JD Irving proposed a lands swap to help New Brunswick meet its conservation goals. In related news: a new study on Boreal tree planting and carbon neutrality in Canada; carbon credits could help Georgia’s forest industry; BC First Nations acquire some of Canfor’s timber rights; BC Timber Sales grapple with watershed logging in West Kootenay; Ontario invests in natural resources research; IKEA completes forest land acquisition; and Vietnam focuses on sustainable timber sourcing. Meanwhile: the latest news from the BC First Nations Forestry Council.
In Business news: Ontario helps Kap Paper complete its market-pivot study; Oregon counties get pay bump from logging; CN Rail reports tariff hit and forest products revenue drop; and Canada’s Real GDP was unchanged in November. Meanwhile: Unifor Canada toutes forestry for sustainable jobs action; and mass timber news from Cleveland, Ohio, and Redmond, Oregon.
Finally, On World Wetlands Day—a focus on forest conservation and climate resilience.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
The unravelling of our trade relationship with the US compels us to act decisively. The chaotic diplomacy of the Trump Administration should encourage Canada to build up economic capacity where Canadians possess both agency and an existing industrial base to rely upon. This capacity‑building goal dovetails with the inherent purpose of the Sustainable Jobs Action Plan (SJAP). …Acting on these priorities, industry can direct its capital and follow its own strategic objectives, but it will do so in an environment that better reflects Canada’s long‑term economic goals. The SJAP can play a pivotal role. …One can look to the forestry sector. …Forestry faces an existential crisis from the 45% U.S. duties and tariffs imposed on Canadian lumber. …However, the sector also holds immense potential for manufacturing a variety of high value‑added products while also being a renewable resource key to decarbonizing construction.
MONTREAL — Tariffs and economic angst delivered a significant blow to Canadian National Railway Co. last year, as the question mark hanging over North American free trade continues to threaten profits in 2026. “Tariffs, trade uncertainty and volatility impacted our full-year 2025 revenues by over $350 million,” chief commercial officer Janet Drysdale told analysts on a conference call Friday. Forest products and metals took the biggest bruising, she said, with the two segments seeing a year-over-year revenue drop of eight and four per cent, respectively, in the latest quarter. …On top of trade uncertainty, a less publicized source of angst has rippled through the rail industry since last summer. Union Pacific Corp., the second-largest railway operator in the United States, announced in July it wants to buy Norfolk Southern Corp. in a US$85-billion deal that would create that country’s first transcontinental railway, and potentially trigger a final wave of rail mergers across North America.
RUSS TAYLOR provided the latest quarterly report from the 
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A state panel this week extended its offer to help finance construction of a new 129-room boutique hotel in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. While that doesn’t guarantee the hotel will move forward, the developer leading the project said construction can’t start without the state’s financing. The board… offered until Jan. 31, 2027 are $35 million worth of state bonds for the roughly $55 million project that would build a Marriott Tribute Portfolio boutique hotel. …The air quality facilities noted in the resolution include the seven-story building’s proposed use of mass-timber in its construction. …The presence of wood-timber construction above a first-floor reinforced concrete deck is noted in this axonometric view of the proposed Ohio City Hotel (DLR). The use of mass timber instead of reinforced concrete can save up to 40% in ongoing heating and cooling emissions for a building’s user as well as reduced emissions, according to Dan Whalen, at Places Development. 
Residents of a Bonnington, 18 km west of Nelson, hope they can rely on B.C. Timber Sales’ assurances that logging in their watershed will reduce wildfire risk and won’t threaten their water supply. For nearly a year, BCTS has engaged in an elaborate communication process with the residents of Bonnington about its plans for the Falls Creek watershed. The agency has a timber license on Crown land in the watershed, which provides drinking water to the rural community of about 600 people. …BCTS plans and designs logging operations, builds logging roads, then sells the timber to the highest bidder. The B.C. government added wildfire mitigation to the BCTS mandate last year. In the spring of 2025, the province hired Cathy Scott-May, a communications consultant, to steer a communication process along with BCTS professional forester Mark Tallman of Nelson. …Tallman said this consultation process is different from anything BCTS has done in the past…
NEW BRUNSWICK — J.D. Irving approached a number of municipalities last fall, asking them to support its request to be able to log 32,000 hectares of protected areas on its Crown timber licence in exchange for conserving forest near those communities. At least nine municipalities signed a letter asking that Natural Resources Minister John Herron “give equal weight to the social and economic interests of local governments when seeking to balance the interests of multiple stakeholders across New Brunswick.” …Conservation groups, including the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, said the proposal is extremely concerning. Roberta Clowater questioned why protected areas would be treated as “a wood bank for industry.” …The proposal is in response to the government’s promise to increase conservation lands from 10% to 15% of the province’s landmass. That would mean protecting an additional 360,000 hectares, which the province hopes to source from a mixture of Crown and private land.
Observed annually on February 2, World Wetlands Day marks the adoption of the Ramsar Convention in 1971 and provides an international framework for recognizing the role of wetlands in environmental protection and sustainable development. The 2026 edition is held under the theme “Wetlands and traditional knowledge: Celebrating cultural heritage,” drawing attention to the long-standing relationships between wetland ecosystems and the cultural practices, knowledge systems, and governance structures developed by communities over centuries. The theme highlights how inherited ecological knowledge, often embedded in rituals, seasonal calendars, land-use practices, and spatial organization, has shaped resilient interactions between human settlements and water-based landscapes. …World Wetlands Day 2026 emphasizes the need to reconsider prevailing development models by integrating traditional knowledge with scientific research and planning strategies in efforts toward conservation, restoration, and long-term environmental stewardship.
HCM CITY — Proactive compliance with legal timber sourcing and sustainability standards is essential not only for business survival, but also for repositioning Việt Nam’s wood industry towards greater transparency, responsibility, and higher value creation in global supply chains, speakers said at a seminar in HCM City on January 29. Speaking at the Forest Talk & Link seminar themed “Wood Consumption, Climate Change and Deforestation-Free Requirements”, Võ Quang Hà, Chairman of the HCM City Structure Architecture Wood Association (SAWA), said Việt Nam exported more than US$17 billion worth of wood and wood products in 2025, ranking among the world’s leading furniture exporters. However, an estimated $4–5 billion in export revenue still derives from low-value wood chips and pellets, underscoring the sector’s significant untapped potential for value-added growth. Developing large-timber plantations was identified as a key solution.
Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group (IKEA’s largest retailer), has completed the acquisition of forestland from Södra in Latvia and Estonia, following the signing of the agreement announced in October 2025. The transaction is part of Ingka Investments’ strategy to invest in long‑term assets that combine financial resilience with positive impact for the Ingka Group and IKEA business, building a strong foundation for many generations to come. With the acquisition now completed, Ingka Investments will take on the role of long‑term forest owner, with the ambition to manage the forest in a responsible way, while contributing to local economic activity. …Total area included in the acquisition is 135,232 ha in Latvia, and 17,742 ha in Estonia. The purchase price of the asset was EUR 720 million. …With IKEA retail operations in 32 markets, Ingka Group is the largest IKEA retailer and represents 87% of IKEA retail sales.
A new study finds that Canada could remove at least five times its annual carbon emissions with strategic planting of more than six million trees along the northern edge of the boreal forest. The 
…Timber prices have been low for a long time; they never really recovered from the 2008 housing crash. Nearly a dozen paper mills closed across the South in recent years, and Hurricane Helene tore down trees in much of Georgia and the Carolinas. It’s left many in Georgia, one of the leading states for forestry, with a dilemma: what do you do when your income relies on a forest but nobody wants to buy your trees? A group of researchers and industry leaders thinks paying landowners for carbon storage could help. “We may see a decline in the number of acres that are kept in forests and the quality of the land that is forested,” said David Eady with Georgia Tech’s business school. Losing those trees would shrink the industry and be devastating for the environment. …So Eady and others asked: why not use that carbon storage to keep foresters in business?
A door company in Ireland says it holds the key to turning wood dust into electricity to help power its factory. It’s part of a new multimillion-pound investment by O&S Doors. The company says the onsite renewable heat and energy technology is “a first on the island of Ireland”. Currently the company takes wood dust left over from the manufacturing process and ships it to England where it is used as animal bedding or sent to landfill. But the company – located just outside Benburb in County Tyrone – has revealed new details of its plans to install a biomass-fuelled combined heat and power system. It will turn the dust into millions of units of electricity that can reused to power parts of the factory. …O&S Doors says its biomass-fuelled combined heat and power system will harness MDF dust.