Daily Archives: January 29, 2018

Today’s Takeaway

Satellites and cellphones expose illegal logging and protect tropical forests

January 29, 2018
Category: Today's Takeaway

Amid the plunder of tropical forests, satellites and cellphones offer a ray of hope. A Globe and Mail exposé shows how satellites are capturing the disappearance of Brazil’s forests in real time and have reduced deforestation by 82 per cent. Meanwhile, a New York Times feature speaks to how cellphones can can help with illegal logging, offering traceability from the forest to the big box store. 

Closer to home: the PPWC (formerly Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada, now the Public and Private Workers of Canada) says status quo in forestry in BC is a non-starter; Bob William’s report on the case for regional forest management continues to get press; the emerald ash borer has killed tens of thousands of trees in Ottawa; pressure mounts on Congress to restore Alaska’s roadless rule exemption; and a Q&A with USFS Chief Tony Took addresses funding for fire-fighting.

Finally, Canada and Mexico are applying pressure on the US on a day that may or be key for NAFTA.

— Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Business & Politics

Canada, Mexico tell U.S.: Decide whether you want a NAFTA dispute settlement process

By David Lawder and David Ljunnggren
CBC News
January 28, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

MONTREAL — Canada and Mexico are applying pressure on the United States to decide whether it wants to be part of NAFTA’s investor-state dispute mechanism, threatening to sideline it unless it commits to participating fully. Multiple sources say the conversation came to a head this week over how to settle disagreements between states and corporations, with the two countries refusing to let the U.S. rewrite the rules for Chapter 11 of the agreement if it can’t commit to being part of it. …The success or failure of those efforts won’t be known until Monday, when U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer pronounces on those efforts at a joint news conference with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo. …Trade lawyer Mark Warner said he believes Canada’s position is a ploy to divert attention from a larger, related priority — saving Chapter 19, which lays out the appeal process for anti-dumping and countervailing duties.

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Opinion: Status quo a non-starter in BC’s forest industry

By Arnold Bercov, President Public and Private Workers of Canada
The Province
January 28, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Doug Donaldson understands better than most how neglected B.C.’s forests are, and how that neglect is mirrored in troubling job losses and missed employment opportunities in rural towns and First Nations communities. …Well the time for posturing is over. Horgan is premier. He and his forests minister, whose file now includes “rural development,” must act. It’s up to them to lead on the forestry and rural-revitalization files. …We see no signs of action from the government. What is its plan, if any? …Here’s what my union believes is possible and that’ll have the ultimate support of many First Nations, environmental organizations and some forest companies: More old-growth forests protected. An end to raw-log exports. Increased forest-industry employment based on getting greater value from every log we cut, rather than shipping it off in unprocessed form. New, First Nation-area-based tenures that anchor new joint ventures where First Nations are majority partners.

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Rupert gateway to grow with Trans-Pacific Partnership

By Shannon Lough
BC Local News
January 27, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Francois-Philippe Champgne

Canada has agreed to a revised trade agreement with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal that spells out growth for trade industries and the Port of Prince Rupert. “This is very positive news for Prince Rupert as a gateway,” said Ken Veldman, director of public affair for the Port of Prince Rupert, who is also board director of the BC Chamber of Commerce. …… “Let’s take a market like Japan, where we’re looking at significant possibilities in terms of improving exports in food products, wood products, where currently there are some significant tariffs,” Veldman said. …“In the forest industry, like Vietnam, a very important market for wood and paper, [there are] very high tariffs. Same with Malaysia. Even in Japan, a long standing market, still a 10 per cent tariff in Japan for wood products from there to Canada.

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Province investigates ‘misuse’ of documents in cross-border log shipments

By Connell
CBC News
January 29, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

The New Brunswick Forest Products Commission says it is working with the Department of Justice and Public Safety to investigate the “misuse” of shipping documents used for transporting logs into the U.S. The case involves the use of transportation certificates mandated by the provincial government to track the movement of logs and to protect landowners from wood theft. “We have some active investigations on the go where we’re looking into misuse, or improper use, of transportation certificates,” said Tim Fox, the commission’s executive director. …While not confirming the border area investigation, a Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement saying officers from both Justice and Resource Development conducted a “compliance blitz” across the province Thursday aimed at the use of transportation certificates.

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Industry is handout-free? Who is Bill Black kidding?

By Raymond Plourde, Ecology Action Centre, Halifax
The Chronicle Herald
January 28, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

Columnist and ex-Maritime Life CEO Bill Black’s blinkered boosterism for resource intensive/extractive industries is as tiresome as it is predictable (“Let’s stop hugging trees, start embracing industry” Jan. 20). So, too, is his breezy dismissal of the very real environmental impacts of those industries and the concerns of the many (mostly rural) citizens who have to live with the effects of heavy industries in and around their communities. …Repeated short-rotation harvesting, based almost entirely on clearcutting, has badly degraded our forests. Our thin, acidic soils cannot sustain the repeated poundings they receive and still remain productive — resulting in an increasingly degraded and “scrubby” forest, composed mostly of low-value trees, for humans and wildlife. Another fallacy in the column is the idea that wildlife displaced by abrupt forest removal can simply find “new habitat in the plentiful neighbouring forests.”

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J.D. Irving’s job announcement comes as excitement to young workers

CTV News
January 26, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

J.D. Irving, Ltd. announced Thursday it plans to bring thousands of jobs to the Maritimes over the years to come, leaving many young workers feeling optimistic about their future in the region. The Saint John-based conglomerate company says it will need to hire people to fill 1,510 new jobs in Canada and 190 in the United States over the next three years. “If there’s great talent out there and you want to be in Saint John or Halifax or Chipmen, we’ll find a spot for you,” says Jeff Green, recruitment director of JDI. …Young apprentice welders Craig Dempster and Meagan Sutton say they’re happy to be given the opportunity to now stay in the Maritimes.

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Freres’ mass plywood panels almost ready for market

By Kyle Odegard
The Albany Democrat-Herald
January 28, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US West

Automated machinery hummed, sprang to life and sprayed sticky resin over a plywood sheet 48 feet long and 12 feet wide, then picked up another matching piece and placed it on top. The process was repeated for a few minutes on Wednesday until a behemoth of a wall 8-inches thick was created. “We’re witnessing the largest plywood panel in the world,” said Eric Ortiz, a plywood salesman for Freres Lumber Co. The new veneer-based product — called “mass plywood panels” — could change the construction and timber industry, said Arijit Sinha, an associate professor in Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, which played a critical role in the development and testing of the panels, called MPPs.  …“The future lies in five- to 12-story buildings. There’s a lot of market share to be captured there,” Sinha added.

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Japan anticipating reduced supply of softwood timber

EUWID Wood Products and Panels
January 29, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

The Japanese Forest Agency is anticipating a supply of approximately 1.37m m³ of European softwood timber in the first half-year of 2018, which would equate to a reduction of roughly 5% against the same period of last year.  Figures published in the Japan Lumber Journal show that the supply of timber from Europe in the first six months of last year had amounted to 1.45m m³. The estimates given for 2017 to date project a supply of European softwood timber totalling roughly 2.86m m³, almost 4.5% more than in 2016. [END]

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Giant outfall pipe travels to Pan Pac’s Whirinaki pulp mill

By Andrew Ashton
New Zealand Herald
January 27, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

A multimillion-dollar project to correct an outfall staining issue off the coast of Hawke’s Bay is almost complete. A final 500m piece of outfall pipe started an unusual sea voyage yesterday, to allow wood-processing company Pan Pac to finish the 2km extension of its outfall pipe at its Whirinaki pulp mill. The extension is made up of three 500m pieces, one 300m and one 200m. Pan Pac managing director Doug Ducker said the project cost more than $4m and would correct a situation that arose following the construction of a $20m treatment plant at the site in 2012, which resulted in water “staining” at sea. “It is a discolouration issue only, there are no issues with sediment or solids or anything of that nature – it’s strictly a colour matter.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Daio Paper starts up cellulose nanofiber plant

By Stephen Moore
Plastics Today
January 29, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

Japan’s Daio Paper started production of cellulose nanofibers (CNF) at  a 10-tonnes/year pilot plant in Shikoku-Chuo City on the island of Shikoku in January 2018. The company markets its products under the Ellex brand, with target applications including fiber reinforcement for plastic composites. Nippon Paper’s Ishinomaki cellulose nanofiber plant is the largest in the world. The company plans to use output from the plant for trial production of plastic composite materials and improve their processability with the objective of supplying CNF-reinforced molding compounds. Target applications include automobile and appliance parts.

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Triangular timber roof shelters the ruins of Sweden’s oldest church

By Alan Griffiths
Dezeen Magazine
January 28, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

AIX Arkitekter has completed an exhibition hall and shelter, to protect the site of a ninth-century church in the village of Varnhem, southwest Sweden. The Stockholm-based studio set a structure with a triangular timber roof on top of excavated ruins within the grounds of Varnhem Abbey. Excavations at the site in 2005 uncovered the remains of the farm church, which is believed to be Sweden’s oldest discovered Christian church and possibly the country’s oldest building. …”In order to make the old church accessible for visits, the foundations with its burial sites is protected from weather and wind,” said the practice. …The building itself comprises a series of glue-laminated timber beams combined to form trusses in the shape of an equilateral triangle.

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Why wood is back at the top of the tree for architects

By Rowan Moore
The Guardian
January 28, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

There is a miracle building material – one so environmentally friendly that it extracts carbon from the atmosphere rather than adding to it; a stuff with which structures can go up at lightning speeds, that reduces the noise and disruption of building sites, that can be as strong as steel and much lighter, that makes both construction workers and a building’s users happier, and that, with the help of technology, is getting ever more efficient and adaptable. “It’s the material of the future,” an architect tells me. Its most ardent proselytisers think it could fix the overcrowding of the world’s cities. At the same time, this stuff – wood – is so ancient that 18th-century theorists believed that Adam built the first house out of it in the Garden of Eden. Mild-mannered, unassuming timber has gone into a phone box and come out as a super-substance.

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Forestry

Conservationists sound alarm over Victoria’s western screech owls

CBC News
January 28, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Conservationists in Victoria are asking the public to keep an ear open for the distinctive call of the western screech owl as they aim to bring the bird back from the brink. Threatened by habitat loss from logging and development, and at risk from predators such as cats and the much larger barred owl, the western screech owl population has plummeted by 90 per cent over the past decade. Paige Erickson-McGee, a stewardship coordinator with the Habitat Acquisition Trust in Victoria, says there are just 20 left in the Victoria area. “They need a very specific habitat”, Erickson-McGee told On the Island host Gregor Craigie. The endangered owls, which are barely larger than a robin, nest in tree cavities, such as those formed by woodpeckers.

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Rare plant communities in B.C. not being protected from logging: Forest Practices Board

By Larry Pynn
Vancouver Sun
January 27, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

A Forest Practices Board report into a B.C. Timber Sales operation on the Sunshine Coast has revealed that rare plant communities are not receiving adequate protection from logging in B.C. The report, based on a complaint by environmental group Elphinstone Logging Focus, found that two cutblocks totalling 18.3 hectares of mature timber on the southwest slope of Mount Elphinstone contained plant communities considered at risk by B.C.’s Conservation Data Centre — red-listed (meaning threatened or endangered) western red cedar/sword fern, and blue-listed (of special concern) western hemlock/flat moss. …In response, Vivian Thomas, spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, acknowledged Friday “there is a gap” in protection measures and that the government would look at options for improvement, including working with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy to properly identify plant and animal species most at risk.

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Restoring forestry in B.C.

by Jim Hilton, professional agrologist and forester
Williams Lake Tribune
January 26, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

The extended title of an article by Bob Williams, is “The story of the industry’s decline and the case for regional management,” January 2018. Mr. Williams describes his forestry experience in the introduction and his final statement gives a good idea of what is to come in his report.  …The paper is in two parts: first, the decline of forestry in B.C. and, second, a new way forward. …Williams also devotes some space comparing Sweden to B.C. According to the paper, Sweden has an equivalent area of forest but gets twice the growth that we do. …The 33-page report also has examples of problems with the tenure system and the author describes some local tenures which he considers a better alternative.

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Trees provide new life for former farmer

By Pat Kerr
Sault Star
January 28, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

Brent Attwell and Trent Massey

ECHO BAY – Trent Massey has found a sound purpose for his former farmland. …He and his wife were left wondering what to do with their sprawling 30 acres of land until they partnered with Forests Ontario and he found a new job in forestry. Massey partnered with Forests Ontario, which supports tree planting efforts on both rural and urban lands, because, “I’ve always loved the outdoors and wildlife.” “I wanted to see more deer passing through, I wanted the benefits of a wind-break during winter, and privacy from the highway that runs next to our property,” he told The Sault Star. “Trees can provide all of those things.” Massey, who trained in forestry at Sault College, worked with Brent Atwell, of REGEN Forestry, to determine what was best for his land. 

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They who kill the hemlocks

By Zack Metcalfe
The Chronicle Herald
January 29, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

…The Eastern hemlocks behind my home, and across all of Nova Scotia, are indeed threatened by a pest, one which far too few are talking about. It’s called the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, an invasive, aphid-like insect which has ravaged the forests of the Eastern Seaboard to the south some 60 years now. It depends upon hemlocks for its survival, originally in its Asian homeland and for about a thousand years on the west coast of North America, but in both cases it’s been held in check by predatory insects and the trees themselves. Here in the east, however, our hemlocks have no natural resistance against this pest, and our native insects have no intention of eating it.

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Attack of the emerald ash borer: Ottawa trees razed due to invasive beetle

CTV News
January 27, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

Call it the attack of the emerald ash borer. Across the continent, millions of ash trees have been killed or cut down because of this invasive Asian beetle. This week, numerous trees in Ottawa were its latest victims. “It’s all disappearing quickly,” Peter Lowry told CTV Ottawa while standing behind his house in a city-owned field that just a few days earlier was thickly forested with ash trees. “We figured it would be just a few trees here and there scattered through,” Lowry said. “But at this point, it’s basically clearcutting from what I can see.” The tiny beetle has killed tens of thousands of trees since it arrived in the capital. Others have fallen victim to chainsaw-wielding city crews looking to contain the infestation. Ottawa is by no means alone in fighting the insect. Cities from Montreal to Toronto to Winnipeg are engaged in their own protracted beetle battles.

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Relocated Lake Superior caribou doing well, scientist says

CBC News
January 27, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

A lot of logistics and planning goes into any move, but a northern Ontario scientist recently took that that planning to a whole new level. Recently, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry relocated caribou from Michipicoten Island to Slate Islands, by helicopter. Art Rodgers, a research scientist with the ministry, was in charge of developing the protocol to move the animals and coordinate everyone involved. “I had not been involved in relocation of animals before,” he told CBC. “We really haven’t done too much of that in Ontario in the past.” The caribou were moved as wolves had made their way over to the island and the population of caribou was declining as a result. Rodgers says he contacted other provinces for advice on the move.

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Q&A with U.S. Forest Service chief Tony Tooke, who sees collaboration as key to improving public lands

By Jason Blevins
The Denver Post
January 28, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

Tony Tooke

Tony Tooke, chief of the U.S. Forest Service since last fall, visited the Outdoor Retailer Snow Show last week, meeting with volunteers, partners and conservation groups as part of a mission to broaden the coalition of organizations, agencies and communities working to improve recreation on public lands. In a brief chat with The Denver Post, Tooke emphasized collaboration and partnerships as essential to meeting the array of challenges facing the National Forest’s wildlands. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Sudden oak death task force fights for funding

By Nicholas Johnson
Coos Bay World
January 29, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

The Sudden Oak Death Task Force will once again be appealing for funds during Oregon’s February legislative session, where they will ask for an additional $1 million to eradicate NA-1 and EU-1 strains of the sudden oak death pathogen. After submitting plans to eradicate sudden oak death to the state, asking for $1.7 million in 2017, the state returned to the task force offering $700,000. That $1.7 million dollars is what the task force requires yearly, so throughout 2018 they will be asking the state for $2.7 million. The plan was designed to hopefully eradicate sudden oak death by 2019 provided the task force gets the funding it needs. “This is probably the scariest thing we’ve seen as far as a pathogen effecting our economy,” Oregon State Rep. David Brock Smith said.

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Scientist urge Congress to back off roadless rule

By Kevin Gullufsen
Juneau Empire
January 28, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

A group of 220 natural resource scientists urged Congress with a joint letter Friday not to eliminate the so-called “roadless rule” on Alaska’s Tongass and Chugach national forests.The letter comes in response to two proposed changes U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, attached to an Interior Department spending bill in November that hasn’t yet passed. One provision exempts the Tongass and Chugach from prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting in certain areas of the national forests. …Overturning these protections, the scientists write, would threaten salmon runs and the Tongass’ ability to store carbon and mitigate climate change.“Retaining the existing roadless areas of the Tongass is a ‘key element’ in sustaining the region’s extraordinary salmon runs (and their commercial, subsistence, and recreational fisheries),’” the scientists wrote.

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State leads new efforts to restore Roadless Rule exemption

By Elizabeth Jenkins
KTOO.org
January 26, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Bill Walker

There have been numerous attempts recently to sidestep U.S. Forest Service management of the Tongass National Forest. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has a few plans in the works. And now the State of Alaska is petitioning for more attention to be given to a very old debate. The Roadless Rule was created to protect wilder areas on federal lands. But critics say it limits access to timber and mining in Southeast — putting jobs at risk. If you listened to Gov. Bill Walker’s State of the State speech last week, you might have caught it. Peppered among tidbits about a natural gas pipeline and budget concerns, there was this: “Today, my administration filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to undertake a rule making process to restore the Roadless Rule exemption to the region,” the Governor said.

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House panel endorses new forest strategy for Black Hills

By Bob Mercer
The Daily Republic
January 26, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

David Johnson

PIERRE — The state House of Representatives is scheduled to talk next week about a different approach on forests that is taking root for the Black Hills. A resolution that calls for a “resilient forest strategy” is on the House calendar for Tuesday afternoon. Rep. David Johnson, R-Rapid City, is prime sponsor of HCR 1003. Johnson, who’s 57, said he’s worked about 40 years as an arborist in western South Dakota.  He helped put together an information session for state lawmakers Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol. Then he led off testimony Thursday about the plan to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. The panel unanimously endorsed it. The thrust of the new approach is to change management of timber ground and reduce the opportunities for mountain pine beetles to make their next invasion.

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Don’t let logging ruin West Virginia’s pockets of heaven

By Randi Pokladnik, retired chemist
Williamson Daily News
January 28, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

Randi Pokladnik

Most of the old-growth forests in the United States have been logged long ago. West Virginia’s virgin forests succumbed to the ax starting in the 1880s. A few photographs are all that remain of the giant trees, some over 45 feet in circumference, that once covered the hillsides of the state. …West Virginia’s forests were able to recover from the initial assault, but they will never be the same magnificent virgin forests of centuries ago. These ecosystems are still extremely valuable, not because of the timber they supply, but for the services they provide. These ecosystems provide flood control, stabilize fresh water supplies, protect diversity, offer recreation, bring in tourism, supply non-timber forest products, and act as a carbon sink for carbon dioxide emissions.

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Government Orders Cut in Teak Production, Bans Private Timber Operations

By Thazin Hlaing
The Irrawaddy
January 29, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

YANGON — The government has ordered timber production be reduced by 40 percent in the 2017-18 fiscal year, while banning private timber operations altogether, according to the Naypyitaw Forestry Department. The department will oversee the production of only 15,000 tons of teak and 350,000 tons of hardwood from forests across the country. According to the department, the state-owned Myanma Timber Enterprise has a quota to cut down 19,200 teak trees and 592,330 timber trees annually, but this fiscal year it will harvest only 10,620 teak trees and 193,412 other timber trees. Moreover, the government has placed a ban on private logging in order to control the loss of forest cover, said U Aung Chein, director of the Forestry Department.“We no longer grant permits to private loggers. Only Myanma Timber Enterprise is producing timber and teak now,” he said.

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The unsure fate of our forests

By Peerawat Jariyasombat
Bangkok Post
January 29, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

…The Cambodian government has put these forests on different concessions. These forests are divided. Much of its land has gone through logging concessions while some lands have been cleared for rubber plantations, new towns or commercial areas in the hands of foreign investors. But there is also something called land concession, which is different from other kinds. …It can be called a forest, for its remarkable density of trees. But these trees will be cut without proper protection. …The Thai government admits that with limited budget and manpower, the task to look after all forests is an uphill battle. …Forest concessions for tourism may sound like quite a new idea for Thailand, and it’s something the country could learn from. With proper rules, the forests will get better protection while the government earns from the concession. It can be a win-win solution. 

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Amid the Plunder of Forests, a Ray of Hope

By Richard Connie
The New York Times
January 27, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Strange as it may sound, we have arrived at a moment of hope for the world’s forests. It is, admittedly, hope of a jaded variety: After decades of hand-wringing about rampant destruction of forests almost everywhere, investigators have recently demonstrated in extraordinary detail that much of this logging is blatantly illegal. And surprisingly, people actually seem to be doing something about it. …So where’s the hope? This may sound naïve, but making the illegality so blatantly obvious ought to drive the timber industry to clean up its own act. Failing that, technology will start to do the job for them. …Every logging truck would then have to report by cellphone, before leaving the forest, which trees it is carrying. The ambition is traceability, right through to the finished product in the consumer’s local big box store or lumberyard.

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Highway to riches, road to ruin: Inside the Amazon’s deforestation crisis

By Stephanie Nolen
The Globe and Mail
January 26, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

…Every single day, cameras on satellites 700 kilometres above the Earth sweep over the five million square km of Amazon rainforest in Brazil and record a series of images. The pictures show the soaring trees that spike above the canopy and the tangle of jungle below, threaded through with rivers, some swift and muddy brown, others nearly as green as the sea of trees. …As the satellites pass over the forest, they record its disappearance in real time. …Brazil began to collect these images in 2004, a key part of the country’s big push to stop the burning and the gouging. The pictures are sent to teams of field agents who head to the sites of fires and patches of newly denuded land, to make arrests, levy fines and destroy the equipment of loggers and miners and those who cleared the land for ranches and farms. And it worked. Between 2004 and 2014, Brazil drove deforestation down by 82 per cent.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Balancing emissions and removals from Europe’s forests

By Samuel White
EurActiv
January 28, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

EU policymakers face a big challenge to maximise the economic potential of Europe’s forestry sector while balancing its carbon emissions and removals. But it’s one they will have to rise to if the bloc is to meet its climate and energy targets. Forests are Europe’s biggest carbon sinks and forestry the sector with the greatest potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere in the quantities needed to meet the bloc’s Paris Agreement target of slashing net emissions by 40% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. …Between them, the EU’s forests are capable of removing from the atmosphere and storing 10% of the bloc’s 4.45 billion tonnes of annual carbon emissions. …And biomass is set to keep playing an important role in the EU’s energy mix as countries seek more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.

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