Canada’s emergency preparedness minister says 2023 is on track to be the worst fire season ever. In related news: millions of Canadians will face extreme fire danger this summer; much of Quebec is in haze and smoke; Toronto is feeling the effects of Quebec fires; and specific fire updates from Quebec, Ontario and Michigan; and Port Alberni & Fort St. John BC. Meanwhile: Fungi may offer a ‘jaw-dropping’ solution to climate change.
In Business news: Paper Excellence’s owner could face parliamentary summons; stage set for Structurlam reopening; BC Asia trade mission seeks to diversify trade; a 10-story wood building seems earthquake proof; and push back and push forward on Australia’s native forest bans.
Finally, a recipe for gridlock for the BC forest products sector.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
It has been two years since the BC government presented its vision to reshape the province’s forest sector. …A large part of the reason for the industry’s underwhelming response is the lack of specific direction from government on what exactly it meant by “more jobs and higher value.” …The irony is that the industry recognizes that change is needed in order to continue operating in this province. Even without policy changes, there are various pressures driving decisions to shift paths including a declining BC Interior timber supply, wildfire management and need to grow relationships with First Nations to name a few. 
CANADA — The secretive owner of Canada’s largest wood pulp manufacturer could soon face a summons to appear before a parliamentary committee after he sent company executives in his stead to testify Tuesday. New Democratic Party Natural Resources Critic Charlie Angus served notice Tuesday he will ask the Natural Resources committee to issue a summons to force Paper Excellence owner Jackson Wijaya to appear before the committee to answer questions about who owns the company and its complicated network of holding companies. …Angus’s motion calls on Wijaya to testify before June 20. However, if the committee agrees to issue the summons, it can only be executed if Wijaya sets foot in Canada. …The committee resumes its hearings into Paper Excellence Friday, with officials from the industry, natural resources and public safety departments scheduled to testify.
CONWAY, Arkansas — The shuttered Structurlam Mass Timber Corp. facility in Conway, idle since a sudden closing in January, could be operating again soon with Mercer’s announcement it has acquired the business. …The Canadian timber manufacturer has a track record of buying financially distressed manufacturing plants that have been closed and turning them around. In a news release, Mercer indicated the Conway factory “will expand Mercer’s product offering and enhance its ability to service its growing customer base.”
JAPAN — March total housing starts fell 3.2% to 73,693 units. The decline was led by owner occupied housing, with the segment falling 13.6% for the 16th consecutive monthly decline. …Sluggishness was prevalent in wooden single family housing, falling 6.9% to 36,531 units. Post and beam starts fell 8.2% to 28,033 units. Wooden prefab starts increased 4.7% to 817 units and total prefab housing declined 2.2% to 8,504 units. Platform frame declined 3.0% to 7,681 units. Results of 2×4 starts by housing type were as follows: single family custom homes fell 9.9% to 2,044 units, rental housing edged up 0.5% to 4,702 units and built for sale spec housing declined 9.8% to 861 units. …March total non-residential starts decreased 3.1% to 3,439 units. Wooden non-residential starts dropped 6.8% to 1,242 units and wooden floor area fell 5.4% to 222,243m2. 
Victoria’s state government recently announced an end to all native forest logging in their state by January 2024. Just over two years ago 250 Tasmanian doctors and medical students signed an open letter to the then Tasmanian Premier and Minister for Climate Change Peter Gutwein calling for an end to native forest logging to protect their patients from climate change related health threats. Native forests provide vast carbon stores critical to the mitigation of climate change. Climate change is widely acknowledged, including by the World Health Organization, to be the greatest threat to human health this century. We, as the group of doctors who organised the original open letter, were pleased to see the leadership shown by the Victorian Government in announcing and budgeting for an end to native forest logging. This follows Western Australia’s plans to similarly end native forest logging.
A study published in Current Biology found that fungi gobble up more than a third of the world’s annual fossil fuel emissions. As such, fungi “represent a blind spot in carbon modeling, conservation, and restoration,” said coauthor Katie Field, University of Sheffield. Field’s team found that fungi pulled down 36 percent of global fossil fuel emissions — enough to cancel out the yearly carbon pollution from China, the world’s largest carbon emitter. …For nearly half a billion years, these “mycorrhizal fungi” — named for the combined Latin words for “fungus” and “root” — have provided plants with mineral nutrients like phosphorous in exchange for plant-manufactured sugars. …Globally, the world’s plants pump an estimated 13 gigaton of carbon dioxide into underground fungi each year, the study found. But despite their importance, these subsurface fungal networks are continually broken open by the many ways human society interacts with the subsurface world — through agriculture, mining and industry.
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