Daily Archives: October 23, 2018

Today’s Takeaway

BC tightens oversight of resource projects with new superintendent of professional governance

October 23, 2018
Category: Today's Takeaway

The BC government introduced legislation to tighten oversight of resource projects, create whistleblower protection and oversee the professional associations. Is it a means to restore public trust (BC Gov’t) or a lost opportunity (ABCFP)? In other Business news, more on: the San Group expansion, Irving’s plea deal; and Random Lengths lumber and panel report.

In Wood Product news: the US Forest Service celebrates CLT; DeckExpo promotes Southern Pine and Western Red Cedar; but the concrete, cement and steel industries say the US Code Council’s advocacy guidelines are suppressing information on the devastating consequences of allowing wooden high-rise buildings.

Finally, Prince Harry’s environmental message; a survey of US family forest owners; and an online map of the impact of climate change on Canada’s boreal forest.

–Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Business & Politics

Commerce taking hard look at softwood subsidies

By Brian Bradley
The American Shipper
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

The Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration is accepting comments through Nov. 18 on any subsidies, including stumpage subsidies, provided by certain countries that exported softwood lumber or softwood lumber products to the U.S. from Jan. 1 to June 30. Under the Softwood Lumber Act of 2008, the Commerce secretary must submit to Congress a report every 180 days on any subsidy provided by countries exporting softwood lumber or softwood lumber products to the U.S., including stumpage subsidies. Commerce submitted its last subsidy report on June 20. …The agency said… Brazil, Canada, Germany and Sweden exported softwood lumber to the U.S. accounting for at least 1 percent of U.S. imports of the product.

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Random Lengths Lumber and Panel Market Report

Random Lenghts Publications
October 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

Traders noted a change in the tone of the framing lumber market, and even a sense that prices had found or were nearing a bottom. However, that sentiment was stronger in the first half of the week than the latter. A few mill curtailments announced in the West and a picket line set up at a mill site in British Columbia caused traders to stir. …Structural panel prices plunged as mills searched for trading levels to alleviate buildups. Prices of OSB finished the week lower, but strong sales in the second half of the week allowed producers to bounce quotes off their lows in some regions. Southern Pine plywood trading nearly reached a standstill amid languishing demand. 

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New mills, new jobs boost Port Alberni in Langley company’s $70-million project

By Jeff Bell
Victoria Times Colonist
October 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Port Alberni’s economy has received a huge boost with news that Langley’s San Group Inc. will put $60 to $70 million into a trio of mills and provide employment for about 135 people in three phases. The centrepiece will be a HewSaw mill, designed in Finland, that specializes in small-dimension wood. To build the new sawmill, family-owned San Group, based in Langley, is buying 25 acres at the Catalyst Paper site in Port Alberni, and will provide Catalyst with wood chips. …“They will use the steam from the Catalyst mill to run kilns, and the chips from this process will go into paper,” said Port Alberni Mayor Mike Rutten, who was briefed on the plans. …The company will take cedar, for example, and laminate it to other wood to create a high-value product with a cedar finish for uses like home exterior and flooring.

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Public land-use issues passed over in favour of proposed legislation targeting natural resource professionals

The Association of BC Forest Professionals
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Christine Gelowitz

Vancouver—The BC government’s proposed new legislation standardizing governance of all natural resource professionals is a missed opportunity that will not address real issues of public concern around forest management, says the CEO of the Association of BC Forest Professionals. “The introduction of the Professional Governance Act and creation of the Office of the Superintendent of Professional Governance will change how professionals are governed but does nothing to change policies regulating how the environment and land base are managed,” said Christine Gelowitz. …“We want to work with the government to make real, sustained improvements in BC’s forest management practices and the professional reliance regime. But that has to start with realizing professional reliance is an active partnership between government, industry, and the profession,” Gelowitz said. “With a third of BC’s forest professionals working for government, this is not a question of government versus industry. 

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Qualified professional legislation to restore public trust in natural-resource decision-making

By Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy
Government of British Columbia
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

The B.C. government has introduced legislation aimed at making sure decisions affecting the province’s natural resources are science-based, transparent and protect B.C.’s unique environment for future generations. The Professional Governance Act will, if passed, modernize and strengthen the roles and expectations of qualified professionals in the province, in turn providing greater, science-based public oversight of how B.C.’s natural resources are managed. It will also establish an office of the superintendent of professional governance to ensure consistency and best practices are applied in the work of qualified professionals moving forward. …The remainder of the report and recommendations focus on natural resource regulatory regimes. Government is acting on many of these recommendations as part of broader goals and mandate commitments for natural resource management, including strengthening results-based laws, building government capacity for compliance and enforcement, modernizing land-use planning and building partnerships with Indigenous peoples for resource management.

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West Fraser Announces Third Quarter Results

By West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.
Cision Newswire
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Despite lower third quarter SPF and plywood prices, we produced results that, while off the record pace of the second quarter, were still significantly ahead of the third quarter of 2017.  We continued to make progress on the reduction of finished goods inventories.  We shipped 107 million board feet of lumber in excess of production during the quarter.  We estimate that as of the end of the third quarter, we had approximately 40 million board feet of excess finished SPF inventory remaining to ship.  The wildfire season in BC in 2018 set a new record in terms of hectares of land that were burned.  Unlike 2017, it was not necessary for us to curtail any manufacturing operations due to the fires.  However, logging and hauling operations were restricted which has impacted log inventory at a number of our mills.  Log and contractor availability is expected to remain constrained which we expect to influence the trend of log price escalation in B.C.

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Inside Tolko Armstrong

By Maria Church
Wood Business – Canadian Forest Industries
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West
Tolko Armstrong in the B.C. Interior is undergoing a $35-million capital investment project to optimize its sawmill facility. In 2015 the planer mill had a similar $18-million treatment and now boasts impressive speeds and automation. …Tolko Armstrong Lumber Safety Supervisor Peter Foodikoff takes CFI on a tour inside the Armstrong sawmill and planer mill. 

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B.C. government moves to tighten resource industry regulations

By Tom Fletcher
The Nanaimo News Bulletin
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman has begun the NDP government’s overhaul of oversight of resource projects, bringing forward legislation to set up a new superintendent to oversee engineers, biologists, foresters and other professionals who are currently self-governing. Heyman said the change is required to “restore public trust” in decisions made on natural resource projects. “The initial stage of implementation would enable the office and its policy, guidance, investigation and enforcement functions and bring key provisions of the act into force, such as whistleblower protection,” Heyman told the legislature Monday. …The Association of B.C. Forest Professionals issued a statement calling the legislation “a missed opportunity” that doesn’t change environment and land use policies. The foresters “stressed the need for government to clearly define values, clarify desired results, set objectives and values, and establish a hierarchy of objectives on the landscape,” CEO Christine Gelowitz said.

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J.D. Irving plea deal raises questions of conflict of interest, say law professors

By Connell Smith
CBC News
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

Jim Irving

Law professors contacted by CBC say conflict of interest and a lack transparency are among the issues with a plea deal proposed in a J.D. Irving pollution case, and one predicts the case will not be accepted by the court. The sentence, recommended jointly by the Crown and defence lawyers in the case, would see a $1.1 million fine paid to Collaboration of Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow, or CAST, a conservation non-profit chaired by Jim Irving, JDI’s co-CEO. …If accepted by Judge David Walker, the sentence deal would also see Irving Pulp and Paper construct a treatment facility at its Reversing Falls pulp mill and pay $2.4 million to the federal Environmental Damages Fund. …Shaun Fluker, a University of Calgary associate professor, said the proposed Irving plea deal is… problematic because there’s little evidence to show how defence lawyers and the Crown came up with the joint recommendation.

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Tariffs, Trade and Son of NAFTA

Hardware+Building Supply Dealer
October 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States

Chicago — Why is there no solution to the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber trade dispute? And can President Trump unilateral withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement? These were some of the questions posed during a presentation called Lumber and Wood Products Trade Issues Update, the final presentation of the 2018 ProDealer Industry Summit. And the answers to these and other questions were complicated. Stephen Claeys, a partner at Wiley Rein LLP and expert on international trade law, provided background on the softwood lumber dispute… “It comes down to who owns the trees,” he explained. “In Canada, it’s the Queen of England. In the U.S., it’s private landowners.” …A previous trade agreement expired in 2015, and a getting a new deal might take a while. Why? Claeys pointed to several reasons. First, there are many seats at the table. The national governments, the provinces, Canadian industry and the U.S. industry. 

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Tougher trade policies can give Maine’s sawmills a chance to thrive

By Jared Golden, Democratic candidate for the 2nd Congressional District
Bangor Daily News
October 23, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US East

“No round stick of wood should ever leave Maine.” Have you heard that before? Spend time in the small towns of Aroostook, Somerset or Penobscot counties and you just might. This phrase is echoed by the people of northern Maine who have watched their communities — built on the sweat of cutting, hauling and sawing wood — wither away while those outside our border make money off Maine’s resources. Harmful trade policies impacting our forest product industry have hamstrung northern Maine for the better part of a century. Conversely, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have done a great job looking out for their industry. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., corporations and lobbyists that benefit from this imbalance have succeeded in enacting trade and migrant labor policies that hurt those whose livelihoods depend on Maine wood being cut by Mainers, hauled by Mainers and sawed by Mainers.

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ND Paper Completes Acquisition of Old Town, Maine Pulp Mill

By ND Paper
Cision Newswire
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US East

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. — ND Paper, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Limited, on Friday, Oct. 19, completed its acquisition of the Old Town kraft pulp mill from OTM Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of CVG, Inc. Under the terms of the asset purchase agreement, ND Paper acquired the bleached kraft pulp mill, plus approximately 100 acres of real property, for an undisclosed sum, payable in cash. Prior to its idling in the fourth quarter of 2015, the Old Town Mill manufactured and distributed approximately 155,000 air dried metric tonnes (admt) annually of bleached hardwood kraft pulp.  After a series of phased capital investments, ND Paper expects the Mill will restart in the first quarter of 2019 and ultimately produce 275,000 admt annually of unbleached kraft pulp.

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Timber product exporters wary of potential Chinese dumping

By Emir Zainul
The Edge Markets MY
October 22, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

Datuk Low Kian Chuan

KUALA LUMPUR: The far-reaching consequences of the escalating trade tensions between the US and China are also a concern for the timber product export industry, according to new Malaysian Timber Council (MTC) chairman Datuk Low Kian Chuan. While manufacturers of furniture, wood-based panels and commodities like rubber and palm oil may benefit from the diversion of investment and demand from the two countries, there is the potential that excess Chinese timber products may be dumped into export markets that Malaysia currently supplies to, like Europe and Japan, Low said. “For example, Chinese plywood may potentially flood the Japanese market, which is currently the largest market for Malaysian plywood.” he told The Edge Financial Daily in a recent interview.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

DeckExpo Delivers Treated Southern Pine Message

Southern Forest Products Association
October 23, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, United States

Throngs of builders collected treated Southern Pine facts in Baltimore while attending the recent DeckExpo, co-located with the Remodeling Show and JLC Live. The Wood, Naturally display and adjacent demonstration clinic provided visitors with the latest information about lumber products, including pressure-treated Southern Pine and Western red cedar. SFPA’s Eric Gee and Cameron Goodreau coordinated the display on behalf of the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and were joined by Sydni Dobson and Katie Juhl from the Southeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association (SLMA), as well as Jay Poppe of the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association(WRCLA). …“These project demonstrations highlighted the design flexibility of using real wood,” Eric noted.  “Things built with wood are created, rather than assembled” added Mark Clement.

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Groundbreaking Brock Commons blazes new construction trail

By Jean Sorensen
Journal of Commerce
October 22, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada West

The University of B.C.’s Brock Commons Phase 1 student residence, now the world’s second tallest wood building, is reshaping traditional construction through fabrication and winning awards for its’ construction crew. Three B.C. construction companies have received Vancouver Regional Construction Association Silver Awards: Urban One Builders Construction Management (general contractor — $15-$50 million), Seagate Structures Ltd. (Chairman’s Trade Award for trade contractor up to $1 million), and Trotter & Morton Building Technologies Inc. (mechanical contractors — $3-$9 million). “The wood structure came together in nine weeks,” said Urban’s senior project manager Karla Fraser, as that work included 16 wood storeys plus envelop and concrete floor topping. Throughout the build, prefabrication components, just-in-time delivery, and crews employed on carefully sequenced work cycles sped the building’s rise. …Fraser credits modelling and animation with taking a proposed project and transforming it into a virtual reality allowing the whole construction team to visualize the process.

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Industry groups call out advocacy suppression at Code Council Conference

By Build With Strength Coalition
Concrete Products
October 22, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association-backed Build With Strength coalition, along with allies the Portland Cement Association and Steel Framing Industry Association, are challenging International Code Council “advocacy guidelines” that restrict communications during the group’s Annual Conference, Public Comment Hearings and Expo, October 21-25 in Richmond, Va. The event is …scheduled vote on a proposal essentially validating design of wood framed buildings taller than the International Building Code’s current five- to six-story threshold.  “The ICC proposal …signal to …building departments across the country that combustible tall wood buildings are an acceptable form of construction,” Build With Strength notes. Under the guise of fairness, the coalition adds, the Council underscores a preference “to shelter membership from viewing critical materials. …the ICC should welcome, not restrict, as much information as possible so that membership can make fully informed decisions. …combustible wooden high-rise buildings are on the table, and it deserves the highest level of care and educated consideration.”

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Can Future Cities be Timber Cities? Google’s Sidewalk Labs Asks the Experts

By Olivia Jia
ArchDaily
October 23, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

Steel and concrete facades have dominated contemporary cityscapes for generations, but as pressures from climate change pose new challenges for design and construction industries, some firms are turning to mass timber as the construction material of the future. But could it be used for structures as complex as skyscrapers?  In Sidewalk Labs’ inaugural City of the Future biweekly podcast, which focuses on new ideas and innovations poised to transform city life, hosts Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk investigate the potential of—and pushback against—an emerging mass timber industry. …As fires plagued early cities, however, a shift towards steel and concrete as more trusted construction materials—both mass energy consumers and non-renewable resources—became commonplace. Michael Green, one of the world’s leading experts in building skyscrapers out of wood and principal architect at Michael Green Architecture (MGA), hopes to change that.

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The Forest Service Celebrates Cross Laminated Timber during Forest Products Week

By Melissa Jenkins, Forest Service
US Department of Agriculture
October 22, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

During National Forest Products Week we celebrate the value of America’s forests and recognize how vital they are to our well-being and national prosperity. …By supporting forest products markets, we are … contributing to a more sustainable building sector. The Forest Service is working to develop the U.S. market for cross-laminated timber, or CLT, and other mass timber technologies. …the International Code Council is examining whether or not tall wood buildings up to 18 stories will be included in the 2021 International Building Code. A final decision will be made later this year. The state of Oregon has already adopted the proposed provisions for the International Code Council under its Statewide Alternate Method, and Washington State legislation already embraces mass timber construction. The U.S. Department of Defense is already using CLT in some of its on-base housing because of the incredible resiliency of the materials and their resistance to explosive forces.

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Huge fire decimates another East Bay housing development under construction

By Sarah Ravani
San Francisco Gate
October 23, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States, US West

A massive fire early Tuesday in West Oakland destroyed multiple buildings in the latest incident of an East Bay housing development going up in flames. Crews arrived to West Grand Avenue and Filbert Street after receiving reports at 1:59 a.m. that a three-story complex was on fire, said Nick Luby, a deputy fire chief with the Oakland Fire Department. “It’s just a big pile of kindling,” Luby said of the construction site. “Small timber, it just grows quite quickly.”  A total of six structures in different phases of construction were burned in the blaze. Four of the buildings that were in the early stages of construction were completely lost, Luby said. As of 6:30 a.m., two of the remaining buildings that were nearly done were still burning. “The smoke is our biggest challenge right now,” Luby said. “Daylight will give us a whole new perspective.”

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Pancreatic cancer: Chinese tree compound helps destroy tumors

By Jasmin Collier
Medical News Now
October 22, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research, finds that a synthetic analog of a compound found in a rare Chinese tree can be used to tackle treatment-resistant pancreatic cancer. New findings may drastically improve the outlook for people who have pancreatic cancer. The American Cancer Society (ACS) report that around 55,440 people will develop pancreatic cancer in 2018 and around 44,330 people will die as a result. …New research offers much-needed hope; scientists have found that a derivative of camptothecin — which is a Chinese tree bark compound whose anticancer properties were discovered over half a century ago — can effectively kill pancreatic cancer tumors.

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Forestry

The Future of Forestry is Here

BC Forest Innovation Investment and TimberWest
TimberWest
October 22, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

For forest companies, like TimberWest, the health of the trees and associated ecosystems are paramount.  From seedling to maturity, the trees must be monitored and any problems addressed.  Monitoring methods are changing dramatically through the convergence of new technologies such as LiDAR, and the ability to deploy sensing technology using drones. …LiDAR… is now being used for forest research to more accurately examine everything from the height and diameter of trees to ground terrain evaluation and plot-level wood volume estimates. In the just-released video Forest for the Trees: How technology is transforming BC’s forest industry, University of British Columbia forestry professor Dr. Nicholas Coops emphasizes LiDAR and drone use are just two more recent examples of the forest sectors technological revolution, and the types of technology incorporated into every-day forest management.

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Forest management post wildfires, focus of Federation of BC Woodlot Association’s AGM

By Monica Lamb-Yorski
Williams Lake Tribune
October 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Woodlot licensees, joined ministry, industry, local government and academics from around the province for the Federation of BC Woodlot Associations AGM held in Williams Lake, many seeing firsthand the impacts of the 2017 wildfires. Organizer and federation president Brian McNaughton said more than 100 delegates attended and during a panel discussion on Saturday, there were numerous ideas advanced for necessary changes to the way public forests are managed. “It set the stage for further discussions and the actions to need to occur,” McNaughton said. “While woodlot licenses may be a small forest tenure, many are fixed on the land base in critical areas that interface with communities and public infrastructure. This conference showed how seriously woodlot licensees take their responsibilities to manage the land and forests responsibly.”

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Lynden girl wins best wildlife photo in national photo competition

By Julia Lovett
The Hamilton Spectator
October 22, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

A monarch butterfly perched on a cornflower won the top prize in the Earth Rangers’ Living Forest Photo Contest under the best wildlife photo category. And it was a nine-year-old girl from Lynden who captured it in her lens. …The competition, held jointly by Earth Rangers and Forest Products Association of Canada, challenged young rangers to photograph wildlife in their natural habitats and, according to Gelderman, she was shocked when she learned she had won. …The contest featured two other categories. They included best forest landscape and best tree photo.

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A Survey of Industrial-Scale Multigenerational Family Forest Owners Across the United States

By Chuck Henderson
Dovetail Partners
October 23, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

Chuck Henderson


This project focuses on families who own large tracts of forestland in the United States and manage them for economic return. …Specifically, this project seeks to understand the intersection of the family, business and forestry characteristics of these firms with the objective of sharing best practices and opportunities for the future. Forty-three families participated in the project. …The responding family firms had a median of 98 years in business and four and a half generations of ownership. Over three quarters of family firms intend to continue to own and manage their forestland “for many generations to come”. …As these families continue to grow in generations and members, it will be important for them to bolster their family processes as they have their businesses… it is often family sustainability that is hardest to achieve. 

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Growing spruce beetle populations spurs another officially recognized outbreak, hitting the Mat-Su Valley the hardest

By Jacob Mann
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman
October 23, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

WASILLA — Spruce beetles are only a quarter-inch long but in 2018, these tiny bugs took a huge bite out of Mat-Su Valley forests, killing about 506,000 acres of trees, according to data from the U.S. Forest Service website. “We’re currently in a spruce beetle outbreak in Southcentral Alaska,” Jason Moan, Forest Health Program Manager for the Alaska Division of Forestry, said. True to their name, these beetles’ primary victims were spruce trees. Their host of choice is white spruce, the hardest hit in recent years, leaving miles of red, dead trees stripped of their pines.  According to the U.S. Forest Service, nearly 558,000 acres of trees were decimated across Southcentral, primarily affecting the Mat-Su Valley and the northwestern Kenai Peninsula (48,000 acres). The last major spruce beetle outbreak ended around 1997, closing the final chapter of the notorious “90’s Spruce Beetle Epidemic,” that killed several million acres of trees.

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Forest Service keeps tabs on bugs that threaten fir forests

The Chronicle Journal
October 23, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

LEWISTON, Idaho – State and federal entomologists are tracking the spread of a tiny invasive insect that feeds on fir forests. The Lewiston Tribune reports the Idaho Department of Lands says the balsam woolly adelgid has the ability to rearrange the species composition of Northwestern forests, and it’s already been found in northern Idaho. The wingless insect is from Europe and was first introduced to North America in the early 20th century. With no native predators, the bug has flourished. “There is not a very effective group or guild of predators that feed on this insect,” said Tom Eckberg, an entomologist and forest health program manager for the Idaho Department of Lands at Coeur d’Alene.

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Michigan brothers face $450,000 in fines for tree removal on their property

By Louis Casiano
Fox News
October 22, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

Brothers in Michigan are facing nearly $500,000 in fines for allegedly removing more than 1,400 trees from their 16-acre property without permission, a report on Monday said. Gary and Matt Percy removed the trees with the intention of creating a Christmas tree farm on the Canton Township plot, their attorney Michael Pattwell told MLive.com. The attorney said that the land was filled with invasive plants. “This case is about misguided overreach,” Pattwell said. “It is unavoidably about whether people who own property are allowed to use it … We contend the Percy brothers exercised a farming exemption in the local tree removal law to clear the historic pasture behind their business and develop a Christmas tree farm.” The Percys’ are moving forward to plant 2,500 Christmas trees, and have already planted 1,000. Township attorney Kristin Kolb said the brothers were told last year they needed a permit to remove the trees.

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‘Without trees we won’t survive’: Prince Harry’s environmental message on Queensland visit

The Guardian
October 22, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

In the local language, Queensland’s Fraser Island is called K’gari, meaning paradise, and that’s just what Prince Harry says he found during his visit. The Duke of Sussex turned his focus to the environment on the seventh day of his royal tour of Australia. His first engagement was to dedicate the K’gari/Fraser forest to the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, a network of forest conservation initiatives, which involves most countries of the Commonwealth. He said the project was committed to raising awareness of the value of Indigenous forest and to saving them for future generations. “Put simply, without trees and forests we don’t survive. It is a symbiotic relationship and one that so many people still fail to realise,” he said in his dedication speech.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Online maps show impact of climate change on Canada’s boreal forests

The Canadian Press in the Calgary Herald
October 22, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: Canada

WINNIPEG — New online maps let viewers zero in on how climate change will affect their part of Canada’s boreal forest. “It’s designed to give information that’s relevant to people where they live,” Danny Blair, co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre at the University of Winnipeg, said Monday. The centre released its climate atlas of Canada last spring. This week, they’ve added information that details how things are likely to change in the boreal forest. …Blair and his colleagues divided the entire country into a grid of squares 10 kilometres per side. Using a combination of 12 international climate models, they made their best projection as to how each of those grid squares would be changed. …The point of the maps, he said, was to give Canadians a plain-language tool they can use for themselves to understand what’s coming.

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Availability of nitrogen to plants is declining as climate warms

By University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Science Daily
October 22, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US East

Researchers have found that global changes, including warming temperatures and increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are causing a decrease in the availability of a key nutrient for terrestrial plants. This could affect the ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the amount of nutrients available for the creatures that eat them. “Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide is stabilized at low enough levels to mitigate the most serious impacts of climate change, many terrestrial ecosystems will increasingly display signs of too little nitrogen as opposed to too much,” said study co-author Andrew Elmore of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

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