Canada’s forests are managed responsibly, as expected by Canadians coast to coast to coast. Our forests support jobs and communities, are home to wildlife and biodiversity and must remain healthy for future generations. Forest management certification plays an important role in meeting those expectations by ensuring harvesting is carried out in a manner that respects and maintains the full range of environmental, social, and economic values across forest landscapes, while providing independent verification that forestry practices meet high standards. Forest management certification is a voluntary, third-party system …The three independent certification programs used in Canada – the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) Canada and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) – are applied voluntarily by different companies and groups, and information is often scattered across multiple sources. To make it more transparent and accessible, FPAC has brought this information together in one place through its forest certification webpage.
BROMONT, QC
A panel at the 2026 SFI Annual Conference — Leveraging SFI Certification for Global Reporting Frameworks and Market Assurances — took on one of the more pressing questions facing the forest sector: as global disclosure frameworks multiply and investors demand quantifiable outcomes, does forest certification still do the job? Shenandoah Johns, Chief Environment and Sustainability Officer at West Fraser, walked through five major disclosure frameworks that have arrived in the last five years and identified the gap between what certification was designed to demonstrate and what regulators are now asking for. Paige Goff, VP Sustainability at Domtar, made the case for not overcomplicating what is already working. Kirsten Vice, Senior VP Sustainability and Canadian Operations at NCASI, framed 2026 as a year of influence — with key nature-related frameworks being finalized — and called on the sector to shape its own targets before others do it for them. Jason Metnick, President of SFI, moderated.
VICTORIA, BC — The Honourable Nathalie Provost, Secretary of State (Nature), highlighted 16 projects across BC. These projects represent a $272 million investment to plant over 95 million trees, helping to protect nature and biodiversity in Canada by restoring critical habitats for species at risk and wildfire-affected areas, as well as supporting Indigenous-led reforestation efforts through tree planting. … Canada’s Strategy to Protect Nature is based on three pillars for action to harmonize nature protection and economic growth: Protecting Nature in Canada, Building Canada Well, and Valuing Nature and Mobilizing Capital. Key components of the strategy include increasing our protected areas network on land and water. Elements to do this will include expanding our parks network and restoring critical habitats for species at risk, as well as recognizing and expanding on working landscapes or other effective conservation measures.
…In 2009, the Lil’wat and Squamish nations entered into a formal 25-year agreement with the Resort Municipality of Whistler to create the Cheakamus Community Forest—a more than 33,000-hectare patchwork of forested Crown land… Today, the
Delivered in partnership with COFI member companies, Indigenous organizations, school districts, training providers, and community partners, these initiatives are designed to increase awareness of the many career opportunities available in today’s forest sector. Through guided mill tours, classroom presentations, field tours, and career fairs, participants will gain direct exposure to local forestry operations and the technologies driving the industry, including advanced manufacturing, automation, and digital systems. 
Alberta Forest Week is just behind us – one of those natural moments throughout the year where I take time to pause and reflect on the challenges behind us, the opportunities that lie ahead, and all of the people who make that work possible. This year, I find myself thinking about what it truly means to be part of a forest community. Because at its core, this sector isn’t just about trees — it’s about people. The ones who show up early, stay late, and take pride in work that often goes unseen. The ones who build their lives around the forests, who care deeply about the land, and who understand that what they do today matters for generations to come. …So however you choose to celebrate Alberta Forest Week — whether it’s a walk in the woods, taking a closer look at the products we rely on every day, or simply learning something new — please take a moment to recognize the people behind it all.
With support from the B.C. government, a Vancouver business is conducting a field trial of its technology to assess whether it can reduce the frequency of wildfires ignited by lightning. Through the Province’s Integrated Marketplace program, delivered by Innovate BC, Vancouver-based Skyward Wildfire Technologies is receiving as much as $1 million to assess the effectiveness of its lightning-caused wildfire prediction and reduction technology in reducing wildfires ignited by lightning. Lightning is the leading cause of wildfires in B.C. In 2024, lightning was responsible for 70% of wildfire ignitions and 97% of all area burned in BC. …Skyward’s technology uses proprietary AI-enabled forecasting to identify areas of elevated lightning-caused wildfire risk and a targeted intervention designed to reduce cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. This technology has the potential to support wildfire-prevention efforts in fire-prone regions in BC.
In a public alert, the Village of Sayward — located just over 300 kilometres north of Victoria, B.C. — issued a warning to its residents after the grizzly was spotted within the village on May 4. Residents had been seeing the bear in the area around the village in the days leading up to it officially entering the village’s boundary. …While it’s the first sighting of a grizzly on the Island for the year, sightings are becoming more common. …Historically, the Island has not been considered a year-round habitat for grizzlies, says Nick Scapillati, executive director with the Grizzly Bear Foundation. But sightings of the mom and her cubs goes back to 2024 and Scapillati says that due to the small size of the cubs, they wouldn’t have been able to swim over. He believes it could be evidence of the first ever grizzly cubs to be born on Vancouver Island — a sign that grizzlies could be wintering on the Island. 
The Bureau of Land Management has repealed the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, commonly referred to as the Public Lands Rule, which put conservation on equal footing with mining, logging, and grazing of public lands. The rule required science-based decision-making, conservation considerations within multiple land uses and a focus on sustaining public lands for the long-term benefit of wildlife and the American people. “Today’s repeal of the Public Lands Rule abandons progress at the same moment climate change, chronic drought and accelerating habitat loss demand better stewardship from BLM,” said Maddy Munson, senior planning and policy specialist for federal lands at Defenders of Wildlife. …“This fits a pattern of brazen attempts to sell off and sell out our shared public lands at the expense of public access and conservation,” added Beau Kiklis, associate director of energy and landscape conservation at the National Parks Conservation Association.
WASHINGTON — The Intertribal Timber Council (ITC) expressed deep disappointment following the European Commission’s release of its EUDR simplification review, saying the package offers no meaningful relief for Indigenous Tribal Nations and leaves major concerns raised by Tribal forest managers unresolved. Despite months of engagement from Tribal representatives and repeated warnings about unintended impacts on Indigenous communities, the Commission declined to reopen the regulation and instead proposed only limited technical adjustments through implementing acts, FAQs, and guidance documents. As a result, compliance obligations affecting Tribal Nations in low-risk countries remain fundamentally unchanged. …US Tribal Nations manage 7.8 million hectares of forestland under sovereign governance systems. …The ITC is calling on the European Commission to recognize Tribal forests in the United States as low-risk, legally protected systems.
EUGENE Ore. – The Bureau of Land Management has proposed increasing timber harvest on 2.4 million acres of federal forest land in Oregon, sparking a renewed debate over logging, wildfire risk and the future of old growth forests. The plan would return harvest levels to 1 billion board feet annually on O&C Lands (Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands), about four times last year’s yield. Supporters say it would restore jobs and reduce fire danger. Environmental groups warn it could undo decades of protections and say they will challenge the plan in federal court. The O&C Lands are checkerboarded across western Oregon. Once owned by railroad barons, the government reclaimed the land over 100 years ago and opened it up to logging. After new environmental protections were implemented in the 1990s, logging levels plummeted. Last year those same lands yielded about a quarter of the proposed target.
LAKE TAHOE BASIN, Calif. – A yearlong investigation by Mother Jones is casting new scrutiny on the use of glyphosate in California forests at the same time the U.S. Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit plans to use the controversial herbicide across thousands of acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Glyphosate, commonly sold under the brand name Roundup, is widely used to kill shrubs and hardwood vegetation that compete with replanted conifers after fires and logging operations. However, the herbicide has long been controversial. In 2015, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen,” and manufacturer Bayer has paid more than $12 billion in settlements tied to lawsuits alleging the herbicide caused cancer.
The American Forest Resource Council warns that Washington’s Department of Natural Resources is headed for deep budget trouble that will result in state worker layoffs and force taxpayers to foot more of the bill to keep the agency running. Counties that rely on logging revenue from land the agency manages could be at financial risk, too. While it’s become common for the group to clash with the department, they’re not the only ones complaining. Foresters inside the agency are pointing to Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove’s decision to pause some timber sales for eight months as a reason for the looming deficit in a key operating account, which covers many of the department’s expenses for managing timberland. …Upthegrove and other agency leadership say … it has less to do with recent timber sale activity on state land and more to do with the timing of when logging revenue reaches the agency. 
Oregon’s congressional Democrats on Wednesday warned that federal agencies tasked with helping prevent and fight fires in the Northwest could be understaffed and underprepared going into the 2026 fire season. Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, and Portland and Willamette Valley-area U.S. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici and Andrea Salinas left a Wednesday wildfire season briefing at the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland with “deep concerns” about federal agencies’ capacity to respond to what’s expected to be a long and severe fire season in the region. The center is the headquarters for a wildfire prevention and response network that includes nine state and federal agencies across the West. The lawmakers said budget cuts and the loss of staff at federal science and land management agencies — especially at the U.S. Forest Service, tasked with the largest share of federal wildland fire prevention and response — have created needless uncertainty and chaos.
Brazil’s Atlantic forest, the country’s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a new report shows. The forest is Brazil’s most populous biome, and home to 80% of the population and major cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In 2025 it recorded 8,658 hectares of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985. Environmentalists have welcomed the results, which they say could even lead to “zero deforestation” in the Atlantic forest within just a few years, but warned of potential risks that could reverse the downward trend of recent years. One is the recent approval of the so-called “devastation bill” in Brazil’s congress that drastically weakens environmental law. The other is the prospect of a far-right government, opposed to environmental protection policies, returning to power in the October presidential election…
UK — The significant decline in the number of trees produced by Britain’s nurseries provides a “stark illustration” of the sector’s ‘falling’ confidence, an industry leader has said. Around 139 million trees were grown in the UK’s private and public nurseries across 2025/26, a sharp fall on previous years. In both 2024/25 and 2023/24, nurseries grew slightly over 160 million trees, with 2022/23 totalling slightly under 152 million. This means the total number of trees produced fell by around 14% between 2024/25 and 2025/26. …The findings were contained with the Forestry Commission’s new Tree Supply report – published in late April – which pointed to reduced planting expectations in Scotland as being a major cause of the decline. Stuart Goodall, chief executive at industry body Confor, said: “the report provides a stark illustration of the concerns that have been raised for a number of years – government targets for tree planting are not being met and this is affecting confidence and business activity in the sector.
For the last few decades, the working assumption in European fire management was geographic: the real threat lives at lower elevations. In countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain, the threat was tied to parched lowlands, flammable scrub, and summer drought. The Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians sat above the areas at risk, written off as too cold and wet to carry serious fires. A 25-year satellite record now challenges that assumption. Tracking fires across eight European mountain ranges, researchers found flames climbing the slopes at a steady rate — and the pace has picked up sharply since 2015. A team led by Dr. Mirela Beloiu, an ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), tracked wildfires across eight European mountain regions from 2000 to 2025. The pattern was hard to miss. Fires are climbing the slopes at roughly 236 feet per decade, finding fuel in stands that almost never burned before.