The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada announces their 2023 Science & Management Conference to take place October 12-14 in Revelstoke, British Columbia. The annual conference brings together researchers, managers, students, and enthusiasts of whitebark pine and related high-elevation, forested ecosystems in Canada and the United States. Once every five years, the conference is hosted in Canada and this year Revelstoke is proud to host. Come learn the latest research and management techniques being applied across the range of whitebark and other high elevation five-needle pines. This year’s theme focuses on human impacts to five-needle pines, whether it be to bolster populations through conservation and restoration efforts or minimize the impacts of industry operations. Everyone is welcome and invited to attend.
Mill tradespeople and technicians can access specialized entrepreneurship training and coaching to gain the foundational business skills they need to start and grow their own business. “The forestry industry and communities are facing challenges, so we are supporting those affected by helping them land stable, good jobs and move away from the old boom-and-bust cycles,” said Sheila Malcolmson, B.C. Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. …Through a $2.95-million grant to Hubspace, the new Build Your Own Future (BYOF) program will provide foundational business skills to prepare participants to start and grow their own businesses. …The Province has committed $185 million in Budget 2023 for people affected by weakening markets and changes in the forestry sector. In addition, the Province continues to seek innovative ways to support forestry workers and rural communities affected by downturns in the forestry sector.
‘By not logging it, they would be respecting the will of the community reflected in the Roberts Creek Official Community Plan, and expressed in SCRD Bylaw 641, to conserve the park proposal area. As hiwus Craigan has stated “Our forests have already been studied to death, it’s time to rebuild and restore.”’ This paper reported on plans by Sunshine Coast Community Forest (SCCF), to conduct research within the proposed Mt. Elphinstone Park expansion area in block EW19, directly adjacent to one of its three disconnected park parcels that currently total only 139ha. SCCF is claiming that the Ministry of Forests is forcing them to conduct a “Mother Tree” research project that involves cutting 50 per cent of the stand in EW19. Though such research may have merits, we ask it not take place within the park proposal area, the lower Coast’s last and best chance for at least one substantial size, lower elevation protected area. 
Our forests make British Columbia one of the best places to live. They have shaped our past and will continue to define our opportunities, no matter where you live in the province. Forestry is – and will remain – a foundation of B.C.’s economy. The future of forestry increasingly is about managing for resilience, climate change and multiple values. This includes the contribution of old forests, cultural values, and products derived through getting the most out of every tree harvested, to create maximum value and the greatest number of jobs. …The Forest Enhancement Society of BC is a proven partner in delivering projects on the ground that benefit communities, workers, and the health of our forests. That’s why we are further supporting its work with $50 million over two years to expand funding for projects that increase access to fibre, reduce emissions from slash pile burning and reduce the risk to people from wildfire.
Highlights of the April newsletter include:
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — Lawmakers from several western states want the U.S. Forest Service to do more to address a wildfire crisis that they say will surely destroy more landscapes, communities and livelihoods as long-term drought persists around the West. They grilled Forest Service Chief Randy Moore during a congressional hearing this week, asking about the agency’s spending priorities and the backlog of national forest lands that need to be treated to reduce wildfire risks. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said the agency needs to usher in a new phase of accountability and transparency if it wants “reverse the tide against this historic crisis.” …Moore said the top priority is reducing hazard fuels on more than 4 million acres in high-risk areas nationwide over the next year. He said the Biden administration is requesting more than $320 million for the work on top of money already appropriated by Congress.
Last spring, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to inventory their holdings of mature and old-growth forests . The order triggered a scramble to formally define what constitutes “mature” and “old-growth” forests. …Federal scientists had never previously attempted to define “mature forests.” The team settled on a definition that included forests exceeding a set threshold of the structural characteristics that are associated with old-growth forests. …The report is likely to intensify debate over how the federal government should manage older forests. Some argue such forests should be strictly protected because they store more carbon than younger forests. …Others counter that so few national forests have been logged in recent decades that species which need open space and young, shrubby forest, are losing habitat. …The government is now turning toward an even more daunting challenge: devising ways to help its mature and old-growth forests adapt to climate change. 
Deforestation is a complex environmental problem that has eluded a series of public policies and private-sector interventions. The need to develop effective solutions to this problem is urgent because unabated deforestation exacerbates climate change, biodiversity loss, human rights violations, displacement of Indigenous communities, and breakouts of zoonotic diseases. This paper focuses on corporate-led efforts to stop deforestation and identifies four reasons behind their failure: global trade and supply-chain obscurity, power dynamics in supply chains, neglected consumption in emerging economies, and diluted goal setting. We call upon corporate sustainability scholars, specifically in entrepreneurship, marketing, strategy, and supply-chain management domains, to dedicate efforts to develop novel corporate sustainability initiatives that can address the complex, rampant, and stubborn challenge of deforestation. We propose three broad areas of research to advance scholarship on the role of corporate sustainability in stopping deforestation: zero-deforestation supply chains, zero-deforestation consumption, and nature-positive business models.
A federal judge has ordered an injunction stalling the Knotty Pine timber project on 56,000 acres of Kootenai National Forest land until federal agencies address whether the construction of logging roads, as well as their illegal use, will harm isolated grizzly bear populations in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem. The April 24 order by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen was issued in response to a lawsuit filed last year by conservation groups. The complaint accuses the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of failing to analyze the damage that logging and road use would have on grizzly bears living in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem Recovery Zone, a designation that is much smaller than the Northern Continental Divide or the Greater Yellowstone ecosystems. In his order, Christensen said the agencies failed to adequately account for the harm to grizzly bears from illegal roads when they authorized the Knotty Pine Project.
With more than 7 million acres of California’s forestland destroyed by wildfires from 2019 to 2021, CAL FIRE has been looking for ways to restore the state’s forests and may have found the answer with the state’s largest lumber company. On Dec. 6, CAL FIRE announced that they granted Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) $3 million for their “state-of-the-art” seedling nursery that will be growing native conifer trees. The grant funding is provided through a specific budget item in CAL FIRE’s 2021/2022 fiscal year to go towards supporting reforestation projects in California. CAL FIRE announced on Dec. 14, that they… are looking to grant $120 million of the total Wildfire Prevention and Forest Health budget for reforestation projects like SPI. …“Conifer seed is often a limiting factor in reforesting burned landscapes, Andrea Howell said. “SPI maintains a significant conifer seed bank and operates many conifer seed orchards.”
