A Sierra Club report calls for BC’s old-growth forests to be returned to 30% of their original level. In related BC news: ENGO’s call for more old-growth protection; second growth forests are not as fire resistant as old growth; and today is the deadline for input on BC’s forest policy review. Elsewhere: a fresh approach to the spruce budworm is working in New Brunswick; Saskatchewan foresters join Quebec to fight the budworm; and private investors team up with the Nature Conservancy to protect Appalachian forests.
In other news: lumber and plywood lead price decline in residential construction; Western Forest Products strike enters third week without agreement on a mediator; a Montana perspective on BC’s mill closures; national efforts taken to stop US firefighter suicides; and China’s GHG emissions are up more than 50% in the last ten years.
Finally, the latest viral online craze involves… stapling bread to trees. Sorry!
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
Prices paid for goods used in residential construction decreased by 1.1% in June according to the latest Producer Price Index released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The decline broke a four-month trend of increases and was only the fifth month over the past two years in which prices fell. Over the past 12 months, building materials prices have decreased 1.6%, just the fifth June year-over-year decrease since 2000. The decline is a sharp reversal of June 2017 to June 2018, during which prices increased 8.8%. The PPI report shows that softwood lumber prices decreased (-1.7%, not seasonally adjusted) in June-the index’s third consecutive monthly decline. …One of the special indexes published by BLS tracks lumber and plywood in one category. Similar to softwood lumber, the lumber and plywood index fell 2.3%. Prices paid for softwood lumber and lumber and plywood have decreased 23.1% and 17.6%, respectively, since June 2018.
HAMILTON, Mont. — Logging work has commenced in a project intended to thin wooded areas that could potentially provide fuel for wildfires. The Ravalli Republic reported Sunday that loggers have started thinning about 5 square miles (13 square kilometers) of dense forest in the area of the Bitterroot River. The Meadow Vapor project will split the work area and the timber will be sold in two sales to area mills for various uses. The project focuses on removing diseased and smaller trees and leaving old-growth ponderosa pine and Douglas fir behind. Fires burned large areas of the region in 2000. The Bitterroot Community Wildfire Protection Plan has identified the area with an estimated 255 homes as a high priority for reduction of potential wildfire fuel. [END]
WASHINGTON – Private investors have backed what supporters say is one of the largest conservation acquisitions ever in the eastern United States, offering a promising new model to protect land. Conservation group the Nature Conservancy announced Monday that it and partners now control almost 400 square miles of land in three states in the central Appalachian Mountains, traditionally heavily dependent on coal mining. The tracts… were purchased from timber management entities through a $130 million investment fund. …The Nature Conservancy will manage the land, known as the Cumberland Forest Project, for a decade, she said and will provide investors financial returns from three sources: revenue from certified sustainable timber sales, carbon offset credits and the eventual sale of the land, at the end of the period, with long-term or permanent management restrictions in place.
