The world of Canadian forestry lost one of its giants with the recent death of renowned ecologist Hamish Kimmins — a long time mentor and friend of the Frogs.
In Business news: FPAC’s Derek Nighbor responds to the federal budget; the US Lumber Coalition pushes back on WSJ Editorial on softwood duties; Canada Wood on what Brexit means to wood exporters; and BC grants seek to strengthen fibre supply chains. Meanwhile: North American lumber prices soar, but logs are still dirt cheap; and making sense of market changes in Japan and China.
In Forestry news: NRDC ups the anti on Canada’s boreal after industry, labour leaders call out their rhetoric; BC First Nations Forestry Council’s new scholarship partners; US senator seeks fund to save forests and create jobs; and Washington state is close on funding wildfire efforts.
Finally, scientists create wood that generates electricity when you walk across it.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
JP (Hamish) Kimmins 
Twenty-four projects from all over B.C. designed to strengthen manufacturing supply chains have received StrongerBC funding to help make the province more secure in the face of global supply interruptions. The Supply Chain Resiliency Grant Program has awarded one-time funding of up to $400,000 to organizations with wide-ranging projects that focus on various aspects of fortifying B.C.’s manufacturing ecosystem. …“This pandemic has further squeezed the uncertain supply of fibre that’s available to B.C.’s independent wood processors. With this grant, higher value-added wood manufacturers will be able to develop solutions to create more certainty, support investment in B.C. facilities, develop new products to take advantage of underutilized species such as hemlock, and sustain employment,” said Brian Menzies, executive director, Independent Wood Processors Association of BC.
VANCOUVER, BC – The First Nations Forestry Council has announced three new partnerships with Mosaic Forest Management, Tolko Industries Ltd. (Tolko), and Western Forest Products Inc. through the 
The Global Sawlog Price Index rose 8% in the 4Q/20 as demand for logs was up in North America and Europe. Both of the WRI’s sawlog price indices (Global and European) jumped 8% q-o-q in the 4Q/20 as log prices increased worldwide. Demand for logs improved when lumber consumption increased in the second half of 2020, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the MENA region. In Europe, the lumber market was generally flat, with only minor changes in domestic demand. However, European countries with high levels of lumber exports to non-European countries were in luck. Record setting lumber prices in the US helped drive increased shipments to higher levels y-o-y than in the 4Q/20. These increases were observed in Germany, Sweden, Romania, and Austria.
Scientists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have found a way to make wood produce small but useful amounts of electricity when compressed… The team manipulated a property of wood … called piezoelectricity, which refers to the tiny amounts of electricity discharged when the materials are compressed. By using a fungus to remove a material called lignin from the cell walls of a small piece of balsa wood, the team made the wood vastly more compressible, with a piezoelectric output more than 50 times greater than normal. It could be possible to use such delignified wood to make biomedical or other electrical sensors, or to insert the wood into floorboards so that walking across them generates power to be stored in a battery and which could power lights or appliances, the team speculated. …The ETH breakthrough is an example of how growing numbers of experts are rediscovering wood as a go-to sustainable building material.
Anti-forestry activists are declaring a new “war in the woods,” and we’re responding. Last week we asked many of our BCFA Advocates to call their MLAs and stand up for loggers and responsibly harvested mature forests. We’re already seeing great results. Thanks to the Pacheedaht leadership and pro-forestry advocates, the conversation on Fairy Creek and mature forests is starting to change. But anti-logging activists are putting the pressure on Forest Ministry Conroy, calling her and protesting outside her office. …We need to make sure Minister Conroy and her team know that BC still supports forestry. We’re asking you to call the Minister and tell her how you feel about mature forests and the blockaders at Fairy Creek and other camps. We’ve let anti-forestry activists go unchecked for too long. The government has only heard one side of the story, but it’s time we were heard.
Washington — A coalition of conservation and climate organizations have submitted a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, asking his agency to “take the fiscally responsible step of prohibiting federal funds from being used to pay for, subsidize, design, study or construct roads for logging in the Tongass National Forest.” The Tongass National Forest is the cornerstone of Southeast Alaska’s economy… In recent years, the tourism and commercial fishing industries that depend on a health Tongass have generated $1 billion apiece in annual economic benefit. The timber industry, on the other hand, presently provides less than 1% of jobs in the Southeast economy. Despite that reality, the Tongass timber program has cost the American taxpayer $600 million in the last two decades.
…Northern forests—temperate and boreal forests found in places like Canada, the U.S., and Europe—are facing a quiet extinction. Over the last 30 years, while the international community has rightly mobilized to combat the rapacious pillaging of tropical forests, Northern countries have successfully deflected attention from themselves, decrying forest loss in the Global South while obfuscating their own destructive practices. …In the last 60 years, Sweden has lost over 70% of its lichen-rich forests to the logging industry and ranks first globally in tree loss per capita–just ahead of Norway, Canada, and Russia, all also countries with boreal forest. …Canada is one of the loudest voices claiming “world class” forestry practices, with an industry that blanches at any intimation of unsustainability while routinely blocking and lobbying to remove essential protections for at-risk species and carbon-rich primary forests. 