Daily Archives: November 26, 2019

Today’s Takeaway

Canfor adds Christmas closure to BC forestry curtailments

November 26, 2019
Category: Today's Takeaway

Canfor adds Christmas closure to BC curtailments, removing 58 million board feet of production. In related news: BC’s laid-off workers still waiting for bridge-funding: Domtar (Kamloops) forced to look elsewhere for fibre supply; the CN Rail strike threatens pulp mills; and more on Tolko’s Soda Creek mill. Meanwhile: the US affirms its duty determination on Chinese hardwood plywood; and key takeaways from the EU’s International Softwood Conference.

In Forestry news: a cancelled Sierra Club event becomes a pro-forestry rally in Campbell River; opposing herbicide spaying can be dangerous for your career in New Brunswick; the Australian logging ban may endanger some old growth forests; and Brazil’s deepening forest malaise.

Finally, wood fibres, electrodes and wearable electronics – oh my!

Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Business & Politics

Sustainable Forestry Initiative Announces New Board Members with Expertise on Key Sustainability Issues

By Sustainable Forestry Initiative
StreetInsider.com
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

WASHINGTON and OTTAWA — The Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI) is pleased to announce the election of three new members to its board of directors: Jad Daley, President and CEO, American Forests, Dr. Patricia Layton, Director of Clemson University’s Wood Utilization + Design Institute and Professor of Forestry at Clemson University, and Jeff Bromley, United Steelworkers Wood Council Chair. …the expertise of these board members will strengthen SFI’s knowledge around key issues including climate, carbon sequestration in well-managed forests and measures to support healthy forests and communities. …“The addition of these three new board members will support key priorities,” said Kathy Abusow, President and CEO of SFI Inc. “Their experience on issues such as quantifying the positive contribution of forests and forest products in addressing climate change, advancing innovations and green building…will help us deliver on our strategy in coming years.”

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Ministry says no funds have been dispersed yet to help laid-off forestry workers

By Chad Klassen
CFJC Today
November 26, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

KAMLOOPS — Many communities in the B.C. Interior are still reeling from reduced workforces, layoffs and closures. During the summer, more than 20 mills shut down or curtailed production, costing thousands of people their livelihoods. The crisis only deepened on Monday with Canfor announcing it will take a two-week curtailment at all of its B.C. sawmills beginning Dec. 23. The NDP says it’s making progress with initiatives like increasing the allowable cut for First Nations and creating a new community forest agreement in places like Quesnel. However, the MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin Donna Barnett argues the people out of work aren’t being helped quick enough. …According to the ministry, 500 laid-off sawmill workers have applied to the province’s retirement bridging program. …To date, about 4,000 people across 27 communities in B.C. are out of work due to mill closures. The NDP announced in September $69 million to help laid-off workers. 

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B.C.’s trade goods piling up behind CN Rail strike

By Derrick Penner
The Vancouver Sun
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Typically, 70 ships a week sail in and out of Vancouver harbour, but that number will quickly start to dwindle if the CN Rail strike drags on, said Chamber of Shipping president Robert Lewis-Manning. The labour dispute… halting about half of the rail traffic coming in and out of the Port of Vancouver. …And the interruption in rail transportation comes at an inopportune time for producers of forest products, which are suffering through terrible markets. “This is having a real impact on our companies now” at a time they can’t afford more disruptions, said Susan Yurkovich, CEO of COFI. Yurkovich said… production plants are starting to run short of raw materials they need, such as wood chips and, particularly for pulp mills, chemicals that they usually receive by rail. …“I’ve heard some producers say if they can’t get some of the raw materials (they need) they will be shutting down next week.”

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Forest crisis has forced Domtar to look elsewhere, pay more for its fibre supply

By Chad Klassen
CFJC Today
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

KAMLOOPS — The forest crisis in B.C. isn’t impacting operations at Domtar in Kamloops, but the mill’s general manager says the pulp mill has been forced to find alternative sources for its fibre supply.  The lack of supply that has shut down sawmills during this crisis has also forced Domtar to go elsewhere and spend more money to get the fibre it needs to make pulp. “You need 2.3 tonnes of fibre in order to make a tonne of pulp, which is what we are making. It makes fibre rare and hard to get, and the fibre we can buy and find on the market is more expensive,” said Domtar’s mill general manager Jean-Claude Allaire. “And (the) pulp market is a global market, so we’re competing not only with Canadian mills but we’re competing with the global market.” 

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Canfor adds Christmas closure to B.C. forestry curtailments

By Tom Fletcher
BC Local News
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

As B.C. politicians argued in the legislature about the ongoing job losses in the forest industry Monday, Canfor announced its province-wide shutdown of sawmill operations from Christmas to after New Year’s Day. The shutdown is expected to remove 58 million board feet of production. …The announcement came as Minister Doug Donaldson was being questioned about Mosaic Forest Management’s shutdown of contract logging on Vancouver Island. Mosaic began its annual winter shutdown early. …Mosaic, a partnership of Island Timberlands and Timberwest formed in 2018, adds its curtailment to the five-month strike at Western Forest Products. …In the B.C. Interior, Tolko Industries announced that its Soda Creek sawmill is going from four days a week down to three. …Since November, Tolko has announced the permanent closure of its Kelowna sawmill. …“I’m not sure how much more communities like Williams Lake can take,” said MLA Donna Barnett.

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Canfor Curtailing BC Production Capacity in December

By Canfor Corporation
Cision Newswire
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

VANCOUVER — Canfor Corporation announced it will be curtailing operations at all British Columbia sawmills at the end of December. All sawmills, with the exception of WynnWood, will be curtailed for two weeks from December 23 through January 3, with operations resuming on January 6. WynnWood will be curtailed for five days. The curtailments are due to the high cost of fibre and continued weak lumber markets, which are making the operating conditions in BC uneconomic. “We deeply regret that our employees have been impacted by multiple curtailments in 2019,” said Stephen Mackie, Senior VP. …These curtailments will remove almost 58 million board feet of production output and are in addition to all previously announced capacity reductions.

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Tolko Soda Creek going to three-day work week

By monica Lamb-Yorski
The Williams Lake Tribune
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

Tolko’s Soda Creek mill in Williams Lake will be see a three-day work beginning in December, something the company said back in September it was planning for. “The schedule is part of that flexible operating footprint of moving into something that would fluctuating between 100 per cent and 50 per cent at different points,” said Chris Downey. …United Steelworker Local 1-2017 first president Paul French said Monday he questioned how high prices have to get before things can start floating again. …The curtailment to three days at Soda Creek mill will begin next week and then be reviewed, he confirmed. “If the review comes back that it’s not that bad then they will go up to four or they will remain at three. It’s going to be week by week.”

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Commerce Affirms Radiata Pine Circumvention

The Decorative Hardwood’s Association
November 25, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States

The U.S. Department of Commerce has affirmed its preliminary determination that decorative softwood-faced plywood is subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty order of 194% on these Chinese imports. Four U.S. producers in the Coalition for Fair Trade of Hardwood Plywood filed a petition with the Department of Commerce, asking the agency to find that imports of Chinese hardwood plywood products with face and back veneers made of softwood species suitable for decorative uses are circumventing the recently issued antidumping and countervailing duty orders on hardwood plywood products from China. The Department of Commerce made an affirmative preliminary determination last fall. Imports of these products had surged in 2018 but have since returned to near 2016 levels.

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Tackling market and climate change

By Charles Hopping, Timber Trade Federation president
The Timber Trades Journal
November 26, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

Charles Hopping

ANTWERP, BELGIUM — It all seemed so simple…the International Softwood Conference asking if I’d like to explain what was going on in the UK, with special reference to Brexit. …In terms of the market, 2018 was a very good year but 2019 has been disappointing. Globally too much production has chased a reduced demand, weakening prices significantly. Looking ahead, production is expected to increase, and producers expect global demand to recover and bring things more nearly into balance. …It’s nearly 20 years since mountain pine beetle began to ravage the forests of BC. We now have a potentially similar problem in European forests, particularly those of Central Europe. …The longer-term issue is how we replace those forests. The trees that have died or fallen have often done so because they are stressed due to climate change.

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

Cowbell Brewing wins SFI Certified Wood Award

REMI Network Design Quarterly
November 25, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada East

Cowbell Brewing won the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Certified Wood Award for using responsibly sourced wood products in the design of North America’s first carbon neutral brewery. The award is part of the Wood Design & Building Awards program. Allan Avis Architects received the award at the Toronto Wood Solutions Fair. …Cowbell chose SFI-certified products for this beautiful brewery, restaurant and event space south of Blyth, a village in southwestern Ontario. It features a closed-loop brewery and an on-site carbon sequestration initiative. …“The Cowbell Brewery is a prime example of wood’s versatility and appeal. Builders and architects use wood because it looks great, it’s easy to work with and it comes from a renewable resource,” said Annie Perkins, senior director of Strategic Partnerships at SFI.

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Opinion: Cross-laminated timber can help the Northwest lead on the Green New Deal

By Conor Bronsdon & Abel Pacheco
Puget Sound Business Journal
November 25, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: United States, US West

We live in a region of pioneers and conservationists in a land built on the back of the timber industry. The idea of sustainable working forests fits not just our historical industrial strengths, it fits our regional ethos. In the Pacific Northwest, we want to live green. It’s time for Seattle to take the lead on mass timber. With cross-laminated timber (CLT) and other mass timber products we can move to solve our housing crisis, develop needed density, and address climate change — all while staying true to our regional culture and history. It might surprise you to hear that construction accounts for 23 percent of the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions. Steel and concrete together account for 14 percent of global carbon emissions to date. We need to change the way we build.

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Using wood in electrodes for more durable, sustainable wearables

By KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Phys.org
November 25, 2019
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

A team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology reports that it created the new composite material by combining wood cellulose nano fibrils (CNF) – or extremely small filaments known as nanorods—with MXene, a two-dimensional nanoscale conductive material. The wood fibrils provide mechanical strength otherwise lacking in MXenes, and they allow the electrodes to become flexible. “Our results will eventually help with realizing the development of flexible multifunctional energy storage devices, that is, supercapacitors and batteries, at a lower cost and with higher device-base performance,” says Max Hamedi, a researcher in wood cellulose at KTH who in recent years also developed a soft battery made of aerogel foam from wood pulp.

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Forestry

Sierra Club presentation becomes pro-forestry rally after Campbell River event cancelled

By Mike Davies
Campbell River Mirror
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

The Sierra Club of BC and the Wilderness Committee were scheduled to host a presentation entitled “Forests: A Climate for Change” at the Campbell River Community Centre on Monday night, but the event was cancelled at the last minute based on recommendations from the RCMP and the City of Campbell River over concerns including “a high risk of emotionally charged behaviours and security and public safety reasons,” the organization announced on its Facebook event page. ..In response to the clear opposition being voiced by many in the community, it was announced earlier in the day that the format of the event would be changed.  …“We are dropping our planned presentations and instead will provide space for an open community discussion about these complex issues,” adding “Our goal has never been to antagonize forest industry workers.

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Coulson Aviation sends helicopters to Chile, Australia to fight wildfires

By Susie Quinn
Alberni Valley News
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Coulson Aviation is expanding its firefighting operations into Chile and sending more aircraft to Australia to help both countries battle wildfires. For the next 100 days, Coulson Aviation, headquartered in Port Alberni, B.C., will be working with its new partner PESCO and Chile’s National Forest Corporation (CONAF) to fight against the current wildfire season. The CH47D Chinook helicopter that Coulson sent to Bolivia to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest has been sent to Chile, said Foster Coulson. The National Forest Corporation (CONAF) is a Chilean non-profit organization, through which Chile contributes to the management of the country’s forest resources. Together with the new partner PESCO, a leading company in equipment and machinery for the forestry, mining, environmental, municipal, and emerging industries, Coulson Aviation is bringing their expertise in firefighting into Chile. …“It’s exciting to see our company constantly evolving and now operating on three continents, ” Britt Coulson said.

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In New Brunswick, opposing forestry industry practices can be dangerous for your career

By Gil Shochat and Sylvie Fournier
CBC News
November 26, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada East

NEW BRUNSWICK — Along Restigouche County’s Route 180, in northern New Brunswick, is a perfectly arranged silhouette of conifer plantations. But this forest is cultivated, and the political battle around it has come to define much of the political conversation in that remote part of Canada. At issue is glyphosate, a herbicide sprayed by forestry companies on many of the province’s forests. …Eighty per cent of the forest harvest on public lands in New Brunswick is done by clear cutting. About one-third of that clearcut land is sprayed with glyphosate. …A college instructor and longtime critic of glyphosate was recently fired from a forestry college and has filed a wrongful-dismissal suit. Another university professor lost a post on a scientific panel when he opposed forest industry practices. Other scientists suffered similar consequences. 

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Guam Christmas trees treated with gas to stop invasive pests

Associated Press in Helena Independent Record
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

HAGATNA, Guam — In the U.S. territory of Guam, the Christmas season so far smells like frankincense, myrrh and methyl bromide. The Pacific Daily News reports that Guam’s Customs and Quarantine’s BioSecurity Task Force is filling containers of imported Christmas trees with methyl bromide gas to kill potentially invasive species. Officials say they have treated six containers of more than 2,500 imported trees, wreaths and garlands and expect to treat another seven containers in the coming weeks. Officials say they have treated six containers of more than 2,500 imported trees, wreaths and garlands and expect to treat another seven containers in the coming weeks. The Guam Invasive Species Council approved the fumigation policy in 2016 to keep unwanted pests from impacting Guam’s agriculture, natural resources or the homes of Christmas celebrants.

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Responsible Forestry Leaders Celebrated at Greenbuild During FSC’s 25th Anniversary Gala

By SCS Global Services
The Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

ATLANTA – SCS Global Services celebrates longtime Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) certificate holders Baskahegan Company and UFP International as 2019 FSC Leadership Award recipients… The award was given to Baskahegan Company for “15 years of continuous FSC-certified forest management and a commitment to long-term stewardship in Maine’s Baskahegan Valley.” UFP International + The Kendeda Building at Georgia Tech received the award for “innovative use of FSC and reclaimed wood in this mass timber project seeking Living Building status.” “These companies are highly deserving of an FSC Leadership Award –Baskahegan Company, for its longstanding dedication to economically and ecologically responsible forestry practices over five decades, and the degree to which it is so well integrated with and supportive of the local community, and UFP for its commitment to responsible sourcing globally, and its leadership in innovative, sustainable building,” said Dave Bubser, Vice President of Natural Resources, SCS Global Services.

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Brazil’s deepening malaise

By Robert Rotberg – Harvard Kennedy School, Program on Intrastate Conflict
The Globe and Mail
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: International

With the Amazon burning and politicians regaining impunity after political and economic corruption scandals recede, Brazil’s rule of law is suffering one sharp blow after another. …South America’s biggest country is sliding rapidly into a slough of deceit. Modern-day brigands are pillaging Brazil’s environment while reforms to its justice system are being denied. …So far, according to Brazil’s own National Institute for Space Research, almost 3,800 square miles of Amazon’s forest cover have been set alight since Mr. Bolsonaro became president in 2018. …Mr. Bolsonaro now says the economic value of opening up the Amazon is what’s important. Ecological reserves “hinder development,” he claims, and national parks are a nuisance. …Some environmental organizations have threatened to boycott Brazilian products, especially beef and soy exports. But, however that movement develops, readers should be aware of how much Brazil is unnecessarily, wantonly, contributing to the warming of the planet.

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Green groups fear Victorian logging ban may actually endanger some old growth forest

By Lisa Cox
The Guardian
November 25, 2019
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Environment groups have raised doubts about the Victorian government’s promise to protect 90,000 hectares of old growth forest, just weeks after the Andrews government announced a major transition plan for Victoria’s timber industry. Six organisations, including The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and Environment Victoria, have expressed fears that the government will open up some areas currently mapped as old growth to logging. In a letter to the premier, Daniel Andrews, and the environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, the groups have called on the government to clarify how it plans to implement its promises, which include an immediate ban on old growth logging. Current maps used for native timber harvesting identify areas of old growth forest that are off limits to logging, but the groups fear some of these areas may be opened up under a new verification system.

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