The San Group announced its Port Alberni and Delta expansion plans, while Paper Excellence plans a temporary curtailment at its Crofton Paper mill. Other company headlines include: Tolko’s Kelowna mill site report; Roseburg’s wildfire investigation; West Fraser’s dividend; and Meadow Lake Pulp’s 30-year celebration.
In Forestry/Climate news: Canada and Koch Industries clash over carbon offsets; an op-ed piece on forestry and Canada’s GHG offset credit system; BC reports its 2020 GHG numbers are down; a NY Times feature on prescribed burns; and EU wildfire emissions hit 15-year high.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
This presents the opportunity for both the lumber and pulp industries to co-operate on land management, sharing in the carbon offset credit revenue to help pay for the establishment of the plantation, while benefiting from additional fibre sources over a shorter time span. …There is plenty of room in Canada for both conventional crop farming and tree farming. The key is to plan strategically and aim, for example, at productive land parcels that are difficult to farm but could still generate income through the sale of carbon offset credits. Parcels as small as one hectare could still be monetized into a valuable tree farm. …If Canada wants to achieve its GHG reduction targets, it’s going to have to do a lot more than just pump carbon dioxide back into the ground… and making tree farming affordable goes a long way toward building a natural climate change solution.
VANCOUVER, BC — West Fraser Timber declared a quarterly dividend of US$0.30 per share on the Common shares and Class B Common shares in the capital of the Company, payable on October 7, 2022 to shareholders of record on September 22, 2022. …Shareholders may elect to receive their dividends in Canadian dollars. Details regarding the election procedure are available at 
Vernon, B.C. — Tolko Industries Ltd. (Tolko) has submitted the detailed environmental site investigation report for the former Kelowna mill site to B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. As previously noted, the third-party investigation at the site encountered a light non-aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) at a test hole located approximately 150 metres away from the lakeshore. Laboratory analysis indicates that this hydrocarbon contamination is consistent with a lubricating oil. This substance was found to be limited to the area around two adjacent test holes. Tolko is planning to have this area remediated in September along with one other small area under the supervision of a third-party Environmental Professional. …Tolko is committed to addressing these contaminants and appreciates the ongoing support and collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.
Richmond, BC – Paper Excellence today announced a production curtailment at its Crofton paper facility. The curtailment will coincide with scheduled annual maintenance of key utility assets. The outage will reduce the site exposure to higher cost energy through this period. The curtailment will commence September 10th, 2022 and is expected to last approximately two weeks. It is estimated that approximately 95 employees will be affected with temporary layoff notices. We remain committed to our impacted employees and servicing our paper customers’ needs during this curtailment. 
LANGLEY, BC – The San Group announced it is expanding the company’s flag ship value added division, San Forest Products in Port Alberni and the newly acquired Acorn Sawmill in Delta, BC. The $23 million dollar investment will help develop new markets with a focus on high quality shelving products for big box stores such as Ikea. The expansion process expects to break ground in Q4 and extend to 2023. The San Forest Products value-added expansion will focus on installing an Anthem Line, a fully automized system designed to develop edge glued panels extending to eight feet. …The Acorn Forest Products expansion will focus on installing a new auto grader and dry kilns to modernize the sawmills efficiency. Explained John Langstroth, San Group’s Senior Vice President: “We are highly integrated and these advancements allow us to add efficiencies and realize economies of scale.”
The U.S. exported 649,185.7 metric tons of wood pellets in July, down from 832,092.2 metric tons the previous month, but up when compared to the 546,519.1 metric tons exported in July 2021, according to data released by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service on Sept. 7. The U.S. exported wood pellets to more than a dozen countries in July. The U.K. was the top destination for U.S. wood pellet exports, at 345,802.4 metric tons, followed by the Netherland at 166,974.5 metric tons and Japan at 45,102 metric tons. …Total wood pellet exports for the first seven months of 2022 reached nearly 4.97 million metric tons at a value of $851.09 million, compared to 4.12 million metric tons exported during the same period of last year at a value of $596.7 million.
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research published a study in the journal Nature Communications that claims building future cities from engineered wood products could prevent 106 billion tons of carbon dioxide from entering the Earth’s atmosphere by 2100. As the world’s population increases, more people will gravitate toward cities. Low rise wooden buildings of between 4 and 12 stories could provide shelter for all those people and locations for community businesses without the carbon emissions associated with making buildings out of concrete and steel. …Abhijeet Mishra, the paper’s lead author said, “More than half the world’s population currently lives in cities. This means more homes will be built with steel and concrete, most of which have a serious carbon footprint. But we have an alternative. We can house the new urban population in mid-rise buildings — that is four to 12 stories — made out of wood.”
The summer season is slowly transitioning into fall, but the BC Wildfire Service says this isn’t the time to let up when it comes to awareness around wildfire risk. Shaelee Stearns, BCWS fire information officer, said the Kamloops Fire Centre … still generally has a high fire danger rating. This means forest fuels are dry, and new fires could easily start. “The summer is not over, fires are still burning, there is still chances for ignition,” Stearns said. “So just be aware of that, and especially if there’s storms that pass through the area, the public is our eyes and ears on the ground. They’re the ones who report it. It’s super beneficial.” Temperatures throughout the Kamloops area have started cooling to more of a seasonal average which can help to decrease wildfire activity, but the forecast still shows some hot days ahead.
WISCONSIN — John Bates is a naturalist who sees his professional purpose as enabling people to develop environmental literacy. Since 2003, Bates has been particularly interested in old-growth forests, made up of trees that are hundreds of years old at minimum. Bates shares his Brief But Spectacular take on helping others “fall more deeply in love with the world” and connecting time through old-growth forests. “My interest in old growth took off in, oh, about 2003. I’d been walking in older forests, and found that they were quite rare and wondered why. Why did we cut so many down? They’re a filter for air. They’re a storage of carbon. They provide shade to our streams. …If you’re standing under an old white pine here in Wisconsin that’s 400 or 500 years old, you are standing underneath a tree that Native Americans had stood under.”
The wildfires that swept across Europe this summer, driven by high temperatures and prolonged dry conditions, have caused the highest CO2 emissions from fires in 15 years, 
The current timber supply shortages in Victoria brought about by vexatious legal action against VicForests is causing anguish among the people of Orbost, where 37% of its workforce faces the axe. Already thrown into an atmosphere of uncertainty with the announcement in 2019 that the Andrews Government would inexplicably shut down native timber harvesting by 2030, Orbost is the canary in the coalmine as many regional Victorian centres face similar crises. Parkside, which is Orbost’s second largest employer, is running on the last few loads of log supply and will need to take steps similar to Mectec sawmill in nearby Newmerella. Mectec was forced to lay off its casual workforce and put its permanent staff on whatever annual leave they had left. Now the 37 staff at Parkside face a similar fate. Should these mills close, along with the contracting businesses which supply them, the estimated direct timber job losses to the Orbost/Marlo area will be 115.
The Province has released provincial greenhouse gas emissions numbers for 2020 as part of its most recent annual provincial inventory. The provincial emissions inventory is produced every year by B.C.’s Climate Action Secretariat and is based primarily on the federal government’s National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, net emissions in British Columbia totalled 63.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) after considering 1.1 MtCO2e of carbon offsets from forest-management projects. This represents a net decrease of 3% (-2.0 MtCO2e) from 2007 levels, the baseline year for B.C.’s official emissions targets, and a net drop of 4% (-2.7 MtCO2e) from 2019 levels. Emissions data is published with as much as a two-year lag to allow time to assemble and analyze a wide range of information. …Quick Fact: Forest-management carbon offsets in B.C. reduce emissions by sequestering more carbon in forest ecosystems than would have occurred without the project.
