Ontario carpenters walk off the job, joining residential construction workers already taking job action. In other Business news: replacing coal with biomass in Minnesota and Arizona; mass timber goes cradle-to-cradle in Virginia; and housing market updates from Canada and the US.
In Forestry/Climate news: Nick Smith on the meaning of Biden’s Executive Order on forests; Dave Elstone on the path forward for BC’s old-growth deferrals; Nova Scotia defers logging to protect Atlantic whitefish habitat; Maryland passes FSC and SFI audits; and Maine’s martens are a sign of healthy forests.
Finally, Steelworkers mark the 10th anniversary of BC’s deadly sawmill explosions.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
ONTARIO — Approximately 15,000 carpenters in the industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) sector have walked off the job, joining thousands of residential construction workers in a number of trades who went on strike last week. Members of the Ontario chapter of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America began the strike action at 12:01 a.m. after rejecting their employers’ latest contract offer. The local says that the main issue of contention is wages. …The strike comes on the heels of six unions in the residential construction sector walking off the job last week. …The impacted trades include house framers, tile installers, carpet and hardwood installers and individuals who are involved with high rise forming work. The Ontario Labour Relations Act currently stipulates that strikes or lockouts in the residential construction sector cannot exceed six week.
The US housing market typically follows an ordered pattern: mortgage rates lead sales and construction, which in turn lead prices, which in turn lead inventory. In the past few months, there has been a sharp spike in mortgage rates to a 10 year high. The increase in rates has led to a decline in mortgage applications and home sales, which can be expected to continue and spread to construction. Prices are still rising at a near-record pace, but are poised to hit a wall. Inventory declines are abating, and inventory can be expected to trend higher for an extended period. …The pattern is most analogous to the 2003-06 Boom or Bubble period. Even as sales growth slowed and then reversed, prices climbed ever higher at brisk rates, while inventory, which had slowly declined, reversed course and rose. :max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/21_0511_APEX_ProgressPrakashPatelPhotography8-4266fb94b6054b60989f91df346514c7.jpg)
Nanaimo, BC – Calling all teachers and educators in the Nanaimo area! If you are looking for a unique opportunity to bring forestry into your classroom, the Canadian Institute of Forestry/Institut forestier du Canada (CIF-IFC) is organizing a Teachers’ Forestry Tour and you are invited to register! Hosted in collaboration with the CIF-IFC Vancouver Island Section and Vancouver Island University (VIU), the Teachers’ Forestry Tour will take place on June 3, 2022 in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. With funding in part from the Government of Canada, the CIF-IFC will be hosting and coordinating Teachers’ Forestry Tours across Canada over a two-year period (2021-2023). …The tour will inform teachers about basic forestry concepts, including sustainable forest management, Indigenous participation in forestry and the links between forests and climate change.
Northern Ontario First Nations emergency management professionals and organizations gathered in Thunder Bay, Ont., in preparation for the upcoming wildfire season. The inaugural “After Action Responders Forum,” hosted by the Northern Ontario Emergency Management Working Group, was designed to give First Nations and people working in emergency management a chance to share experiences, challenges and best practices from previous years. …The conference came on the heels of a record wildfire season — with more hectares of land burned in Ontario in 2021 that in any other year in history and over 3,000 people forced from their homes, many of them from remote First Nations in the northwest. …Derek Maud, a former chief and now the community emergency management coordinator for Lac Seul First Nation said it was an important networking opportunity, given that the position of community emergency management coordinator is a relatively new one for First Nations.
First, it’s important to note that Executive Orders don’t carry the force of law, like an Act of Congress would. …President Biden’s Executive Order does not ban timber harvesting, and it does not identify logging as a threat to old and mature trees. Rather, it identifies “climate impacts, catastrophic wildfires, insect infestation, and disease” as the primary threats to all forests, including older forests. It also takes aim at illegal logging and deforestation in other countries and seeks to limit the trade of illegally sourced wood products. Much of the Executive Order represents a reasonable effort to protect forests at home and abroad from the impacts of climate change. However, it may also undermine that effort by adding more bureaucracy and red tape on federal agencies that are already struggling to implement forest health projects and hire more land managers and firefighters to carry out the work. 
ARIZONA — Salt River Project has launched a study on whether it can turn the coal-fired power plant in St. Johns into a cutting-edge producer of clean energy. That could include a biomass burning plant, which would turn scraps from forest-thinning projects into energy – helping save watersheds and tame megafires. But it could also include currently experimental technologies – like producing hydrogen from water to replace natural gas. It might also include a series of small nuclear reactors, which could both produce electricity and drive the hydrogen production. …Kathleen Munroe will head up the wide-ranging feasibility study on whether the Valley utility company can transform the 773-megawatt coal-burning plant before its scheduled closure in 2032. “It’ll be several years before we can make a decision – this study will help us take the next step,” she said.
LONDON — Russian President Vladimir Putin told regional officials on Tuesday to deal with forest fires in Siberia and said there could be no repeat of last year’s fire season – the biggest on record. Putin said fires were causing significant material damage and posing a threat to life, the environment and the economy. Acting Emergencies Minister Alexander Chupryan told Putin: “Altogether since the start of the year on Russian territory there have been 4,000 forest fires on an area of 270,000 hectares” – an area larger than Luxembourg. The 2021 fire season was Russia’s largest ever, with 18.8 million hectares of forest destroyed by blazes, according to Greenpeace Russia. At least eight people died in Siberia on Saturday as fires ripped through hundreds of buildings in several villages, with high winds hampering efforts to extinguish the blazes.