Jennifer Hong gives forests a human face. This 26-year-old Vancouverite works for the Canadian Forest Service providing information and analysis on the potential economic interfaces between humans and forests. She also conceived, founded and runs Faces of Forestry, launched at the United Nations’ XV World Forestry Congress 2022, to allow youth to tell their own stories about what forests mean to them. …Faces of Forestry, a project of Youth4Nature supported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, provides a platform for young people to help each other and the world understand more about their relationships with forests wherever they live. At the time of the congress, we had 20 such stories told in different media. We hope there will be many more as other young people come forward to use this link to add their voices.

When the world’s biggest sawmill opened its doors on Feb. 9, 2004, then-premier Gordon Campbell enthused that it could shoot out enough lumber to build all of British Columbia’s new annual housing stock, which was then averaging 26,000 units per year. After the ribbon was cut and the first logs passed through its computerized scanners and whirring sawblades, the mill’s owner claimed it might produce 600 million board feet a year — 25 per cent more than its closest global rival, a lumber mill in Germany. Just 20 years later, however, the super-sized mill is set to close — another casualty in a province and industry that went all-in on the idea that bigger is better and must now live with the consequences.Located in Houston, a three-and-a-half hour’s drive west of Prince George, the jumbo mill is owned by Canfor, a company that has made headlines in recent weeks — but this time, not for ribbon cutting.

As people commuted home from downtown Kelowna to start the weekend, chants of “save our trees,” could be heard from city hall all the way to Bernard Avenue. On Friday, (March 3) a group of approximately 50 people from Fridays for Future Kelowna gathered in front of city hall for the global strike and to protest old growth logging and to advocate for a greener future. Fridays for the Future is an international environmental activism youth-led initiative started by climate activist Greta Thunberg. Carley May, a member of the Kelowna chapter, said that the group’s mission is to raise awareness of the old growth deforestation that has been happening around B.C. …She said that Fridays for Future Kelowna is joining the movement that started on the island to hold B.C. Premier David Eby accountable for his promise to protect old growth forests.

MANITOBA — Adding the land requirements for renewable energy, biodiversity conservation, less-intensive farming, and two billion trees equals 469,273 square kilometres or 72 per cent of the area of Manitoba. This is an immense area of land to be reallocated and is it even feasible? The lesson: Do the math. In 1959, scientist and writer C.P. Snow delivered a lecture entitled “The Two Cultures,” arguing the two intellectual cultures were “science” and the “arts.” Science is represented by objective and mathematical analysis while the arts are represented by subjective, non-quantifiable, feelings and emotions. I would submit that environmentalism, writ large, is similarly split. We have scientists measuring environmental factors and delivering numerical conclusions about nature, while passionate environmental activists usually… [the access the full story a Hill Times subscription is required].

A B.C. company that wants to avoid logging sections of at-risk old growth was told by the Crown corporation that manages B.C.’s public forests to cut the trees down or pay to leave them standing. Kerry Rouck, chief forester for Downie’s owner, Gorman Bros. Lumber, said it has remained on pause since the province launched the continuing old-growth deferral process that fall. …But BC Timber Sales, told Downie it must fulfil its logging contract — or pay full stumpage fees for the trees left standing, Rouck said. …“The irony is that we’re trying to work toward a balanced conservation result, and we stand to be penalized,” he said. …Rouck said he’s since had further discussions with Forests Ministry staff, who indicated they would be open to creative solutions. “Perhaps we can change the harvesting prescription from clearcutting to an innovative partial cut that is more caribou-friendly,” he wrote.

NORTH COWICHAN, BC — I’ve long known that unusual experiences await those tempted down remote dead-end roads. But nothing prepared me for the assortment of bizarre, ghoulish and even criminal artifacts I encountered on the logging roads of the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. …North Cowichan’s 5,000-hectare Municipal Forest Reserve (MFR)… simply [doesn’t have] the staff to patrol every stretch of rutted gravel road for illegal activities such as campfires, campsites, littering, poaching and gunplay – especially at night and on weekends. …One winter, I reported an individual actively cutting wood. The town investigated, told me they caught him in the act, but let him go, too, with a warning. The illegal harvest of wood is one issue. Leaving behind a mind-bending array of garbage – if one can rightly call it that – is quite another. [to access the full story a Globe and Mail subscription is required]

The B.C. government says it’s extending an old-growth logging ban for part of the Fraser Canyon, located about 100 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, for another two years to help with the recovery of the endangered spotted owl.  On Friday, the province announced it had extended the suspension of old-growth logging activity in the Fraser Canyon’s Spuzzum and Utzilus watersheds — which span more than 300 square kilometres — until February 2025.   …The province says the two-year logging deferrals in the Spuzzum and Utzilus watersheds are part of its plan to bring back a “sustained breeding population” of the owl.  “These deferrals are an important component of a complex process that will allow us to learn as much as possible to support the reintegration of the spotted owl into its habitat,” Nathan Cullen, B.C.’s minister of water, land and resource stewardship said in a written statement.

BC Government Press Release by the Ministry of Forests: Province extends old-growth logging deferral in endangered spotted owl habitat