OTTAWA, ON – World Wildlife Fund Canada announced today the launch of the WWF-Canada Catalyst Fund, a $500,000 initiative designed to accelerate ecosystem restoration across the country and help Canada meet targets set in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and 2030 Nature Strategy. …the fund will support efforts by Indigenous Peoples, non-profits, businesses and all levels of government to expand or accelerate restoration of lost or degraded lands. The investment will specifically target small but effective restoration actions to support initiatives that are at the planning or implementation stage. …Funding will support large restoration projects of more than five hectares by encouraging actions such as better planning, the use of native plants and seeds, strengthened monitoring and maintenance protocols to ensure long-term success, or other innovative ideas. Ecosystem restoration can include activities such as replanting fire-damaged forests or stabilizing the banks of flood-ravaged rivers with native vegetation.
The world’s largest green timber label will vote next week on whether to begin work on new traceability rules, amid renewed scrutiny and accusations over whether the body is doing enough to prevent fraud within its supply chains. The Bonn-based Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) bills itself as “the world’s most trusted mark for sustainable forestry.” …But forestry experts and whistleblowers have alleged for years that the FSC lacks a proper control system, allowing bad actors to fraudulently pass off timber that was illegally or unsustainably logged as FSC-certified. Phil Guillery, who was the FSC’s integrity director from 2011-21, 
BANFF – Most of the homes destroyed by the destructive Jasper wildfire were in neighbourhoods with many combustible roofs, highly flammable conifer trees and woody vegetation close to buildings after embers showered down on the national park townsite. That’s according to one of two independent Parks Canada-commissioned reports released last week, which examined the devastating wildfire in Jasper in July 2024 that destroyed 358 buildings – approximately one-third of the national park townsite. …“Once structures ignited, strong winds drove fire growth through densely-built up neighbourhoods, with structure to structure ignition dominating the spread,” according to the 71-page report by FP Innovation Wildfire Operations. “In the areas surrounding the townsite, continuous fuel pathways were often present between the wildland and structures. Consequently, a high proportion of ignitions were likely caused by direct flame contact and radiant heat emanating from burning wildland fuels. …The findings in FP Innovation’s report, said Martens, reiterate that “FireSmart works.”
Since its inception almost 10 years ago, the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) has been guided by a simple but powerful principle: collaboration drives impact. …Partnering with First Nations organizations has also deepened our understanding of how traditional knowledge can guide projects with a generational focus. This approach has helped foster greater Indigenous participation and leadership within forestry, contributing to a more inclusive and sustainable future. …Together, we are investing in projects that help create healthier, more productive and resilient forests for the future, and we are also strengthening the relationships that help make it all possible. 
As wildfires continue to devastate communities across North America, it’s time we confront a hard truth: neglecting the forests that surround our towns is no longer an option. …Silviculture — the science of managing forest growth, composition, and health — is not just a tool for local timber production. It’s a vital strategy for climate resilience and community safety. Through practices like selective harvesting, thinning, and replanting, silviculture reduces fuel loads, promotes biodiversity, and maintains the ecological balance necessary to prevent catastrophic fires. Critics often question the ethics of cutting trees in the age of climate change. But when done responsibly, harvesting followed by replanting can actually enhance carbon sequestration. …Moreover, strong forest management isn’t just about trees — it’s about people. …Let’s stop treating forest management as a luxury or a controversial topic. It’s a necessity. Investing in silviculture is investing in the safety, sustainability, and future of our communities.
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QUESNEL, BC — Given what’s going on around the world, it’s easy to understand why more areas in BC are taking a closer look at the Community Forest form of log harvesting tenure. It returns the management and responsibility for small, designated areas of forest land back into the hands of appointed people who live, work and care about them. Some control of what happens to and on the forest land in their own back yard has a growing appeal to its residents. …A community forest attempts to better accommodate other land users. …Co-operating with others as one cohesive unit becomes the catalyst for achieving dynamic, site specific land use solutions. It’s challenging but exciting work. It requires administering a cocktail of flexibility and responsiveness. Nick Pickles understands all that. It’s part of the appeal to being manager of the Three Rivers Community Forest based in the Cariboo region. 
North Cowichan Mayor Rob Douglas has, again, sent a letter to Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar asking the province to help increase the amount of timber that the municipality’s saw and pulp mills have access to. Douglas said that three tree-farm licenses held by Western Forest Products supply much of the timber and fibre for local mills. He said that improving access to timber in these areas could help stabilize mill operations and reduce the impact of challenging market conditions and trade pressures. Douglas said Parmar’s mandate is to ensure a sustainable land base to enable the harvest of 45-million cubic metres of timber while the province is on track to harvest only 29-million cm this year. …The Domtar pulp mill in Crofton, along with Western Forest Products’ sawmills and remanufacturing plant in Chemainus and Cowichan Bay, collectively employ more than 670 workers and generate $7.7 million per year in property taxes for North Cowichan.
The TLA commends the Provincial Forest Advisory Council (PFAC) for its ongoing work to develop a long-term vision for BC’s forest sector, and 
The Province is making 187 amendments to 38 regulations across 10 ministries to reduce red tape, improve permitting timelines and make government services more efficient and accessible. This work is part of Better Regulations for British Columbians (BR4BC) amendment package… This year’s focus is on expediting permitting and approval timelines for people and businesses in British Columbia. By streamlining approval processes, such as removing construction permit requirements for very small private water systems, simplifying the level of authority needed for special-use forestry permits, and eliminating outdated provisions related to soil relocation and open burning activities, the Province is making it easier to do business in B.C.
Backgrounder: On October 24, 2025, the Honourable Rebecca Chartrand, Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs, on behalf of the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, 
DRYDEN — Wildland fire crews were kept “very busy” throughout the 2025 forest fire season as Northwestern Ontario saw over 560,000 hectares go up in flames. “It would be fair to call the 2025 wildland fire season a very busy one in the Northwest,” said Chris Marchand, a fire information officer with the Ministry of Natural Resources’s regional fire management centre in Dryden. “Often in the spring, you hear us speak of the volatility of spring fire hazard conditions,” he continued. “And this year, from about the second week of May, it really provided a good demonstration of how a few weeks of dry weather combined with high winds and low humidity can really produce extreme fire behaviour in forests that haven’t greened up yet.” Those early conditions were the spark for a season that saw 560,234.9 hectares burned by 435 fires in the Northwest region alone. Comparatively, the Northwest’s relatively slow 2024 season saw 69,938.3 hectares burned in 218 fires.
HALIFAX – A documentary on BC’s Fairy Creek blockade is making waves in Nova Scotia. “Fairy Creek” covers a period of eight months in 2021, when thousands of activists blockaded logging roads leading to old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. …Now, it’s getting a Nova Scotia debut with screenings in Halifax, Tatamagouche, Inverness, Annapolis Royal and Wolfville. …Neal Livingston, a Nova Scotia filmmaker, says… “We don’t have a history of that (in Nova Scotia).” Livingston says the film is especially timely for Nova Scotians, as activists in Cape Breton say they have been targeted by recent legislation. …The province introduced an omnibus bill that would make blocking forest access roads illegal and come with a fine of up to $50,000 and/or six months in jail. This fine is a steep increase from the current $2,000 penalty.
A new bill poised to pass the Senate after clearing the House will govern how the federal government thins, burns and otherwise manages nearly 200 million acres of the nation’s forests. The Fix Our Forests Act, sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., John Curtis, R-Utah, Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., passed out of Senate committee recently in a rare show of bipartisan support, with 18 senators in favor and only five opposed. “There is a wildfire crisis across much of the country — our communities need action now,” said Hickenlooper in a news release. “Wildfires won’t wait.” The proposed legislation — the first major congressional effort to fight wildfires in recent history — includes provisions that promote prescribed burning and forest thinning in fire-prone areas along with working with communities to create defensible space around vulnerable homes. The bill formally recognizes wetlands as buffers against wildfires and encourages cross-boundary programs among counties, states and tribes.
A Montana logging project in grizzly habitat in the Kootenai National Forest will remain on hold until federal officials reassess how road use — particularly illegal road use — impacts the bears, a federal judge ruled on Monday. “This court has repeatedly held that it is arbitrary and capricious to not include illegal motorized use that it knows to occur into calculations, regardless of whether the use is chronic and site specific,” U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen wrote in the 40-page opinion. The Center for Biological Diversity led environmental groups in suing the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2022, seeking to block the Knotty Pine Project, and Christensen granted the environmentalists’ motion for a preliminary injunction the following year. …Christensen found the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a hard look at the impact of unauthorized road use on grizzly bears.
SOUTH BEND, Washington — Pacific County Commissioners Jerry Doyle, Lisa Olsen and David Tobin sent a scathing letter on Oct. 20 to the Washington Forest Practices Board (FPB) regarding a proposed increase in timber-harvest buffer zones along streams. Rural counties and forestry groups are mounting a vigorous push against bigger setbacks away from small non-salmon-bearing streams, arguing that over the course of time the loss of timber acreage will add up to billions in lost local economic activity and millions less taxes that currently support government services. Washington state established the Forest Practices Act and the FPB in 1974. It is tasked with establishing laws to “protect salmon, clean water, and the working forest economy.”
Washington’s lands commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, is on a mission to secure $60 million of additional wildfire funding in next year’s legislative session, despite a tightening budget outlook. On Monday, he and a leading Democratic House lawmaker indicated that they want to tap revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program for at least some of that money. The maneuver would mean turning to a steady-flowing stream of cash at a time when the state’s operating budget is squeezed. “Climate Commitment Act dollars are going to be on the table,” said state Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, who is deputy House majority leader. Lawmakers this year already started dedicating some of the climate dollars to the wildfire programs in question. At issue is funding provided under a 2021 law known as House Bill 1168, which passed with broad bipartisan support. With that legislation, lawmakers committed to direct $500 million over eight years to wildfire programs.
Fall is the busy season for forestry work, like fuels reduction. Summer fire restrictions have ended, and winter snow has not yet arrived. But Armando Lopez, owner of DL Reforestation in Jackson County, said the federal government shutdown has put his work on hold. Inspectors can’t visit project areas, and he’s waiting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments. Every day, he eagerly checks whether the government has reopened. …Lopez employs around 40 workers, most of them on temporary H-2B visas. If the shutdown doesn’t end next week, Lopez said, he won’t be able to pay them. …The Oregon Department of Forestry said in a statement that payment delays for contractors like Lopez are varied, depending on the federal agency and funding source. …But U.S. Forest Service, state, private and tribal forestry awards are continuing.
In the southeastern United States, pine plantations serve as critical components of the forestry economy, predominantly managed through intensive site preparation techniques designed to enhance tree growth and accelerate harvest cycles. These plantations often employ soil bed construction to improve drainage and the application of herbicides to mitigate competition from weeds and woody shrubs. While earlier studies have documented that such interventions yield promising early growth in pine species such as slash pine (Pinus elliottii) and loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), the long-term efficacy of these practices remains ambiguous, necessitating comprehensive longitudinal research to unravel their sustained impact on forest productivity. Addressing this knowledge gap, a recent extensive study conducted in the Lower Coastal Plain of North Florida monitored pine plantations for up to 27 years, offering unprecedented insights into how various site preparation strategies influence extended growth trajectories and timber yield.
Ash trees are an important part of the basket weaving tradition, which has long played a significant cultural, spiritual and practical role in the lives of tribal citizens across the country, including John Daigle, a citizen member of the Penobscot Nation in Maine. But the emergence of the emerald ash borer beetle …has posed challenges for Indigenous basket makers. A grant awarded to Daigle, a professor of forest recreation management at the University of Maine, could help preserve and advance the craft. It’s part of the Indigenous Forest Knowledge Fund, a program run by the Northeastern States Research Cooperative to support projects related to tribal homelands or ancestral territories of the Northern Forest region… Daigle’s project was one of three winners this year. His team will also develop technologies to support the processing and storage of ash splints before widespread ash mortality, which could help sustain basket-making supplies.
…An ice storm 
Chopping down rainforests is daft. The social costs of clearing a typical patch of Brazilian Amazon are perhaps 30 times the benefits of rearing cows on it, by one estimate from 2023. The problem is, those costs, which include aggravating climate change, are spread across the entire world’s population, whereas the profits from cutting down the trees go to the men commanding the chainsaws. Somehow, the world has to find a way to make conservation pay. …Yet there is hope. Though Brazil lost more rainforest than any other country last year, due to to wildfires, it also shows how better policy can make a difference. …The pace of deforestation fell by 80% during Lula’s first terms (2003-11), and fell again when he returned in 2023, before the wildfires set things back. …Since preserving rainforests is a global public good, the world should help pay for it. [to access the full story an Economist subscription is required]
…The World Resources Institute calculates that forests are burning at twice the rate they were two decades ago. In Canada … the frequency and severity of forest fires have quadrupled over the last half century. …the global wildfire defence market is projecting annual growth rates that range from 8.4% to 12.6%, much of it driven by public funding. For example, the United States’ budget for wildland fire management was $1.9 billion in 2025, a 10% increase from the previous year. …On October 22, a consortium of national organizations in Canada published an open letter to the federal government asking for a five-year investment of $4.1 billion in wildfire defence. …Coupled with U.S. auto tariffs, the wildfires prompted South Korea’s government to quickly assemble a US$8.6-billion supplementary budget, of which nearly a billion was earmarked for wildfire recovery. …The bushfire crisis of 2019/2020 in Australia caused AUD$2.4 billion of insured loss. …in 2025, Brazil allocated the equivalent of USD$95 million for firefighting efforts.