Canfor announced the continuation of reduced operating schedules in BC due to supply chain challenges. In related news: US pending home sales fell 4%; two perspectives on the bursting of the lumber bubble; and 2021 remodelling trends. On the Wood Products front: a new report on the state of mass timber projects across the globe; featured buildings in Edmonton; Toronto; and Kitchener-Waterloo; and an Australian effort to be the world’s tallest. Meanwhile, BC Wood’s export readiness training kicks-off June 8th.
In Forestry/Climate news: the US Forest Service ban on prescribed burning stalls risk reduction work; court puts Kootenai National Forest logging on hold; and how EU energy policy changes may effect Georgia’s wood pellet industry.
Finally, wandering salamanders skydive from the world’s tallest trees.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
VANCOUVER, BC — Canfor announced the continuation of reduced operating schedules at its Western Canadian sawmills due to the ongoing global supply chain challenges. The Company has been operating at approximately 80% of production capacity since late March 2022. In addition, the Company will be implementing two weeks of rotating downtime across its primary sawmills in July and August, which will help align production capacity with the sustainable timber supply and transportation availability. The Company will use this downtime to complete maintenance projects and other site activities to help mitigate the impact on employees. These capacity reductions are expected to result in an incremental impact of approximately 275 million board feet by the end of August, in addition to the 100 million board feet reduction previously announced on March 30th. …The Western Canadian sawmills are anticipated to resume normal operating schedules following their respective summer downtime. 
Growing and diversifying BC’s value-added wood export sector, has long been an objective of the forest sector—which is why governments and industry invest in market expansion activities. Ask any value-added manufacturer what it takes to accomplish this and you’re apt to hear about the usual constraints to expansion, such as a lack of skilled labour, fibre supply, financing and market intel/experience. But ask the same question of value-added manufacturers that have taken BC Wood’s Export Readiness Program and you’re likely to hear more about their confidence in achieving export growth. The proof is in the survey responses from the last training cohort—in which 100% of the participants said the program was likely or very likely to grow their export sales in the next 12 months, and all agreed that the support materials and recordings were excellent, as was the trainer Greg Henderson 
The Province will provide as many as six research grants of $25,000 to university graduate students to help guide effective wildlife stewardship in B.C. and support the goals of the Together for Wildlife strategy. “The more we understand about wildlife and how they interact with the ecosystems around them, the better our decisions on wildlife stewardship and biodiversity conservation will be,” said Josie Osborne, Minister of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship. “This research funding supports students and draws together the expertise of academics, First Nations and other partners to gather the knowledge and data needed to make well-informed, collaborative decisions about wildlife management.” The Together for Wildlife strategy was released in 2020… The $150,000 for these research grants is an important step toward realizing the strategy’s vision.
On Wednesday, a federal court halted a U.S. Forest Service logging and road-building project in the Kootenai National Forest. The case centers around whether the Forest Service properly evaluated the Ripley project’s impact on grizzly bears. The project includes over 10,000 acres of commercial logging, construction of 19 miles of new permanent and temporary roads and over 90 miles of maintenance and reconstruction of existing roads, according to court documents. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies argued that the Forest Service skirted its responsibilities to properly evaluate the impact of road construction and work on the small threatened grizzly bear population in the bordering Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, which is located in northwest Montana.
The European Union is considering changes to its climate policies that could have a big effect on Georgia trees and Georgia business. The EU has been using wood pellets made from trees in the Southeast to burn for electricity and claiming this practice is carbon neutral. Now, it may change that stance. David Boraks, the climate reporter at WFAE in Charlotte, has been