Wildland firefighters, supported airtankers and other specialized equipment are ready for the wildfire season ahead, says the Government of Alberta. In a news release issued Monday, the provincial government declared it is prepared for the wildfire season, which runs from March 1 to Oct. 31 in Alberta. “As folks look forward to enjoying Alberta’s wonderful outdoor spaces over the months ahead, we’re focussed on keeping communities safe,” said Todd Loewen, minister of Forestry, Parks and Tourism. “Alberta Wildfire has leading-edge firefighting resources positioned across the province, ready to respond to new wildfires as they arise, and continues to test and implement emerging tools and innovation designed to increase our wildfire management capabilities. It’s important that everyone plays an active role preventing wildfires from starting.”

You’ve probably heard the stories: that through an intricate network of underground fungi, trees send nutrients and warning signals back and forth to one another. In Pulitzer Prize-wining novels, New York Times feature articles, PBS documentaries, and TED talks, there have been ample mentions about the “woodwide web,” or the fungus-mediated connections that supposedly help forests thrive. But that concept may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Every so often in science, a revision is in order. A prevailing idea inflates to inaccurate proportions. A set of experiments is taken out of context. Uncertainty gets ignored in favor of the most interesting explanation. …Through these multiple avenues of misinterpretation, existing research might not actually support the importance of fungal connections between trees for forest health, according to a new analysis. … A sweeping review study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, presents a counter-narrative … of underground fungi in forests. 

EDMONTON – Alberta’s United Conservative Party government has moved on a proposal to split wildlife management responsibilities in the province, creating a new department of hunting and fishing in the Forestry, Parks and Tourism Ministry. The new branch, according to an internal memo obtained and confirmed by The Canadian Press, will “increase focus and capacity on supporting hunting and fishing as an activity on Crown lands.” The memo says the branch will now govern allocation of fish and wildlife, including sport fishing regulations, hunting tags, trapping licences and human-wildlife conflicts. It leaves population counts, habitat and land use policy, species at risk management and wildlife disease management within Alberta Environment and Protected Areas — splitting work that should be interconnected and taking the province back decades, critics say. Lorne Fitch said the move will make it harder to track and manage the overall health of Alberta’s wilderness.

Biologist Les Gyug was working for B.C.’s environment ministry when a logging permit application caught his eye. A forestry company planned to clearcut rare old-growth larch stands in the province’s southern interior, set aside decades earlier as seed trees to allow for natural regeneration. “Rather than log them, let’s go look, and see what’s in them,” Gyug recalls saying. He expected to find a suite of forest birds in the scattered 400-year-old western larch stands… Walking through the trees after dawn, binoculars in hand, he heard a mysterious bird drumming in staccato rhythm. “I had never heard this before. And I realized only afterwards, ‘Jeez, that was a Williamson’s sapsucker and it was in an old larch stand!’ ” …“Critical habitat is still being logged,” Gyug tells The Narwhal. “If we keep losing it, [the sapsucker] will never get off the endangered list … And right now, we’re just not doing enough.”

JASPER NATIONAL PARK, AB – Today, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, announced plans to move forward on a new caribou conservation breeding program to support southern mountain caribou recovery in Jasper National Park. The program’s goal is to rebuild dwindling caribou populations in Jasper National Park that are too small to recover on their own. As a result of today’s announcement, Parks Canada is taking the first steps toward implementing this first-of-its-kind caribou conservation breeding program. …Efforts to protect caribou and critical habitat for caribou in Jasper National Park are part of a broader effort by federal and provincial governments and Indigenous partners, peoples and communities to support the recovery of caribou across Canada.

Congratulations to Dan Macmaster, Manager of the West Boundary Community Forest  for being named Forester of the Year by his colleagues in the Association of BC Forest Professionals. We are lucky to have you on the BCCFA board!

• BC Community Forest Association Conference: Kamloops, BC, June 7-9, 2023
• Ministry announces actions to accelerate implementation of Old Growth Strategic Review 
• Congratulations to the Speĺkúmtn Community Forest
• 2023 Indicators Survey – Deadline April 14th  
• The Eniyud Community Forest has a new website

Panorama Mountain Resort in British Columbia is home to western Canada’s first and only endangered tree: the Whitebark pine. And this resort is at the helm of a new partnership with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to save it. Whitebark pine is a hardy, long-lived species of tree that can flourish for centuries. But during the past decade, a non-native fungal disease known as white pine blister rust has been killing the trees at an alarming rate. …In 2021, Panorama permitted the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to plant 5,000 Whitebark pines within its resort boundaries. And for the past several years, Andrew Nelson, the resort’s Avalanche Risk Manager, has been facilitating access to the resort for scientists and technicians from the Foundation who want to study Whitebark pines, in hopes of identifying individuals naturally resistant to the white pine blister rust, and collecting cones for planting new trees.