Canada’s forest sector welcomed federal budget support, but BC industry warned recovery can’t wait. In related news: Canadian Forest Owners; Alberta Forest Products Association and the Ontario Forest Industries Association welcomed the budget commitments. In other Business news: Daiken unveiled a new wood panel in Huntsville, Ontario; Robinson Carbon will build a biochar plant in Louisiana; Tolko is suing FortisBC over a mill site expropriation; and the US International Trade Commission ruled in favour Brazil and Norway on dissolving pulp imports. Meanwhile: Taiga reported Q3 net earnings of $13M; Doman earned $20M; and Rayonier earned $40M.
In Forestry/Wildfire news: an Alberta group protests a planned harvest in the Crowsnest Pass; Colorado voters approve $200M a year for land management; CAL FIRE releases its forest and rangeland assessment; drought fuels a historic New Hampshire wildfire; fuel treatments reduce carbon storage but improve stability in BC; Indigenous stewards bring ‘good fire’ back to Canada; BC wildfire crews hail federal water bomber funding; and the US Forest Service approves a Colorado fuels project. Meanwhile: Maine looks to its forests to reach climate goals; a new framework assesses risks in forest carbon storage; and the UNECE calls for forest resilience in the UN Decade for Afforestation.
Finally, BC local governments must plan to reduce disaster risks starting in 2027.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor
A piece of Tolko’s former mill site in Kelowna’s North End has been expropriated by FortisBC, and Tolko is unhappy with the compensation they received. Tolko Industries filed a notice of civil claim against FortisBC, alleging the $7.41 million the utility handed over for a two-acre parcel of land wasn’t enough. Fortis plans to construct a new electrical substation at the site. The long-running Tolko mill 
ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana — Robinson Carbon announced it will invest $16.3 million to establish a biochar manufacturing facility at England Airpark in Rapides Parish, next to Alexandria, Louisiana, extending its family-owned wood products business into a new market more than 130 years after its founding in Louisiana. Robinson Carbon is expected to create 42 direct new jobs. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the project will result in an additional 60 indirect new jobs, for a total of 102 potential new job opportunities in the Central Region. …The facility will operate two rotary drum pyrolysis reactors, converting approximately 100,000 metric tons of Southern Yellow Pine residuals annually into 16,500 metric tons of biochar. Robinson Carbon plans to source the material from nearby mills and produce biochar to customer specifications for agricultural, horticultural and pollution remediation applications. 
For more than six weeks now, an Alberta group has been protesting the planned harvesting by a forestry company in the Crowsnest Pass. Defenders of the Eastern Slopes members are against the accelerated harvesting by West Fraser of about 460 hectares of forest in the Allison Creek area, in southwest Alberta. While the group says Crowsnest Pass residents deserve meaningful protection from wildfire, members question whether the proposed harvest is the right treatment, in the right place and at the right scale. …West Fraser got a temporary injunction, and, with a police presence, moved the bridge, which the company is placing across Allison Creek to access a logging area. The court injunction allows West Fraser to do its work, and Smith says the group has no intention of impeding the company. …West Fraser said its planned harvesting follows the direction of the Alberta government’s Hazardous Fuels Reduction program.
Proposition 137 has passed, allowing existing sales tax revenue collected from sporting goods purchases — an estimated $200 million annually — to fund conservation and wildfire rehabilitation and mitigation. The Associated Press called the race for Proposition 137 at with 51.6% of the votes counted in favour of the measure and 48.4% opposed. And it was a diverse collection of Coloradans voting in favor of the ballot measure. …The measure directs the legislature to distribute $83 million a year to Great Outdoors Colorado, nearly doubling the conservation group’s annual distribution from the Colorado Lottery. Another $83 million will be split between the Department of Natural Resources and the Colorado State Forest Service for wildfire risk reduction and rehabilitation of watersheds damaged by wildfire. The state currently spends about $16.4 million on wildfire risk reduction and another $5 million a year on restoring burned landscapes. 
NEW HAMPSHIRE — On Thursday night, while crews from across the country battled a wildfire in the dense woods of the White Mountain National Forest, residents of nearby communities and officials with the U.S. Forest Service crowded into the Shelburne Town Hall. …The blaze, which according to officials grew to a peak of nearly 1,000 acres since it began on Sunday but was reduced to 856 acres as of Thursday night, is highly unusual for the region. …“We’re not used to fires of this size here in New England. This is, unofficially, the largest fire in the White Mountain National Forest’s history since its creation,” said Derek Ibarguen, forest supervisor. Drought conditions during the last two years have made the forest much more flammable than it would be under average conditions, said Ryan Hughes, incident commander with the Forest Service, during the meeting.
Researchers have proposed a new approach to measuring the risk that carbon removed from the atmosphere could be released again, potentially improving how carbon removal projects are evaluated and managed. Published in Nature Climate Change, the study introduces a probabilistic measure called “carbon at risk” to assess the permanence of carbon storage. Researchers applied the framework to forest carbon and geological storage projects, demonstrating how different carbon removal approaches can be compared and combined to manage risk. The study addresses a significant challenge for carbon markets, where the absence of standardized measures of permanence risk complicates project evaluation, investment decisions and the development of carbon removal products. The researchers suggest that diversifying carbon removal portfolios could help manage these risks, providing a more consistent basis for assessing the reliability of carbon storage over time.
