Daily Archives: January 22, 2019

Today’s Takeaway

Global wood demand slows in 2018: World Bank

January 22, 2019
Category: Today's Takeaway

Global wood demand slowed in 2018 according to the World Bank in Madson’s Lumber Reporter – the culprits include Chinese tariffs and US housing trends. In other Business news: there is unease in Nova Scotia about a future without Northern Pulp; a no-deal Brexit means changes for UK timber traders; and wood is making a comeback in Ontario

In Forestry/Climate news: Vivian Krause speaks to the US money train behind some Canadian ENGOs; George Wuerthner says the US Forest Service is ignoring fire science to justify thinning; a US study says biotechnology is not a quick fix for forest health; and an Australian report says forest soils need more time to recover from disturbances than previously thought.

Finally, food and building materials merge with wood-composite chicken nuggets.

Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Froggy Foibles

Food and building materials merge with Perdue’s wood composite chicken nuggets

By Lloyd Alter
Treehugger
January 21, 2019
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States

We have been saying for years that building materials should be healthy and high fiber like the food we eat, and now Perdue delivers. Perdue became the first national brand of chicken …We were just writing last week that building materials should be almost edible, that they should be natural and high fiber. And now Perdue has introduced an organic, gluten-free chicken nugget with wood as an ingredient. This could be the start of a new trend: truly edible building materials. Alas, Perdue may have jumped the gun on releasing this product, because the USDA has demanded a recall all 68,244 pounds of the nuggets. …The serious thing about this is that we really should think of our building materials the way we do about food. Years ago… I wrote Why Plastic Foam Insulation Is Like a Twinkie: Lessons Green Builders Can Learn From Michael Pollan and I modified the appropriate food rules and applied them to building materials. It is more relevant than ever.

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Business & Politics

Global Wood Demand Slows in 2018: World Bank

Madison’s Lumber Reporter
January 21, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

In 2017, China imported US$8.83 billion of total lumber products from the United States, according to the World Bank. However, 2018 saw China impose a 10% retaliatory tariff on US lumber products and threatened a larger 25% tariff on US$60 billion of total US goods, said Freight Waves Freight Waves Tuesday.  The United States has cultivated a strong export market for lumber products in China. Prior to the escalating trade war, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) stated that the growth of the Chinese market would be “unlike anything ever encountered in this industry.” The Council predicted that in the near future 60% of American hardwood goods will be exported from the US, with 54% of exports bound for China.

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Natural resources forum coming

By Frank Peebles
Prince George Citizen
January 22, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

The B.C. Natural Resources Forum drills deep into industries derived from the land like forestry, mining, petroleum, natural gas, agriculture, fisheries and tourism. Those who gather at the annual event are some of the primary figures in government, major corporations, First Nations, goods and services delivery, environmental protection, academia, trades and other stakeholder groups. This year’s forum runs Jan. 22-24 and as always it is held in Prince George at the Civic & Convention Centre. Chief organizer Dan Jepson of C3 Alliance Corp. has attended all 15 of the past forums and for the past five has been the lead coordinator. He doesn’t live in Prince George but insists this is the only place he would consider holding the event created by then-MLA Pat Bell. “This has to stay in Prince George. That’s one of the secrets of its success,” Jepson said. 

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Nova Scotia’s forest industry faces unknown future without Northern Pulp

By Michael Gorman
CBC News
January 22, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

Jeff Bishop

It was a few months ago that Jeff Bishop noticed a growing unease about the future of Nova Scotia’s forest industry. Bishop, the executive director of Forest Nova Scotia, was suddenly taking more and more calls. On the other line were concerned industry members, all taking stock of what the potential loss of the Northern Pulp mill in Pictou County would mean for their livelihoods. As the legislated closure date of the mill’s Boat Harbour treatment facility looms and no replacement approved, the future of the mill — which takes between 35 and 40 per cent of the pulpwood from the provincial market — remains murky. While there are differing opinions on the mill in terms of its history, operation and environmental footprint, there is mostly consensus on the role it plays within the forestry industry, both direct and indirect.

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No deal Brexit advice: Changes for timber importers and exporters

Mirage News
January 22, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

Timber importers and exporters are being asked to consider requirements for their businesses in the event of a no deal Brexit. …In a no deal scenario, businesses importing timber and timber products from the European Union and European Economic Area and placing it on the UK market will have to carry out checks (known as ‘due diligence’) from day one of EU Exit. These checks demonstrate they are importing legally harvested timber, helping to protect against illegal deforestation. …There will be no changes to the current process for businesses importing from outside the EU, UK producers first placing on the market, and internal UK trade. As before, they will need to conduct checks to confirm their timber is legally harvested.

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Hawke’s Bay residents furious after forester’s pipe leaves beach ‘unswimmable’

By Sam Farrell
Newshub
January 22, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

A small coastal community is pleading with a local forestry company to stop holding their beach to ransom. Whirinaki Beach, in the Hawke’s Bay, has been unswimmable for months, because of a broken wasterwater pipe leaking brown foamy water into the sea. Warren Kohils and his family are sick of the leaking pipe which, they say, stole Whirinaki Beach from their community last September. The shore is stained, the water is murky and the culprit is wastewater run-off from making wood pulp. …Mr Kohlis says Pan Pac has been breaching its resource consent for four months. “They have a consent for 2.4 kilometres out. They have got a break in the pipe, and we believe they should stop discharging until the pipe is fixed,” he says.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Timber! Why an age-old building material is making a 21st-century comeback in Ontario

By Diane Peters
TVO.org
January 21, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada East

One of the University of Toronto’s latest building projects, a 14-storey academic building on top of the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport, next to Varsity Stadium, is going back to basics — with a twist. It’ll be constructed mainly of mass timber, and when it’s done, it’ll be one of the tallest mass-timber-and-concrete hybrid buildings in North America. Yes, wood is back. The building material comes with a number of benefits — environmentally friendly, lightweight — and support from the Ontario government. “You know what they say: everything old is new again. If you think about it, wherever trees grow, people have been building with wood,” says Marco VanderMass, associate and project design architect at Kirkor Architects and Planners in Toronto. “Over time, we lost faith in wood because of big fires.”

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Increasing Urban Wood Use Awareness and Product Demand

By Kathryn Fernholz et al
Dovetail Partners
January 15, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

This analysis examined existing programs that are utilized in the management and care of the urban forest to identify areas of alignment and potential for green market opportunities. …The analysis identified a number of near and long-term opportunities related to green building, forest certification programs, existing programs, and regional activities. Urban wood use is reported anecdotally within green building programs and third-party forest certification programs. With further development, the use of urban wood in green building could be expanded and recognition within third-party forest certification programs could be formalized. The PEFC has announced an expanded scope of their program to include street trees and urban forests (Trees Outside Forests), which offers a pathway to third-party certification for urban forest management and urban forest products.

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Comparison of Environmental Impacts of Flooring Alternatives

By Jim Bowyer et al
Dovetail Partners
January 14, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States

Homeowners, commercial building owners, designers, and builders have many floor covering options from which to choose. The differences in environmental impacts between some of these options are substantial. …Some flooring products trigger vastly greater environmental impacts than others. No flooring alternative outperforms all others in every impact category. However, systematic assessment of a wide range of impact categories shows plant-based flooring products such as wood and cork to be those generally associated with the lowest impacts, and carpeting and marble floor tiles triggering the greatest impacts. Though a natural material, wool, when used as a floor covering material, has by far the greatest environmental impact of any flooring alternative, including all other types of carpeting material. 

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New GLT manufacturing project announced

Architecture and Design
January 22, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

A new glue laminated tmber (GLT) production plant is to be built in Maryborough, Queensland.  Hyne Timber’s CEO, Jon Kleinschmidt says the new building will be constructed using the company’s own GLT products, manufactured at their existing plant in Maryborough. “Further, Hyne Timber remains committed to using Queensland products and services throughout delivery of this construction project with a priority on Fraser Coast businesses where possible. “Every part of this development will celebrate and showcase Queensland businesses and skills as so many businesses and people have supported us over our 137 years of operations,” Kleinschmidt says. Hyne Timber’s GLT sales manager, John Hesse says the company has been experiencing an increase in both enquiries and demand for GLT as consumers search for sustainable building solutions.

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Forestry

Researcher exposes money trail behind U.S.-based campaign to kill the oilsands

By Licia Corbella
Vancouver Sun
January 17, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, United States

Vivian Krause

Anyone in Canada who knows anything about the target on the back of Canadian oil and gas knows the name Vivian Krause. …Krause’s name has become synonymous with the fight against the concerted effort by U.S. oil interests working to land-lock Canadian oil and gas by using environmental groups to protest against the industry with the stated aim of grinding development to a halt. …Krause said she was actually optimistic that the Tar Sands Campaign might “turn the page” and end after achieving all of those wins, but no, the pressure continues. Notley’s government then created the world’s largest boreal forest preserve, something the U.S. foundations through groups like Tides pushed for. …“(Notley’s) done everything they’ve asked for… so why is this campaign still being funded?”

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Protect the Carmi trails from logging

Letter by Michelle Parry
Pentiction Western News
January 20, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Please remove the Carmi recreation trails near Penticton from the BCTS sales inventory.  Our forests are crown assets and should be managed for the people of B.C. by skilled foresters, biologists and economists, not a sales team who don’t care if they give the trees away for a net financial loss to the communities and our province. …Your policies reflect desperation, short-sightedness and poverty thinking. Are we so poor in B.C. that we have to log small recreation areas valued for so much more than timber? Values that create healthy, intelligent and sustainable communities. Communities that are needed to pay your pension. Is this the legacy you want to leave? Please leave our recreation trails alone, we do not want them logged.

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British Columbians view natural environment and climate as key to quality of life in BC, support strong penalties including jail time for polluters

By the Real Estate Foundation of BC
Cision Newswire
January 22, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

VANCOUVER – Today, the Real Estate Foundation of BC (REFBC) shared the results from a public opinion poll it commissioned on British Columbians’ views on land use, sustainability and regional planning throughout the province. Conducted by McAllister Opinion Research, the poll drew on a cross-section of British Columbian residents. Questions focused on quality of life, sustainable economy, local needs, land protection, penalties for polluters, First Nations as partners, and regionally specific concerns. REFBC, a philanthropic organization that helps advance sustainable land use in B.C., commissioned the poll to better understand B.C. residents’ values, opinions, and knowledge on land use issues. By sharing the findings from Sustainable Land Use: A Public Opinion Survey of British Columbians, REFBC hopes to help policy makers, governments, First Nations, non-profits, and others make decisions that align with public values.

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Forest Service ignores fire science to justify forest thinning

By George Wuerthner, ecologist
Helena Independent Record
January 21, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

George Wuerthner

The Helena National Forest has released its Ten Mile-South Helena Project, which will include logging, prescribed burning on more than 17,500 acres including in roadless lands proposed for wilderness designation. Throughout its document, the FS ignores the preponderance of fire science to justify logging/thinning of the forest and ignores the many environmental impacts that result from such actions. First, the FS implies that dead trees, particularly beetle-kill lodgepole pine, increases fire risk. Contrary to this message, numerous studies have concluded that dead trees reduce, not increase, fire hazard. For example, a study done on bug killed trees in Colorado found: “Contrary to the expectation that bark beetle infestation alters subsequent fire severity, correlation, and multivariate generalized linear regression analysis revealed no influence of pre-fire beetle severity on nearly all field or remotely sensed measurements of fire severity.”

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Can biotech save trees? Study raises more questions than answers

By Rob Chaney
The Missoulian
January 21, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Diana Six

Opinion polls might matter as much as genetic experiments in protecting America’s trees, according to a new study of biotechnology and forest health. “We struggled with that a lot, and didn’t come up with an answer,” said Diana Six, a University of Montana tree pathology researcher and co-author of the national study. “There are a lot of people who don’t want to see genetically modified natural forests. It will affect their lives and how they interact with the forest. Is wilderness still wilderness if the trees are all human products?” …So the U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency and other policy makers asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to produce a “consensus study” showing how trees might be protected through genetic engineering. …“We had a group with a philosopher and an ethics person, social scientists, forest ecologists, entomologists and population geneticists. It’s not a quick fix.”

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Bitterroot Forester to Receive National Award

By Steve Fullerton
KLYQ
January 21, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Byron Bonney

Regional Forester Byron Bonney will be one of seven honorees for work in reducing wildfire danger. He will receive a Wildfire Mitigation Award in March. The National Association of State Foresters made the announcement January 17, citing Bonney’s extensive work as Fuel Mitigation Program manager for the Bitter Root RC&D in Hamilton. Since 2001, according to Bonney, the organization has received over $7 million in grants to help private landowners reduce forest fire risk by fuel reduction thinning, pruning and slash treatment on over 9,000 acres. The work has been done in Ravalli, Missoula and Mineral Counties. Community foresters help in each county. The award is co-sponsored by the National Association of State Foresters, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the National Fire Protection Association and the USDA Forest Service.

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Forest soils need many decades to recover from fires and logging

Australian National University
January 22, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Elle Bowd

A landmark study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that forest soils need several decades to recover from bushfires and logging – much longer than previously thought. Lead researcher Elle Bowd from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society said the team found forest soils recovered very slowly over many years from these events – up to 80 years following a bushfire and at least 30 years after logging. “We discovered that both natural and human disturbances can have incredibly long-lasting effects on forest soils that could impact plant communities and ecosystem function,” said Ms Bowd, who is the lead author of the ANU team’s Nature Geoscience paper. Professor David Lindenmayer, also from the ANU team, said scientists had not known how long soils were impacted by bushfires and logging prior to this study. 

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Public call for forestry promotion proposals announced

By Sylvester Phelan
Agriland
January 21, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: International

A public call has been launched for proposals in the area of forestry promotion, the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Andrew Doyle, announced today. The call is encouraging innovative proposals which will highlight “the multi-functional benefits” of forestry in Ireland over the next two years. In announcing the call, Minister Doyle said: “We know forestry delivers many benefits in Ireland, particularly economic, social and environmental benefits.  “While we have a relatively low level of forest cover in Ireland, compared to other European countries, there is huge potential to develop and grow Irish forestry to enable us and future generations to enjoy those benefits.” The minister said the Government continues to “pro-actively assist and support the development” of Irish forestry through the National Forestry Programme. 

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

The Forest for the Trees: New Device Tells Scientists About Climate Effects

By Steve Baragona
Voice of America News
January 21, 2019
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

A device called a TreeTalker is providing information about trees to people who oversee forests and woodlands. The device aims to measure the growth and general health of trees. Scientists say the new technology is important because trees are believed to be under increasing stress because of changes in the world’s climate. … Antonio Brunori is Secretary-General of PEFC Italy. …The TreeTalker devices serve as an early warning system for people overseeing forests. Brunori said TreeTalker turns “eco-physiological signals, such as growth, absorption of carbon dioxide, liquid flow from roots to leaves – into scientific information.” This information can help show if a tree is under attack from insects or other organisms. Riccardo Valentini invented the new device. He also is head of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.

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