Despite diversification, Canada is still largely a hewer of wood and drawer of water. In related news: BC’s forest sector is dealing with myriad of market challenges; Maine loggers feel inflation squeeze; Gorman helps employees with rising costs; US homebuyers says it’s not a good time to buy; and single-family building slows in the suburbs. Meanwhile: West Fraser increases dividend; Kruger markets eco-conscious paper line; Stora Enso looks at recycled packaging; and Zeus buys two UK packaging companies.
In other news: all eyes on Vancouver Island land title case; Washington State sprawl adds to wildfire risk; 1/3 of California firefighter positions still unfilled; and Tongass old-growth study focuses on carbon stored.
Finally, our friend and colleague, Michel Vallée is featured in “Lives Lived” celebrating extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
VANCOUVER, B.C., – West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. has 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 July 8, 2022 to shareholders of record on June 22, 2022. The quarterly dividend has been increased from the prior US$0.25 per share in order to distribute a substantially similar amount of capital to investors through the dividend in light of the share count reduction resulting from execution of the current normal course issuer bid as well as completion of the recent substantial issuer bid.
Canada’s economy is ranked ninth largest in the world, even though its population is lower than all other nations in the top 10. Despite an increasingly diversified economy, Canada still is largely a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Natural resources are still pillars of Canada’s economy and make up a large portion of Canada’s most valuable exports. …According to Statistics Canada, forestry directly accounts for 1.2 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP), mining 3.3 per cent and oil and gas 5.0 per cent. …In Vancouver, a hub of professional services – from law firms to environmental services – specialize in serving Canada’s mining sector. A significant amount of manufacturing in B.C. is forestry-based, from veneer plants to paper mills. …Canadian forests have reached a maximum sustainable yield, with not much room for growth, except in higher value-added manufactured wood products, and the demand for oil is expected to peak in the coming decades.
A wildfire burning near Fort St. John has already scorched 545 hectares but an expert on forests said that’s not a bad thing at this point in the season. “A little bit of fire in the cool part of the spring … is actually a good thing in that landscape right now,” said Lori Daniels, a UBC forest ecology professor. There have been 152 wildfires in B.C. so far in 2022, down considerably from the 277 the province had already seen by this time last year. But Daniels is still worried about what summer could bring. …B.C. has already done prescribed burns in some parts of the province, but Daniels believes there should be more. She said a controlled burn under the right conditions, that doesn’t endanger communities, helps guard against larger fires in the future. Another risk factor, according to Daniels, is the pine beetle, which has affected 19 million hectares of forest in B.C.
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The Tongass National Forest in the U.S. state of Alaska is a special place for conservation biologist Dominick DellaSala, even after decades of traveling the world to study temperate rainforests. “The trees are enormous,” DellaSala, chief scientist at the Earth Island Institute’s World Heritage project, told Mongabay. “It’s like being in a cathedral. It’s an amazing place.” …DellaSala and his colleagues recently published a study revealing that the forests of the Tongass hold about a fifth of all the carbon in the entire United States National Forest system. That’s the equivalent of 1.5 times all the greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S. in 2019. Their research came out April 13 in the journal Land. …In 2006, a group of researchers calculated that the carbon held in the Tongass’s forests amounted to 8% of all the carbon in all the forests found in the United States outside of Alaska and Hawai‘i.
Thomas Douglass usually looks forward to the end of spring mud season, when most independent loggers like himself return to the woods after a month-long break. But this year, he said, was different. …Douglass estimates the cost of running his business has gone up between 20-and-30% over the last two years, and especially in the last six months. …The Professional Logging Contractors of Maine surveyed its members earlier this winter. They estimate operating costs have gone up an average of 24% over the last two years on everything from tires and hydraulic filters to brake parts and labor. Most mills in Maine are now paying loggers a bonus to offset the cost of fuel, and some are paying slightly more now for fiber. That’s helped, but the volatility is forcing some loggers to leave the industry, scale back their operations or retire, said Dana Doran, executive director of the PLC.
The U.S. exported 659,071 metric tons of wood pellets in April, down from 801,396.9 metric tons in March, but up from the 635,463.4 metric tons exported in April 2021, according to data released by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service on June 7. The U.S. exported wood pellets to more than a dozen countries in April. The U.K. was the top destination at 498,208.9 metric tons, followed by the Netherlands at 74,654.2 metric tons and Denmark at 52,263.9 metric tons. The value of U.S. wood pellet exports reached $145.41 million in April, up from both $127.33 million in March and $82.91 million in April 2021.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a list of grants to test innovative ways to save the forest and forested communities by making use of the small trees and biomass that have so far stymied restoration efforts. The $44 million list of projects nationally includes $1.75 million worth of projects in Congressional District 2, in part thanks to lobbying efforts by Rep. Tom O’Halleran (R-Oak Creek). …The U.S. Department Agriculture announced the national list of projects to create products from the biomass generated by forest thinning and restoration projects. The wood scraps, saplings, small trees, brush and downed wood makes up about half of the material removed in a forest restoration project in the ponderosa pine forests. However, timber companies can’t make enough money on the larger trees to cover the cost of removing the biomass, which has stalled the Four Forest Restoration Initiative for a decade.