Downie Timber’s Nick Arkle on fibre predictability, old-growth and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In other Business news: US and Canadian ministers discuss supply chain woes; the Unifor-Resolute deal includes pay hikes of 20%+; and US lumber dealer priorities include a new softwood agreement. Meanwhile: Rosburg breaks ground in North Carolina; Stora Enso partners on wooden wind turbine towers; and the American Steel Institute releases guide to steel/wood hybrid buildings.
In other news: updates on Nova Scotia’s Lahey recommendations, New Brunswick professor’s glyphosate dismissal trial; Eastern Canada’s deadly storms (and their impact on urban trees); and the US Forest Service plans for firefighters’ pay.
Finally, the Hidden Kingdom of Fungi, exploring the microscopic world in our forests.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
Russia’s ban on the export of forestry products until the end of 2022 will rattle an already tight North American lumber market as exports from Europe are redirected to meet domestic demand, company executives and analysts said. Dogged by rising fuel costs, demand exceeding rail transport capacities and other shipment snags, U.S. home builders have been struggling to find lumber and other raw materials needed to deliver on a massive backlog of projects from last year. Earlier in March, Russia banned exports of certain goods such as telecom, medical, auto, agricultural, electrical and tech equipment, as well as some forestry products to retaliate against Western sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s forestry exports ban could make things worse by removing as much as 3% of U.S. lumber imports via Europe, leading to higher prices for lumber in the United States. 
HIGH POINT – Existing home sales have fallen to lows not seen since the onset of the pandemic. According to a May 19 report from Market Insider, home sales fell for a third straight month in April, dropping 2.4% since March levels and down nearly 6% from a year ago. That pushes the inventory of unsold existing homes to more than 1 million. Home prices are moving up but at a slowing pace. The National Assn. of Realtors says that existing home sales prices rose 14.8% year-over-year to $391,000. …Lumber prices have also fallen to below $700 per thousand board feet, a low for 2022, according to data from stock screening firm Finviz. Finviz attributed lumber’s drop to a sharp rise in mortgage rates, which remain above 5% and have led to a slowdown in demand for homes from buyers. On the other hand, there is growing concern that the situation in Ukraine will cause lumber prices to rise.
Sales of new single‐family houses in April 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 16.6 percent (±10.4 percent) below the revised March rate of 709,000 and is 26.9 percent (±13.7 percent) below the April 2021 estimate of 809,000. The median sales price of new houses sold in April 2022 was $450,600. The average sales price was $570,300. The seasonally‐adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of April was 444,000. This represents a supply of 9.0 months at the current sales rate.
The guide is the USA’s first-ever set of recommendations for hybrid steel frames with mass timber floors. …Design Guide 37 illustrates the potential of hybrid steel-frame buildings with mass-timber floors for achieving low-embodied carbon while optimising steel and mass timber. It provides a context for the new building typology, detailing strategies from the perspective of multiple disciplines. By facilitating this new generation of sustainable buildings, the guide will help accelerate the use of hybrid timber and steel in multistorey residential and commercial construction, said Arup. …The guide says that… hybrid steel-frame buildings with mass timber floor panels allow for longer beam spans and reduced column size than comparable mass-timber post and beam construction, making it an attractive option for market-driven spaces such as office buildings. 
The City of Winnipeg is seeking input on its urban forest strategy. The strategy is a long-term planning document that will guide the long-range protection, preservation and management of Winnipeg’s tree canopy, the city says. “Development of the strategy is crucial and timely as the urban forest faces increasingly significant loss due to insects and disease as well as mounting pressure from climate change and urban development,” a city news release reads. “Now is the time for all of Winnipeg to play a part in defining plans to protect our trees and ensure our urban forest can grow into the future.”
Nova Scotia is “making great progress” in the implementation of the Lahey recommendations on forestry, the deputy minister of natural resources and renewables said. …Lahey recommended that Crown forestry land be divided into three management categories. The mixed forestry or matrix would provide for ecological forestry with a priority on conserving biodiversity through lower impact harvesting and reduced clearcutting. Another leg of the triad model would protect some forest from all harvesting and a third leg would be designated for high production with a cut, plant and spray approach. Gatien said the conservation leg has already begun, along with the ecological matrix leg and the province should be releasing information soon on the high-production piece. The silvicultural guide for the ecological matrix is being gradually phased in and by June 1, the majority of practices in the guide will be required. 
An arborist who specializes in urban forestry says the massive loss of trees in Ontario and Quebec over the weekend due to a severe storm will keep happening if land-use planning doesn’t change. Dr. Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, said she wasn’t surprised when thousands of trees were uprooted and destroyed by the deadly storm that swept through the province on Saturday because trees in urban and suburban settings are from nurseries and planted in soil that is very shallow. “We talk about puppy mills, right? Because it’s a terrible practice. And that’s literally what we do with trees,” said Puric-Mladenovic. “There is no deep root system developed. Because we plant trees that are coming from tree nurseries, whose root ball has already been chopped a million times. Then you plant them in compressed soil, literally like a bedrock … there is no stability.”
Mexican experts said 35 per cent more monarch butterflies arrived this year to spend the winter in mountaintop forests, compared to the previous season. The rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico. The butterflies’ population covered 2.84 hectares this year, compared to 2.1 hectares last year. …Each year the monarchs return to the United States and Canada on an annual migration that is threatened by loss of the milkweed they feed on north of the border, and deforestation in Mexico. …Drought, severe weather and loss of habitat — especially of the milkweed where the monarchs lay their eggs — as well as pesticide and herbicide use, and climate change, all pose threats to the species’ migration. Illegal logging and loss of tree cover due to disease, drought and storms also continues to plague the reserves.
VICTORIA, Australia — Protesters attempting to prevent or disrupt native forest logging in Victoria would face 12 months’ jail, or $21,000 in fines, under laws introduced to state parliament this week. Activists accused the government of seeking to criminalise peaceful protest in the lead-up to the November state election, while Agriculture Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said protesters were putting the lives of forestry workers at risk. “We respect the right to protest safely but want to make sure workers go home to their families each day,” she said. …“Not only has forest protest activity increased in Victoria over recent years, dangerous new tactics have been deployed by protesters that create an unacceptable risk to the safety of workers, authorised officers and police officers and the protesters themselves. …Liberty Victoria president Michael Stanton said, “such draconian measures are plainly disproportionate.”
One of the longest-running scientific studies of tropical forests has revealed rainforest trees are dying twice as fast as they were in the 1970s. The paper, published in Nature, looked at hundreds of trees in plots across the Australian wet tropics. From 1971 to 2019, researchers measured every plant in the plots greater than 10 centimetres in diameter, every two to five years. Professor of Tropical Ecology at James Cook University and Susan Laurance said the data showed mortality rates started to increase in the 1980s. She said they compared it with local climate conditions and found decreases in air moisture and rising temperatures were likely to be the main culprits, driven by climate change. “It’s hard to identify very specific climate signals, but by far the most likely response is going to be the increase in what we call vapour pressure deficit,” Laurance said.
The Northwest Territories’s climate has warmed by two degrees in the past 70 years. Parts of the territory have seen warming up to four times the global average. A recent report offers the first comprehensive analysis of how those rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are affecting the territory’s forests. “Northern forests are driven by disturbance, meaning they need some level of disturbance, like fire or insect outbreaks, to renew themselves,” explained report contributor Jakub Olesinski, an ecologist in the NWT government’s forest management division. The report, a collaboration between the GNWT and the Canadian Forest Service, establishes the current ecological conditions as a point of comparison against future changes in the environment. …The report explains that as the climate warms, forests will see increased permafrost thaw, a subsequent flooding and drowning of trees, the spreading of insect and disease outbreaks farther north, and more frequent wildfires of greater severity.
Changes to global supply chains brought on by the crisis in Ukraine, as well as increased demand across Europe, have seen United Kingdom producers and suppliers urgently switch to alternative sources of imported wood pellets to ensure minimal impact on the biomass heating market, a sector that currently sees U.K. demand for premium grade wood pellets reaching 600,000 tons per annum. The UK Pellet Council, a niche and separate industry to the biomass power market—is now forging new partnerships with worldwide suppliers to plug an immediate pellet shortfall of 200,000 tons per annum, previously sourced from Siberia. This has created new opportunities for existing pellet suppliers from the Baltics and the Iberian Peninsula to increase exports, and potentially, North and South America producers, too.
Dust Safety Science examines how big the combustible dust fire and explosion problem around the world. Determining how to prevent these incidents… is the driving force behind this work. The combustible dust incident reporting launched in 2016. Since then, the U.S. has averaged 133 fires, 30 explosions and 36 injuries per year with fatalities ranging between one and six per year. Canada has averaged 15.2 fires, 3.5 explosions and 4.2 injuries over that same time period. …In 2021, at least eight combustible dust explosions and two combustible dust fires that caused injuries to workers were reported in the incident reporting system. …both dust fires and dust explosions are common challenges at wood products, woodworking and pelleting facilities around the world. A comprehensive combustible dust safety program must be in place to address these challenges and avoid loss of product, damages to the facility, and harm to employees or other individuals that are on-site at the facility.