The panel session Our Forests, Our Climate will be opened and moderated by Albert Nussbaum, Acting Deputy Chief Forester of BC. We will hear from Werner Kurz, NRCan Senior Research Scientist, on climate change about the role of forests, forest management and wood products in mitigating climate change while increasing resilience to climate change impacts. Rachel Pollard, Director, Ministry of Forests will discuss a new approach for forest management that will improve how we manage forest values in the context of climate change and the need for long term forest resilience. Finally, Tracy Andrews, Manager, Audits and Investigations, Forest Practices Board will talk about their recent report, Forest Practices and Water: Opportunities for Action, and the Board’s view on how changes in forest management could improve the protection and conservation of water and downstream values.

Rory McIntosh

The provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta continue to collaborate in the fight against the mountain pine beetle. Since 2011 the provinces have worked together as Dr. Rory McIntosh, Forest insect and disease expert for forest services with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment explains. Since 2011 we’ve worked with the province of Alberta to slow the spread east and the spread of beetles in Alberta. We feel the best approach is to prevent the beetle from reaching Saskatchewan rather than try to manage it in a northern forest. Dr. McIntosh adds that in the early 2000s a massive outbreak in British Columbia resulted in the mortality of almost 55% of the growing pine stock. In addition, the beetles spread in two huge dispersal events in 2006 and 2009 scattering beetles halfway across Alberta. According to Dr. McIntosh detection systems have been set up in Saskatchewan’s northern forests and to date, no beetles have been found here.

Record-setting lack of rainfall over the past month in B.C. means no end in sight for this year’s wildfire season, officials said Tuesday. Abbotsford International Airport recorded 0.9 millimetres of precipitation last month, “the driest September on record,” according to Alyssa Charbonneau, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. The hot, dry conditions have extended the wildfire season across the province, according to Brianna Hill, an information officer with the B.C. Wildfire Service. “There is still no season ending weather in the forecast,” Hill said in an email. “Many locations have been weeks without significant rainfall, while setting temperature records leading into October.” While current conditions haven’t significantly affected existing wildfires, Hill said the B.C. Wildfire Service was concerned about the impact that the extension of summer-like conditions and widespread drought could have on the potential for new wildfire starts.

An investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate has found that Drax catapulted a small industry it says is green into an investor-driven, international operation dependent on logging in areas that include B.C.’s old growth and primary forests.  Activists, scientists and environmentalists argue that far from being green, wood pellet production generates few jobs and actually makes the climate crisis worse. And they say it’s all happening with the support of B.C. Premier John Horgan’s NDP government. …”The greenwashing of the pellet industry needs to stop,” Bob Simpson, the mayor of Quesnel, a town in B.C.’s Interior. The industry says it is renewable because trees grow back while fossil fuels do not. Scientists say that forests take decades, even centuries, to regenerate, and that burning wood produces more emissions than coal. ..Joe Aquino, Drax’s director of sustainability, said the company “only uses lower quality trees from logging operations that otherwise “would have no other purpose.”

A local group is calling for a moratorium on old growth logging. On Sept. 29 Slocan Valley residents gathered on Russel Creek Road to protest the planned logging by Interfor and R and A logging in the Russel Creek watershed, which contains trees as old as 1,000 years old. …residents asked the logging company employees to “come back once they have consulted with local environmental organizations and informed consent by the Autonomous Sinixt.” In the meantime, Last Stand West Kootenay has called upon the province to look at the matter and consider the section of forest set to be logged, said member Ernest Smuga. “The community is asking for an immediate moratorium on logging in the area until Interfor demonstrates how it is planning to honor these deferral areas, ground proof current data in surrounding cut blocks, and protect old growth in Russel Creek,” he said in a press release.