A tough act to follow—former BC premier John Horgan will be remembered and criticized for standing up for the resource sector. In Business news: port strikes add to North American supply chain headaches; an Ontario MP readies for US tariff challenge; Boise Cascade goes exclusive with Trex; West Fraser removes controversial bridge; and a pending book chronicling Tembec Industries.
In Climate news: Canada commits $2 billion at COP29; the import of conserving forest through carbon markets; the promise and perils of Canada’s biofuel strategy; and reducing Maine’s pulp and paper mill’s CO2 emissions. Meanwhile: Christine Gelowitz opines on combating misinformation about BC forestry; the US Forest Service awards $20 million to reduce wildfire risks; and the EU waters down its deforestation law.
Finally, early bird pricing ends tomorrow for the TLA Convention, and the GBI’s latest building certification updates.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
The Truck Loggers Association of BC celebrates 80 years in January at their annual convention. Early bird pricing ends tomorrow! This year’s event offers TLA members and non-members an all-inclusive registration pass, granting access to all sessions and events throughout the convention. Tickets to Suppliers Night and Lunch on the Trade Show Floor can be purchased on an individual basis.
With the growing scale of wildfires, many First Nations are demanding a stronger role in wildfire response. Disproportionate impacts on Indigenous communities in Canada are motivating these demands: although approximately 5 % of the population identifies as Indigenous, about 42 % of wildfire evacuation events occur communities that are more than half Indigenous. In BC, new pathways for cooperative wildfire response between First Nations and provincial agencies are emerging. …Our research highlights the diverse existing capacities, priority opportunities, and processes required to enhance cooperative pathways. Within First Nations communities, existing capacities include local knowledge, firefighting experience, equipment, funding, relationships, and leadership – an overlooked but fundamental capacity. Priority opportunities include ways to build capacity within and beyond wildfire response, such as fully equipped response crews, full-time year-round wildfire management crews, Emergency Management Coordinators, First Nations Liaisons, and cross-trained wildland and structural crews. 
The Government of Canada announced an additional $2.4 million in funding to the Bruce Trail Conservancy through the Nature Smart Climate Solutions Fund. This is part of the Government of Canada’s largest conservation campaign in the country to meet its emissions reduction targets and protect 30 percent of land and water in Canada by 2030. This funding is in addition to a $5 million investment through the Nature Smart Climate Solutions Fund, awarded to the Bruce Trail Conservancy in 2022. The funding will be used to help advance conservation goals with urgent Niagara Escarpment land securement. This additional funding advances conservation of over 300 hectares of important habitat and contributes to capturing and storing greenhouse gas emissions by securing carbon-rich forest, wetland, and grassland ecosystems within the Niagara Escarpment. …It will also improve the connectivity of the iconic Bruce Trail and expand recreational opportunities across all seasons for activities such as nature appreciation, hiking, birdwatching, snowshoeing, and more.
Forests are being cut and degraded at an alarming rate, especially in the tropics, with the expansion of agricultural land causing almost 90% of forest reduction, according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. A first-of-its-kind law called the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), was designed to take steps to counter this. …The legislation was heralded by proponents as a breakthrough in the global battle against forest loss, it came into force in June 2023 and was due to be implemented at the end of this year. But since it was passed, several agriculture ministries — including those of Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden — have called for implementation to be postponed. …in 2023, the world lost some 37,000 square kilometers of tropical forest… A 12-month delay would mean additional global forest loss of about 2,300 square kilometers, according to EU studies.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts is developing technology that aims to use lasers to drastically cut emissions and energy use from Maine’s paper and pulp industry. They received a $2.75 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to help ready the industrial drying technology for commercial use. …Worcester Polytechnic’s drying research center has been working on ways to dry paper, pulp, and other materials using the concentrated energy found in lasers. The lasers Yagoobi’s team is using are not the lasers of the public imagination, like a red beam zapping at alien enemies. Though the lasers are quite strong — they can melt metal, Yagoobi says — they are dispersed over a larger area, spreading out the energy to evenly and gently dry the target material. Testing on food products has shown that the technology can work. Now, researchers need to learn more about how the laser energy affects different materials to make sure the product quality is not compromised during the drying process.
Is it possible to heat the planet to dangerous levels and then cool it down later? Economic models charting the world’s path to net zero emissions say yes. However, this bet on future large-scale carbon removal risks becoming a “get out of jail free” clause that allows high emissions to continue inflaming the climate crisis. A new study by leading scientists has criticised the overconfidence of policymakers and climate modellers – even the authors of the 2015 Paris agreement – for making this gamble. Their research highlights the pitfalls of assuming temperature thresholds can be safely exceeded and then reinstated. They’re right – and the problem runs even deeper. The challenge of implementing carbon removal at the scale required isn’t simply a matter of the technology being available and cost effective to deploy. Large-scale CO₂ removal depends on there being vast amounts of land to store carbon in trees and soil.
ONTARIO — The Hawk Lake log chute is a preserved piece of Canada’s past in the Haliburton region. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of chutes like this across the country at the peak of the logging industry. They helped to open the country to resource extraction and settlement, which is why the Township of Algonquin Highlands has rebuilt and preserved this model from the 1860s. But could it, or perhaps, should it, stand for more than just a colonial victory over the natural world? In this episode, we’ll learn how these chutes transformed the lumber industry, but also led to major harms to both the natural world and Indigenous peoples. [