’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has issued a stark warning, urging extreme caution as temperatures are forecast to rise by 6 to 12 degrees Celsius between July 19 and 25. As record-breaking summer heat and dry winds sweep across the Mediterranean basin, Türkiye is once again on the front lines of a growing global crisis: forest fires. Citing meteorological data, the OGM emphasized that a combination of soaring heat, low humidity and wind can create a dangerous trifecta, fueling wildfires that spread rapidly and with devastating intensity. “Even a moment of carelessness can ignite a fire of catastrophic scale,” the statement read. Citizens are urged not to burn brush, discard cigarette butts, light open fires or leave glass bottles in nature during this critical period. With 86% of wildfires caused by human activity, the risk is real and preventable.
Russia’s timber industry is warning of widespread production shutdowns as the sector reels from Western sanctions, declining demand and a surging ruble that has battered the country’s export competitiveness. …The Russian Association of Organizations and Enterprises of the Pulp and Paper Industry described the current moment as one of the industry’s most difficult periods in modern history. Industry data show that timber harvesting fell 13% in 2024 compared with pre-war levels in 2021, lumber production dropped 11% and plywood output declined 23%. Even pulp production, one of the sector’s more stable outputs, decreased by 3%. Major industry players including Segezha Group and ULK Group have been restructuring loans over the past two years in response to falling output, sliding prices and soaring costs. But the situation has continued to deteriorate, especially within the export-heavy pulp and paper sector. Compounding the problem is the Central Bank’s steep 20% key interest rate along with a hike in the profit tax rate from 20% to 25%.