Daily News for June 09, 2026

Today’s Takeaway

The US Lumber Coalition applauds move to fill US International Trade Commission vacancies

The Tree Frog Forestry News
June 9, 2026
Category: Today's Takeaway

The US Lumber Coalition welcomed the nomination of three commissioners to the US International Trade Commission (ITC), saying the appointments will help ensure enforcement of US trade remedy laws. In other Business news: New York’s Packaging Reduction Act fails to advance; Russ Taylor says North America’s housing recovery remains stalled; US homebuilders say regulations add $130k to the cost of a new home; and Sherwin-Williams partners with Do it Best.

In Forestry news: BC is investing $20M to strengthen wildfire prevention; the Kaslo & District Community Forest receives FESBC award; researchers assess BC’s western screech owl decline; ENGO’s new Forest Act roadshow hits Nelson; Oregon’s new state forester states her priorities; drought is testing Tump’s logging-to-fight-wildfire strategy; and the USDA is challenged, as Minnesota forestry workers are ordered to relocate.

Finally, did you know that before the Boston Tea Party, there was a battle over New England’s white pine forests?

Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog News Editor

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Business & Politics

The U.S. Lumber Coalition Applauds President Trump’s Selection of Nominees to Serve on the U.S. International Trade Commission

The US Lumber Coalition
June 8, 2026
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The US. Lumber Coalition applauds President Trump’s selection of nominees to serve on the US International Trade Commission (ITC). The ITC plays a critical role in the strong enforcement of US trade remedy laws. The current vacancies at the ITC create a risk that this vital agency may not be able to function if any of the Commissioners is not available to perform their duties. The USLC urges the Senate to move these nominations forward.

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[Editor’s note] Per The US White House and sent to the Senate on June 1, 2026, the nominees are:

  1. Peter-Anthony Pappas (New Jersey)
    • Nominated to complete an unexpired term ending June 16, 2026, and then to a full term ending June 16, 2035
    • Served as an adviser to Senator Thom Tillis and has experience in patent and trade matters
  2. Samuel Negatu (District of Columbia)
    • Nominated for a term expiring June 16, 2029
    • Previously served in the Office of the US Trade Representative
  3. Bartholomew Thanhauser (New York)
    • Nominated for a term expiring December 16, 2027
    • Has a background with the Office of the US Trade Representative and congressional trade work

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Do it Best Group and The Sherwin-Williams Company announce strategic partnership

Do it Best Group
June 9, 2026
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States

Do it Best Group and The Sherwin-Williams Company have entered into a long-term strategic partnership designed to strengthen the future of paint for Do it Best members and True Value retailers. The partnership combines Do it Best Group’s brand ownership, retailer relationships, and channel expertise with Sherwin-Williams manufacturing depth, innovation capabilities, and supply chain support. …“This partnership allows us to keep control of the brands and the retailer experience while adding the scale and innovation of a global leader in the paints and coatings industry,” said Do it Best Group CEO Dan Starr. …Headquartered in Fort Wayne, IN, the Do it Best Group is the world’s largest hardware, lumber, and building materials buying cooperative in the home improvement industry.

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Finance & Economics

‘Tailwinds about one mile per hour’: Why the housing recovery keeps getting delayed

By Matt Sexton
The Mortgage Professional America
June 8, 2026
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: Canada, United States

There have been consistent signs that the housing market is poised for a rebound. Russ Taylor has been tracking North American lumber markets for decades. The data, he said, keeps telling a different story. …”If things are unaffordable and there’s uncertainty and consumer confidence is weak, then nothing happens. People might be saving more money if they’re not spending it, but everyone’s worried about jobs and everything else, so they’re not spending.” The number Taylor keeps coming back to is lumber consumption. In 2016, the country consumed roughly 50 billion board feet. In 2025, the number was almost exactly the same. Ten years of demographic tailwinds, rising equity, and persistent housing shortage arguments, and consumption has not budged. …Housing starts have been declining every year since their 2021 peak, and Taylor expects 2026 to continue that trend. Repair and remodeling, which accounts for roughly 40% of US lumber consumption, has been similarly stagnant since the COVID period.

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Regulatory Costs Jump 40% in Five Years, Add $131,734 to New Home Prices

The National Association of Home Builders
June 9, 2026
Category: Finance & Economics
Region: United States

A new study by the NAHB finds that regulations at the federal, state and local levels add $131,734 to the cost of a new single-family home—26.4% of the average sales price of $499,500 as of January 2026. Breaking down the total regulatory costs further, the study revealed that $84,939 of the final house price is the result of costs incurred by the builder due to regulation during the construction phase of the home while $46,795 is attributable to regulation during land development. “This study illustrates how excessive regulation is deepening the nation’s housing affordability crisis and making it harder for builders to deliver the affordable, attainable housing that our nation sorely needs,” said NAHB Chairman Bill Owens, a home builder and remodeler from Worthington, Ohio. “Policymakers should remove unnecessary and costly regulations that are pricing buyers out of the market and slowing construction of new homes and apartments.”

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Vancouver firm wins two international architectural awards for Squamish waterfront project

By Gagandeep Ghuman
North Shore Daily Post
June 8, 2026
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada West

SLA Inc.

A Vancouver architecture firm has taken home two international honours for its Squamish waterfront project. Stephane Laroye Architect (SLA) won both the Jury and Popular Choice prizes in the Architecture + Prefab & Modular category at the 2026 Architizer A+Awards — recognition given to what the program describes as the world’s most visionary architectural creators. The winning project, the Oceanfront Squamish Presentation Centre & Public House (PCPH), sits on the Squamish waterfront overlooking Howe Sound fjord and opened to the public in summer 2024. …The project drew on regional partners throughout. Laroye credited Castlegar-based Kalesnikoff for input on the efficient use of mass timber, and North Vancouver’s Naikoon Contracting, whose work on the project helped spur development of what Laroye called a “Flying Factory” — a mobile pre-fabrication facility designed to serve remote sites and create local employment. See image gallery here. 

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New York Extended Producer Responsibility bill fails to advance after third try

By Stefanie Valentic
Resource Recycling
June 8, 2026
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: US East

New York’s Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (PRRIA) has not reached the finish line. The state legislature adjourned without voting on SB 1464A / A1749A, sponsored by Sen. Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick. The outcome marks the third session in which the bill cleared the Senate only to stall in the Assembly. Previous versions of the legislation passed the Senate in both 2024 and 2025 but met the same fate. …The bill would require producers to cover the cost of managing post-consumer packaging waste, a cost currently absorbed by local governments and taxpayers, establishing a statewide EPR program for producers with more than $5 million in annual net revenue responsible for more than 2 tons of annual packaging waste. …The American Forest and Paper Association cited a study estimating that PRRIA could increase the cost of everyday essentials by up to $732 per year for a family of four…

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From waste-wood to load-bearing feature, a simple calculation could change the way we use misfit wood

Aalto University
June 5, 2026
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Jaakko Torvinen

In his mission to normalise the use of ‘misfit wood’, Aalto University architect and researcher Jaakko Torvinen has shown how standard calculation methods can predict load-bearing capacity for organically shaped logs. …What’s surprising is that nobody has done this earlier. According to Torvinen, the timber and construction industries have for centuries been tied to the assumption that the best material is used for saw logs. ‘This explains why nobody has ever looked at a tree trunk and come up with an algorithm to gauge its strength,’ he says. … ‘If it’s not suitable as saw logs, it goes to pulpwood or energy wood,’ he explains. ‘But our assumption that ‘generic is best’ is old-school thinking –– and we’re wasting way too much good wood.’ Torvinen’s research could cut the millions of tonnes of imperfect wood that goes to the scrap heap… Torvinen [created] Helsinki’s temporary Pikku Finlandia building and his Puusauna earned a 2026 Wallpaper Design Award.

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Forestry

New Maps Chart Old-Growth Forests in Alaska and British Columbia

The Mirage News
June 9, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada West, US West

Mature and old-growth forests are vital for biodiversity, carbon storage, cultural traditions and economic activity. But in Alaska and British Columbia, these rich resources haven’t been reliably mapped, leaving much unknown about what land is protected. Now, University of Oregon researchers are leading a comprehensive mapping effort that sheds light on the location, makeup and conservation status of old-growth forests across the region. Their data show that more than 40% of mature and old growth forests in the study area are in places that lack permanent legislative protection. These forests also store the most carbon in the study area. …Old-growth forests in Alaska and British Columbia are protected through a range of land classifications, including national parks, national monuments and wilderness areas. But by far the greatest area of old-growth forest was found in “Inventoried Roadless Areas” in Alaska.

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The Kaslo & District Community Forest Society Receives Award

The Forest Enhancement Society of B.C.
June 9, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada West

Jason Fisher, Susan Mulkey & Jeff Reyden

Kaslo, B.C. – The Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC) presented its inaugural Community Forest Project of the Year Award to the Kaslo & District Community Forest Society’s (KDCFS) ‘Jimi Crack Corn’ forest enhancement project. The KDCFS received the award during the 2026 BC Community Forest Association Conference and AGM in Vernon last week. “In celebration of our tenth anniversary, we created the Community Forest Project of the Year Award to recognize the leadership, innovation, and collaboration that community forests bring to forest stewardship across British Columbia,” said Jason Fisher, Executive Director of the Forest Enhancement Society of BC. …Completed during the winter of 2024-2025, the Jimi Crack Corn project focused on fuel mitigation, recreational values, and wildlife habitat enhancement around the community of Kaslo. 

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In Pursuit of a Tiny Owl Nicknamed Brad Pitt Western screech owls are disappearing from BC

By Sarah Cox
The Tyee
June 9, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Megan Buers is dodging potholes on a labyrinth of logging roads on northern Vancouver Island, hoping for a late-night rendezvous with a western screech owl. “He’s the Brad Pitt of the screech owl world,” says Buers, a wildlife biologist. …So far, Buers has seen the owl — but not yet managed to fit him with a transmitter for tracking. …Western screech owls are disappearing from BC’s coast — and nobody is quite sure why. …We know they like to nest in big trees,” Buers says. “Outside of that, we don’t really know what they need.” Her research, for a PhD at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, aims to find out if western screech owls require old trees and mature forests for other reasons, including to find prey. Are screech owls more abundant in old-growth forests? And how does that compare to managed landscapes like replanted woods?

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New Forest Act Roadshow stops off in Nelson, calls for new forestry framework

By Bill Metcalfe
The Nelson Star
June 8, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada West

Jennifer Houghton says only a new Forest Act, radically different from the current one, will fix B.C.’s declining timber supply and the faltering forest economy in rural communities. That decline, she says, includes not only dwindling timber supply and mill closures but altered landscapes, growing fire danger, increased flooding, worsening drought impacts, shrinking employment, and increasing pressure on communities that historically depended on forestry. “These problems,” she says, but those outcomes are connected by the way the industry and the regulation of it are structured. …Houghton was the main speaker at the Nelson 2026 New Forest Act Roadshow, traveling to 12 communities throughout June. …The group is promoting a new Forest Act for the province in which ecological balance would replace timber flow as the central driver of all forestry activity. She said the new act is not a protest or a slogan but a practical roadmap to more economically healthy forest communities.

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BC invests in community projects, strengthening wildfire prevention, creating local jobs

By Ministry of Forests
Government of BC
June 8, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Through the Forest Enhancement Society of BC, the Province is committing $20 million per year over three years. …This investment funds projects that reduce wildfire risk, restore forest ecosystems and improve the long-term health and resilience of B.C.’s forests. “The best wildfire is the one that never starts. The best way to protect communities is to work together to prevent them,” said Ravi Parmar, Minister of Forests. …This year, 60 forest enhancement projects are receiving funding. These projects not only reduce wildfire risk, they also support forest-sector jobs in rural and remote communities. The projects include creating landscape-level fuel breaks, removing residual fuels, carrying out prescribed burns, and making improvements to egress routes that are important in the event of an emergency or evacuation. …“These projects reflect the innovation and commitment we continue to see from proponents throughout BC,” said Jason Fisher, executive director, FESBC.

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US Drought Tests Trump Strategy of Logging to Fight Wildfire

By Bobby Magill
Bloomberg Law
June 8, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

Extreme drought and rising temperatures in the US are poised to overwhelm the Trump administration’s plans to control wildfire by logging federal forests, scientists say. …The drought is expected to lead to catastrophic wildfires that stand to become the new normal amid climate change, the researchers say. “The type of drought we’re seeing this year across the West is a glimpse into the future,” said Erica Fleishman,  at Oregon State University. …The US is on track in 2026 for more wildfires than 2025, a much wetter year. More than 5 million acres burned last year. As of April, 1.8 million acres had burned so far across the US—double the acres burned in the same period last year. Trump administration officials say wildfire risk makes it imperative to log forests and help the timber industry. The administration is taking an aggressive approach to quickly suppress wildfires as it increases logging by 25% this year.

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Oregon’s new state forester gets to work, says ‘zero tolerance’ for issues that led to predecessor’s ouster

By Alex Baumhardt
Oregon Capital Chronicle
June 8, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Kacey KC

Oregon’s new state forester Kacey KC’s… will be the first woman to permanently lead the agency in its history, and comes to the job after 24 years at Nevada’s forestry and natural resource agencies, including eight years as Nevada’s first female State Forester Firewarden. KC said she brings with her from Nevada a “zero tolerance policy for a lot of different issues, both financially and treating people poorly.” As she embarks on her third month on the job, she said she is still in learning mode and ensuring “everyone understands my expectations and that we are moving forward together in the right direction.” …In her first few weeks she said she met with environmental organizations, timber operators, tribes, rural and rangeland fire protection associations, and said she meets at least twice a month with the directors of Oregon’s other natural resource agencies.

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Minnesota-based USDA workers ordered to relocate to other states

By Christopher Vondracek
The Minnesota Star Tribune
June 9, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

WASHINGTON, D.C. – An email dropped into the US Department of Agriculture staffer’s inbox this spring. The Minnesota-based worker was about find out where she would be asked to relocate with her family. …The federal government employee had been hired to work remotely. However, her entire team was now being told to move to a new city. …The USDA, the massive federal department covering agriculture policy to anti-poverty food programs to the forest service, is consolidating offices across agencies, moving many workers out DC into select hubs. In Minnesota, USDA lost 21% of its 1,800 employees between fiscal year 2025 and 2026, coinciding with the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. It was the hardest hit of the federal agencies operating in the state. …The latest move also is different than conservation program cuts announced this spring or the USDA-run U.S. Forest Service announcing closure of research sites, including two in northern Minnesota.

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A disease of deforestation: how Ebola is linked to the smartphone in your pocket

By Sonia Shah
The Guardian
June 5, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: International

As demand for cobalt, gold and other minerals grows, mining is accelerating deforestation in the Congo basin – and increasing the risk of deadly Ebola outbreaks. For decades after the discovery of Ebolavirus in 1976, outbreaks of the disease were relatively small and contained, affecting a few hundred people at most. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola have been much larger, affecting thousands and even tens of thousands of people across multiple countries. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in west Africa infected more than 28,000 people in 10 countries on three continents. The current eruption, which began in early May and shows no signs of abating… The conventional explanation has to do with the larger and more interconnected human populations that pathogens can access. But there’s a more fundamental driver: the transformation of the underlying ecology of Ebola, which is being remade, in part, by the rising global hunger for minerals to power the hi-tech economy.

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Forest Fires

Crews concerned about hot spots along Wood Buffalo Fire

By Lisa Iesse
My North Now
June 8, 2026
Category: Forest Fires
Region: Canada West

The wildfire in Wood Buffalo near the Whooping Crane nesting area is currently estimated to be 53,000 hectares in size and remains out of control. Aircraft operations were halted today because of weather conditions and safety concerns. Rainfall brought some level of reduced fire activity. There were no new fires reported as of this afternoon. Crews observed lowered fire behaviour overall, but are concerned about hot spots located on the fire’s border. Currently, 176 personnel, 15 helicopters and 6 fuel bowsers are being mobilized in response to fire located about 22 km northeast of Highway 5. The fire was last estimated to be 53,124 hectares in size. Crews said a 200-foot ceiling between the treetops and cloud cover have complicated the response. …Today, firefighters continued evaluations of the wildfire situation and prepared for team transitions. …Scans yesterday taken by crews showed that there are hundreds of hot spots along the south border of the fire.

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Forest History & Archives

Before the Tea, There Was Timber – The Untold Story of US Independence

Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association
June 8, 2026
Category: Forest History & Archives
Region: United States

Every American schoolchild learns about the Boston Tea Party. Almost none of them learn about the Pine Tree Riot — and historians argue it mattered just as much. Two and a half centuries after independence, as America marks its 250th anniversary, one of the revolution’s most consequential grievances remains stubbornly overlooked: the British Crown’s seizure of New England’s forests, and the fury that seizure provoked. The story begins with a tree. Specifically, the Eastern White Pine — the tallest native pine in North America, the backbone of colonial life, and the object of a royal possession so arrogant and so economically devastating that it turned ordinary New England farmers and sawmill operators into revolutionaries. Before there was “no taxation without representation,” there was something simpler and more visceral: a king’s mark cut into wood that a man had watched grow on his own land — wood he was forbidden, by law, to touch.

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