A UN report released today calls for urgent action to reduce GHGs, says climate-related effects are worse than previously projected. In related news: Canada overshoots its fair share of Earth’s resources; Alaska hears testimony on forest carbon credits; and an oil company CEO calls for more carbon capture and storage. In other Forestry news: Parks Canada’s whitebark pine project; BC’s wildfire reduction efforts; Maine’s Spruce Budworm report; and North Carolina’s growing deer problem.
In Business news: inside the never-ending softwood lumber trade war; Sodra inaugurates its Värö CLT plant; North Carolina’s Canton paper mill closure; Quebec’s Créations Verbois gets fed support; and the US Conference Board Index still points to risk of recession.
Finally, how fluent are you in ‘logger-speak‘ and the wooden spoon boiling-debate.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
I’m the daughter of a microbiologist – which is why this crusade against unseen germs doesn’t impress me. …I hold to the notion that, broadly speaking, wood is naturally antibacterial. I’ve had the same chopping board for more than 15 years, and I’ve only ever wiped it with a damp, soapy cloth; no one has died so far. The creepy trend for boiling spoons – it is said to result in gruesome excretions – began on TikTok. …I read about this, and even as I rolled my eyes – how utterly deranged, I thought. …Our attitude to hygiene, and by extension to dirt in all its multifarious forms, is increasingly strange and stupid. I’ve never known our city streets to look more filthy. But while this seems to induce no disgust whatsoever in most people… much of the rest of life induces rank nausea. 
Canadian lumber companies have gained a foothold in the United States during a trade battle that has defied repeated attempts at a long-lasting resolution. Canadian-owned sawmills south of the border now account for 22 per cent of lumber capacity across the U.S. The softwood lumber fight is complicated by divergent views on public versus private ownership of forests. But the lines have blurred because of inroads by Canadian producers. …Welcome to the complex, arcane and strange world of the softwood industry, where major Canadian producers have taken a detour around U.S. tariff barriers. …The Canadian crusade in the U.S. has emerged as a surprising trend in the trade war. It stands in sharp contrast to 2006, when Canadian-owned sawmills in the U.S. barely registered on the forestry map.
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. fell again by 0.3 percent in February 2023 to 110.0 (2016=100), after also declining by 0.3 percent in January. The LEI is down 3.6 percent over the six-month period between August 2022 and February 2023. …“The LEI fell again in February, marking its eleventh consecutive monthly decline,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica at The Conference Board. “Negative or flat contributions from eight of the index’s ten components more than offset improving stock prices and a better-than-expected reading for residential building permits. While the rate of month-over-month declines in the LEI have moderated in recent months, the leading economic index still points to risk of recession in the US economy. The most recent financial turmoil in the US banking sector is not reflected in the LEI data but could have a negative impact on the outlook if it persists.
Due to their massive resources and global reach, businesses could contribute immensely to global efforts to reduce biodiversity loss. Within the last few years, businesses have indeed shown interest in biodiversity conservation. However, their current efforts are too limited and perfunctory to be consequential for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity. This article proposes the following five distinct yet mutually reinforcing strategies for bringing about transformative change in how businesses can contribute substantively to biodiversity conservation: (i) making biodiversity protection every business’s business, (ii) giving biodiversity a central stage in the corporate sustainability discourse, (iii) holding companies accountable for biodiversity impacts across their entire supply-chains, (iv) developing biodiversity-friendly organizational cultures so that employees become biodiversity champions, and (v) creating third-party certifications to benchmark and evaluate biodiversity-friendly business practices.
INDIANA — Indiana educators are encouraged to apply for the 2023 Natural Resources Teacher Institute, which will be held June 19-23 at the Forestry Training Center at Morgan-Monroe State Forest. Hosted by the Indiana DNR Division of Forestry and Purdue University Forestry and Natural Resources, this week-long immersive professional development program will provide educators with the knowledge, skills, and tools to effectively teach their students about forest ecology, research, and management in Indiana. There is no cost to participants, and meals and housing are also provided. Daily activities include visiting public and private forest sites, touring forest industry facilities, and exploring forestry research through the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment.
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JUNEAU, Alaska — The latest round of testimony Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed bill to open up public lands to a carbon offset program, took place in the House Resources Committee to aid lawmakers working to better understand how it works and how it could impact Alaska. Testimony was heard from Anew, a company that maintains a portfolio of organizations engaged in the carbon credit marketplace. They discussed the feasibility of a potential carbon offset pilot project on 43,000 acres — about twice the area of Manhattan — in the Haines region of Alaska, in addition to certifying credits and evaluating the quality of state forests. …Lawmakers at the hearing learned about the intensive process involving third-party auditors to evaluate the credits. …The discussion also covered how to balance the needs of the timber industry and the limitations the proposed carbon offsets legislation could place on forests on public lands.
Just a few days ago, Canada overshot its fair share of Earth’s biocapacity and resources, as measured by the ecological footprint in 2018. By March 13, Canada had already consumed its fair share of the Earth’s bounty for the year. Collectively, humanity passed its 2022 Earth Overshoot Day on July 28. So what does this mean? …The amount of nature we have is measured in terms of a nation’s or the world’s biocapacity, which “represents the productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land, fishing grounds, and built-up land).” It reflects “the ability of an ecosystem to produce useful biological materials and to absorb carbon dioxide emissions.” …Globally, the world had the equivalent of 1.6 hectares of bio-productive land per person in 2018, but collectively we consumed the equivalent of 2.8 hectares. In other words, at present rates of global consumption, it takes the equivalent of 1.8 Earths to meet our collective needs.
A landmark U.N. report published Monday urged governments across the globe to embark on an urgent course correction to tackle the climate emergency, warning current plans were insufficient to prevent the worst of what the crisis has in store. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the unprecedented challenge of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels had become even greater in recent years. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world, the report said. Deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emission reductions across all sectors will be necessary if warming is to be limited by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report says, noting that global emissions should already be decreasing and will need to be slashed almost in half by 2030.