It’s home building season and lumber prices are plunging due to ailing demand and over supply. In other Business news: JD Irving presents plan for $1.1B Saint John’s pulp mill upgrade; Manitoba will create 20-year forestry plan with three First Nations; and two BC First Nations chiefs say the province’s permit process is handcuffing industry. Meanwhile: positive timber stories thanks to BC’s Mass Timber Demonstration Program; an Oakland, California developer; the Insurance Journal; and the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In Forestry/Wildfire news: Chief Randy Moore updates US Forest Service’s hiring & retention plan; federal judges rule on logging and road building in two of Montana’s National Forests; BC moves to protect 300 hectares of old-growth at eight sites; controversy in Oregon State University’s research forest; and Arizona attacks wildfire that forced evacuations near Phoenix.
Finally, BC wildfire ecologist Bob Gray opines on the need to rethink wildfires.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
The twin-peaked lumber bubble of 2021 and 2022 is now nothing more than a memory. Spot lumber prices have plummeted 75% from their May 2021 record high to just $366 this week. …While the demand side of the lumber market is ailing, the supply side may be in an even worse position. …“It’s a classic bullwhip,” Jalbert noted. “The supply side [responds] in a like manner to demand, and by the time it comes to the market that demand picture is already changed—and in this case in a negative way.” …Jalbert also believes lumber prices will likely stagnate through year-end 2024, but in 2025, he argues things could turn around. Some sawmills will be forced to slow or shut down production due to depressed lumber prices in the second half of this year, lowering lumber supply—“the bullwhip in the opposite direction.”… “But that’s going to take time.”
Expressions of Interest are now being accepted for Intake 4 of the Mass Timber Demonstration Program (deadline October 2024). Priority will be given to projects that leverage the new 2024 BC Building Code provisions such as encapsulated mass-timber construction (EMTC) up to 18 storeys for residential and office buildings, as well as new building types, such as schools, retail, and industrial occupancies. While advancements in mass timber products and wood construction can help to build more resilient, climate-smart communities, there are still barriers, such as limited knowledge and experience about technical performance, constructibility and cost management best practices. Since 2020, the Province of British Columbia (B.C.) and Forestry Innovation Investment have invested over $9.1 million through B.C.’s Mass Timber Demonstration Program (MTDP) to help with the incremental costs associated with the design and construction of 19 building projects and 8 research projects that demonstrate emerging or new mass timber or mass timber hybrid building systems and construction processes.
The threat of increasing climate risks has energized the transition to a low-carbon economy. However this transition comes with its own set of risks and challenges. …These are evident in insurance perspectives on two of the most popular green industries: green building and the use of new materials like mass timber, and solar energy. They also are playing out in how insurers and agents view writing green business risks. …In April, USGBC jumped into resilient building by announcing its draft rating system, LEED v5. Centered around three areas, LEED v5 will seek to advance improvements in decarbonization, quality of life, and/or ecological conservation and restoration. One example, McBride and Zurich NA are bullish on is the use of mass timber for constructing larger buildings. …The growing interest in mass timber projects led to an update to the International Building Code in 2021. Now towers can be built as high has 25 floors.
A federal court judge in Montana has halted a logging project near White Sulphur Springs in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest after he said the U.S. Forest Service failed to take into account a decline in nesting goshawks, which violated federal law. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council successfully argued before federal magistrate Kathleen L. DeSoto that both the U.S. Forest Service and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service hadn’t properly considered the species, which are considered an essential indicator of old-growth forests. …DeSoto found that the Forest Service’s lack of monitoring the goshawk population violated the National Forest Management Act as well as the National Environmental Protection Act. …DeSoto found officials had data showing the population was declining and that the project would likely harm the species. It had failed to include that information in its assessment.
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California firefighters battling a blaze that has ripped through more than 13,000 acres of the Sierra National Forest just north of the Giant Sequoia National Monument and close to several hydroelectric facilities finally began to gain control Monday afternoon. Crews had the Basin fire 17% contained after days of being unable to get a handle on the fire. The wildfire was one of several burning throughout the state as officials braced for the longest heat wave so far this year, set to kick off Tuesday, two days before the Fourth of July. Forecasters predict broiling weather and increased wildfire risks. …The heat wave is expected to bring dangerous temperatures through the Fourth of July holiday and into early next week in many areas, particularly across Northern California, the Central Valley and southwestern deserts. Most of Fresno County is under an excessive heat warning with little overnight relief from the high temperatures.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Air tankers and helicopters helped douse flames from the sky as nearly 200 firefighters on the ground battled a wildfire northeast of Phoenix on Friday that threatened scores of homes and forced dozens of residents to evacuate. Authorities expanded the evacuation area in a subdivision on the northeast outskirts of Scottsdale, closed roads and shut down part of a nature preserve as gusty winds continued to fan the flames in extremely hot, dry conditions. But there were no immediate reports of any injuries or structure damage, Arizona fire officials said. Near Phoenix, where the high reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) on Friday, about 60 residents evacuated homes in the Boulder Heights subdivision overnight after the human-caused fire broke out Thursday. Fire officials said they were investigating exactly what sparked the blaze about 5 miles (8 kilometers) east of Carefree, just outside northern Scottsdale on the edge of the Tonto National Forest.