Starting on a sad note, Bill Dumont, one of Canada’s most distinguished and powerful forestry advocates, died January 25, 2023.
In Forestry/Climate news: BC transfers land back to the Lake Babine Nation; David Elstone opines on the end of the BC mountain pine beetle era; the Huu-ay-aht First Nation on the future of Western’s Alberni mill; Alberta dodges the proverbial beetle bullet; Arizona’s loggers plead for more logs; California’s trees struggle with a warming world; and climate change may cut US forest inventory by 23%.
In Forest Product news: BC and Oregon are optimistic on the future of mass timber; the SLB on monetizing the carbon-storage properties of wood; and TimberTED courses hit the UK. Meanwhile: Russ Cameron on BC’s value-added timber announcement; and Anthony Britneff on the BC government’s response to mill closures.
Finally, the US Dept of Commerce released its preliminary reviews on Canadian lumber.
Kelly McCloskey Tree Frog Editor
Last week’s announcement by Canfor to restructure its BC operations to better align its manufacturing capacity with the available long-term fibre supply represents a major turning point for the BC forest industry. Canfor’s announcement was part of a long series of government and industry announcements over the last two weeks. Such announcements also included $146 million for various government initiatives. Collectively, these announcements have provided insight into the current and future state of the BC forest industry. 
The Huu-ay-aht First Nation says its optimistic members of a working group will be able to come up with a new future for the closed Alberni Pacific Division mill. Western Forest Products which owns the mill 
WASHINGTON – The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) released its Q4 2022 Containerboard Quarterly report. According to the report, total Containerboard production decreased 5% when compared to the full year of 2021.
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Construction in B.C. had a better year in 2022, as the economy gradually emerged from the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prospects for 2023 are mixed, however. …Helen Goodland, principal and head of research and innovation at SCIUS Advisory Inc. in Vancouver, said a sign of better times is that “we’ve finally realized that building housing is a good thing. The B.C. government realizes that mass timber is a technology in which we can be a world leader,” said Goodland. “Thanks to such initiatives as the Mass Timber Action Plan, mass timber is putting B.C. at the forefront of construction technology. Suddenly, mass timber is everywhere. It shows what can be done with the right combination of effort by government and industry.” …Mary Van Buren, president of the Canadian Construction Association, says the No. 1 problem Canadian construction faces is a continuing labour shortage.
In a reversal, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service issued a final repeal of the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule. The move formally reinstates the 2001 roadless rule in the Tongass National Forest, and effectively prohibits timber harvest and road construction within designated Inventoried Roadless Areas. Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the decision is major loss for Alaskans. “It’s yet another way the Biden administration is singling out Alaska,” he stated on Jan. 25. “Alaskans deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides – jobs, renewable energy resources, and tourism, not a government plan that treats human beings within a working forest like an invasive species.” …Numerous environmental safeguards currently ensure that economic survival is balanced with conservation practices and resource protection.
A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that a forest’s management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed. Findings of the research, led by associate forest engineering associate professor Catalina Segura and graduate student Arianna Goodman of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, were published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Probing the factors behind landslide frequency and magnitude is crucial because slides occur in all 50 states, causing an average of more than 25 deaths per year, according to the United States Geological Survey. The USGS puts the total annual average economic damage resulting from landslides at greater than $1 billion.
Ecosystems are
While campaigning, one of Gov. Maura Healey’s climate priorities was to place a moratorium on commercial logging on state-owned forest land, a move that foresters and environmental advocates say would be detrimental to forest health, the state’s climate goals and the economy. Harvesting timber …is a vital forest management tactic… according to local and state experts. Additionally, the state’s tight forest regulations mean any sort of harvesting or forest management practices are heavily scrutinized before work is done on the ground. “For all of those reasons, we and all these major environmental organizations — a long list of them — have urged the administration to not take that step,” said Chris Egan, the executive director of the Massachusetts Forest Alliance, a Marlborough-based forest advocacy group. “It’s not a free-for-all — these are carefully managed and planned projects based in science. Forest management in Massachusetts is among the most tightly regulated anywhere in the world.”
CALIFORNIA –Wildfires have long been a facet of California’s ecosystem, as varied forest land covers much of the state and often benefits from some types of fire. Indigenous communities were using controlled burns to manage forests long before Europeans were part of the equation. But a new study from UC Davis researchers found Sierra Nevada forests are facing more extreme wildfires, which could be bringing changes to ecosystems. …Fires that burn more than 95% of organic matter above ground — classified as high-severity wildfires — have increased across California at “unprecedented rates” since the mid-19th century, the authors wrote. The amount of low-to-moderate severity wildfires, which can be beneficial to forest ecosystems, also decreased during the same time period. Authors noted that a large portion of those changes have been felt over the last decade, as the state has seen nine of its largest fires in recorded history.
A new study quantifies the amount of carbon in a sampling of publicly held U.S. forests, demonstrating the importance of mature and old-growth stands. As much as two-thirds of the carbon held in the large trees in these forests is at risk because the trees lack legal protection from logging. In addition to the carbon benefits provided by the country’s mature and old-growth forests, which the authors say could help the U.S. meet its emissions reductions targets, the older trees found in them support vibrant ecosystems, regulate water cycles, and are resistant to fires.